Evan Halper and Chris Megerian of the Los Angeles Times are basically correct when they say that Hillary Clinton is aggressively courting Republican voters but not actually doing much of anything on the policy front to throw them a bone. There are so many disaffected Republicans who are willing and even eager to disavow Trump that the Clinton campaign has a scheduling problem giving each faction its due. Yesterday it was 30 ex-House members signing an open letter against Trump. Before that, it was ex-Virginia Senator John Warner coming out against him. Back in August, there were 50 Republican foreign policy veterans who signed an open letter against Trump. Mitt Romney is against Trump. The whole Bush family appears to be against him. John McCain only feigns his support. There’s even a Clinton campaign website where ordinary citizens can go declare that they are “Republicans against Trump.”
Yet, the balance of polling data indicates that most Republican voters are either staying put or flirting with Gary Johnson.
For all her marketing to Republicans, Clinton has done little to pivot her agenda in their direction. She has been unapologetic about continuing the policies of Obama, which conservatives detest. She has vowed to nominate justices who would put the Supreme Court under liberal control for decades, filling Republican voters with dread. She would grow government, expand Obamacare and champion abortion rights.
“She hasn’t done much to throw conservatives a bone,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk radio host in Wisconsin. A vocal member of the “Never Trump” movement, Sykes finds himself tangling with his listeners constantly. “They are lining up with their noses held to vote for him,” he said.
Sykes said he is still waiting for Clinton to reach out to Republicans with a “Sister Souljah moment” — a reference to the time Bill Clinton impressed social conservatives with a provocative remark before Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. In the 1992 incident, Clinton repudiated a hip-hop artist’s take on black-on-white violence.
Hillary Clinton is unlikely to deliver such a moment. Instead, she is taking a far more cautious approach, one that avoids offending the progressive voters who were the backbone of President Obama’s electoral coalition and who rallied around her primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I’m skeptical that Clinton’s efforts and these high profile Republican defections aren’t having any impact. It may just be that it’s hard to isolate small impacts among all the statistical noise. Suburban women, for example, have already been identified as one group that is defecting from the GOP in significant numbers. But it’s hard to say how much that is explained by the lure of a woman president or the boorishness and sexism of her opponent. If it’s also the case that these more moderate Republicans are swayed by establishment Republican denunciations, it could be impossible to tell from the polling data.
Anecdotally, as a resident of the Philly suburbs, I live among a lot of Romney voters (of both genders) who will not be voting for Trump. These folks are less likely to get their news from right-wing sources and they’re not doctrinaire conservatives. They actually read newspapers and care what David Brooks or George Will has to say. When they see that Poppy Bush may be voting for Clinton, that actually means something to them. The question is, how many more of them are gettable but still holding out because they prefer a generic Republican to a generic Democrat? Could Clinton make inroads by signaling that she agrees with them about some of the shortcomings of her base?
Progressives don’t like it when Democrats pander to Republicans. If President Obama says something nice about Ronald Reagan, that’s hard to forgive. If Michelle poses for a picture with Dubya, that’s like waterboarding a terrorist with her own gag and bucket. Half of them are convinced that Clinton has or will triangulate them to death.
So far, though, it’s hard to identify any concessions she’s made to the right. There have been no Sister Souljah moments. Most of her natural appeal to the right hasn’t come from movement on her part but simply through Trump breaking with conservative orthodoxy. So, for example, a Republican would naturally feel more comfortable with Clinton’s position on Russia than with this:
Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2013
Perhaps Clinton can find some areas to broaden her appeal to soft Republicans, but so far progressives don’t have much to complain about. Still, maybe the dumbest thing in left-wing politics is the idea that you don’t want to win by too much.
If Clinton does any triangulation, it will either move to appeal to more of the dissatisfied progressives, independent Sanders voters, or Trump’s base and not the no-where-else-to-go Republicans whose choices are not voting and voting for Clinton.
It will take an interesting sort of triangulation that communicates multiple messages at once, but not contradictory policies. For example, Clinton might advocate a DOJ investigation into whether there is corruption and sweetheart dealings in police union relationships with police departments. Once suspects that there would have to be to enforce the general omerta that surrounds corrupt police officers who are found out. It could be framed within the context of the greater institutional frame for community policing. One of the issues with resident police is how easy neighborhood cops are for local corruption; indeed a lot of the reforms of a hundred years ago dealt with variations of that issue. To the extent there is corruption, there is motivation for rank-and-file (and especially minority) police to vote for Clinton. To the extent that police unions shelter abusive cops and inbreed racism, people who live under regimes are motivated to turn out to vote. To the extent that it is seen as improving law enforcement, it turns out those voters. And notice that there is no accusastion, just asking DOJ to ensure that its is not taking place. But in reality, if it is taking place and DOJ aggressively prosecutes it, it could in fact reduce both crime a the killing of unarmed people. And can you argue that union-busting and law enforcement is not conservative? The law and order folks who genuinely are for law and order, including the bulk of the cops must by this moment have nowhere to go because Trump has so discredited himself.
If there is a Sister Souljah moment, it must be in the financial community of New York and it must be Clinton describing the fraud that David Dayen reports in his book Chain of Title. (Just Clinton citing this book could change the political climate.) And then calling for the breakup of Wells Fargo and for stronger laws because what Wells Fargo shows is that business as usual is no different from before Dodd-Frank in its motivation. There is still the intent to circumvent any legislation instead of returning to serving bank customers and the real interests of shareholders. That too much focus on the short-term interests of the CEOs and their salaries, bonuses, and stock options that are at the base of income inequality in the US. That would be the Sister Souljah moment. But it cannot occur until Trump fully discredits himself in the next two debates. The situation is that these donors must also have nowhere to go.
It was thought that progressives had to support Clinton because they had nowhere to go. Sanders’s primary candidacy provided them with a place to go during the primaries and as a result they showed the strength they could add to the Democratic base. Most were in the Obama base already and very frustrated about the results since 2004. They now have places to go, having decided that the candidates of the major parties are not serious about the principle issues facing the country of peace and prosperity and ecological survival. They were not to be herded into the veal pen again with Trump as the scary wolf at the door. Clinton’s business as usual was a scary wolf too. And neither led out of the hole that the US has dug for itself after 30 years of conservative overreach.
Trump is discredited. We overheard a minor GOP neighborhood GOTV session at the local cafe this morning. One lady is on the phone frequently to “Reince” telling him that the situation is unacceptable. And they were discussion what it was that they could do. (Presumably without a top to the ticket, and at the state level as well with McCrory.)
when that becomes widely recognized, the national GOP and some state GOP campaigns will start melting down.
Does the Clinton campaign have a high-powered strategy for how to turn that event into victories in the Senate, House, state legislatures, and councils of state (governor plus top state elected officials)?
That could be the major contribution they could make to preservation of the Republic if they do. Such a devastating victory could change the narrative for the first time since 1968.
If it happens, and Clinton claims it as a “progressive” victory, she will have her left wing re-engaged if still critical.
That said, I am still pessimistic that we get anything but more gridlock and pressure for triangulation and bipartisanship.
link
If a large group of liberals/progressives, against evidence, decide Clinton is a hopeless case who cannot be pressured to the left…
…and if those progressives continue to act as a dozen or so on this blog do, folding their arms and demanding recognition that we will all be disappointed by Clinton’s Presidency and that we will receive electoral defeats in 2018 and 2020…
…they would have made it more likely that those outcomes happen. Clinton will not determine those outcomes. The American people will determine those outcomes much more than Hillary and Congress combined.
This is the way the world really works. I’m going to continue to fight this Eeyore attitude 24/7.
But they would have Sent A Message.
Both of these comments make the points of my pessimism.
What is practical will not deal with what will become a recurring problem on Wall Street and with police killing of minorities. And efforts to expanding voting margins leftward will be confined to haranguing those who might be tempted by voting protest votes for third parties in the vain hope that those parties reach the threshold of being able to be on the next cycle’s ballot.
Having not gotten their support, winning will allow the dismissal of them as political actors who could possible add pressure for better outcomes.
Worst of all, failing to make some directly parsible authentic moves to progressive issues makes the argument to vote for downticket candidates who can make those policy directions real lacks credibility.
“Eat your shit sandwich, powerless ones.” is not a very effective get-out-the-vote message.
And the idea that one can herd commenters into line with comments on a blog is a tactic that I’ve never yet seen work. I’m sorry my pessimism is a downer, but I’ve been a pretty faithful yellow dog Democrat in actual voting–not that it has accomplished a lot recently, given the establishment leadership.
I am not powerless.
You are not powerless either, TarheelDem.
In order to create progressive change, we must act and speak in the belief that progressive change and improved governance is possible, and is in fact demanded. We must strongly support, and then constructively push, the viable candidates who can bring that change about.
The Green Party is not viable, and their Party leaders are largely responsible for that. It is their decisions, along with the most progressive Democratic Party platform and POTUS candidate ever, which has Stein running a very poor fourth, far behind a dim bulb Libertarian nominee.
Progressive change was possible under Democratic Party control of the Federal government during the 111th Congress, and it was achieved. We took the power and made it happen. That was our achievement as well as the President’s and Congress’s.
We actively hurt our ability to gain more and better progressive governance when we essentially claim, as you do in comments of this sort, that progressive change was not achieved during Obama’s Presidency. We deceive our fellow travelers when we report false histories, and we do our movement terrific damage.
When we claim that progressive change, even incremental change, is unachievable between now and 2020 because (PICK YOUR HISTORCAL SUMMARIES, ENEMIES AND PROJECTED REASONS FOR FUTURE HOPELESSNESS), we’re lying. We’re engaging in a very damaging conversation which requires us to lie to our fellow progressives in order to disempower them, and ourselves.
“Worst of all, failing to make some directly parsible authentic moves to progressive issues makes the argument to vote for downticket candidates who can make those policy directions real lacks credibility.”
Senator Sanders is saying, very directly, that Hillary is making some directly parsible authentic moves to progressive issues. Are we calling Bernie a liar, or a man whose judgment we suddenly reject?
Yes, we are well on our way to privatizing the judicial aspect of state power. Arbitration courts are little different from the international trade courts embedded in our trade deals –all advantage the corporate over the citizen.
Damn DOJ is complicit in enabling civil forfeiture in states that DO try to legislatively restrict its abuse. Police simply apply for possession using federal programs. Which have quietly become fully operational again.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161002/05052335680/california-passes-asset-forfeiture-reform-bil
l-that-closes-federal-loophole-adds-conviction-requirement.shtml?_format=lite
This should not be ignored. This is an abomination against our democracy flying below the radar frog in a pot style…
“So far, though, it’s hard to identify any concessions she’s made to the right.”
Does her embrace of Kissinger not count? Saying that single-payer will ‘never, ever happen?’
Do you think Clinton would be doing worse in the polls right now if instead of aggressively courting Republican voters, she’d been aggressively courted the left wing of the Democratic party … while doing nothing to throw them any additional policy bone?
From what I see, many progressives are so deep in conspiracy theories about everything Clinton that she could advocate a 36 hour workweek and socialized medicine and they’d still find a reason to dismiss her.
Yes, I assume that stereotypes regarding deranged hippies is one reason a campaign might decide that aggressively courting Republican voters is the wiser strategy. But I expect there are other reasons, based more firmly in demographics or polling.
If telling holier than thou progressives that they’re unserious basement dwellers is a sin, let me lead the parade to hell.
Winning is more important to me than punishing sinners. If appealing to ‘holier than thou progressives’ will run up the score better than appealing to Republicans, I’m all for it.
I worry that the kneejerk reaction we often see on this blog, against holier than thou progressives (aka, ‘anyone substantially farther to the left than I am’), is motivating strategy.
I was hoping to be reassured that there are more votes in ‘aggressively courting Republicans’ than ‘aggressive courting DFHs.’ I am not reassured.
I think, if you understood me better, you’d start telling me that I’m way to the left of how far to the left I am.
My problem is not with people who are far to the left. At all.
And you’re pretty confident that there are more votes in ‘aggressively courting Republicans’ than ‘aggressively courting DFHs?’
I suspect that’s not the case, but my opinion is based on absolutely nothing. Which is why I asked. I’d love to hear what you think about that question, and why.
Considering that the self-proclaimed DFHs who post here have done nothing but publicly shit on Clinton at every opportunity… I’d answer that the answer very likely is yes. There’s a good chance that if Clinton wins in any type of blowout, it will be Republicans with some sense of integrity voting for Johnson, voting for Clinton, or staying home (which are all effectively the same thing in a first-past-the-post electoral system).
The most puzzling aspect of the DFHs moral outrage and holier-than-thou attitude is that it inherently rests and relies on us LesserProgressivesTM going out and voting strategically. Because, like, we understand how a first-past-the-post electoral system works.
And because, clearly, we’re way less moral, ethical, and principled.
She doesn’t embrace Kissinger to appeal to the right. She embraces him because the guy is (unfortunately) the mentor of every single national security adviser or high level envoy that we’ve developed in this country in these forty years.
His influence cannot be understated.
What it means is basically nothing other than she’s a creature of the foreign policy establishment, which is true of every former and current Sec. of State, undersecretary of State, deputy undersecretary of State, etc.
To suggest that she thinks of Kissinger as a passel of policies from the 1970s is to fundamentally misunderstand our entire foreign policy establishment. He’s more like the Godfather of our diplomatic service.
God help us.
I’m not sure I get it. She didn’t need to affirmatively embrace Kissinger during a debate, did she? She could’ve just … not mentioned him at all. Just because he’s the Godfather, that doesn’t mean you must announce you have his blessing. You make that announcement for a strategic reason. Right?
You’re just saying she wasn’t trying to appeal to the right, she was trying to appeal to the foreign policy establishment? Or to the center?
In her mind, if Kissinger says she’s ready to haggle with the Chinese then that’s impressive. Who wouldn’t agree?
link and link
The Kissinger hug photographed in 2013 was not an effort to “triangulate” after her nomination three years later. We can all deplore it as much as we like, but it has nothing to do with pleasing Republican voters; it was part of a social relationship that goes back many years. If there’s any triangulation, it’s for left voters, in that she asked Kissinger and Shultz not to endorse her, unlike Gates and Chertoff and the various Bush-associated people; news reports that she was courting them are clearly false.
Single-payer schemes are only one way to achieve universal health insurance, not necessarily the best, and the US is on the road to a different, more German-style one. Clinton’s commitment is to universal health care, and there’s no reason to think she doesn’t mean it.
She was clearly looking for votes from the left through the writing of the platform, by far the most progressive Democratic program since Roosevelt, and working to earn support from Sanders, which she has done. The “triangulation” question is about what she’s done since the convention, and she hasn’t gone back on a single item from that list. Please have a look at what Sanders says.
I’m not referring to the hug in 2013. I’m referring to her bragging about Kissinger in the Democratic primary in 2016. And single-payer schemes are certainly not the only way forward. But to say that single payer will never, ever happen? Why say that? Why say either thing, instead of keeping quiet? To whom is a politician who brags about Kissinger and utterly dismisses single-payer trying to appeal?
Yes. I know what Sanders says. I just fucking signed up to phone bank for Clinton. What I don’t know is why certain people on this blog cannot countenance any questions about Obama or (to a lesser extent) Clinton, without reacting like defensive toddlers. Any suggestion that we consider ways we fell short in the past so that we might do better in the future is met with a barrage of kneejerk derision. Any question about the wisdom of the current course is cynical Volvo-driving latte-sipping, and is almost never actually engaged.
For example, the question I asked in this little thread was, “Is there any reason to think that it’s a wiser electoral strategy for Clinton to ‘aggressively court’ Republicans instead of left-progressives?” And maybe there is! That’s an argument I’d like to read. It’s why I asked.
Good point about her actions post-convention, though. And arguably, Bill Clinton’s comments about Obamacare (not the stupid gotcha sound bite, but the whole context) were in fact a nod to the left.
Sorry, I misunderstood. Also embarrassed to say I forgot she was the first person in the campaign to mention the old vampire’s name (in the fifth debate, February 4), it’s quite true, and you’re right to say it wasn’t necessary.
I certainly don’t think she should be courting Republican voters in a way that shuts us hippies out, and I wish I had a clearer sense she knew we existed. But as far as I can see, whatever “aggressive courting” may be going on behind the scenes to rope in some conservative celebrities, she’s not offering them any ideological bribes. The only promise she’s making is to save them from Trump.
Thus she graciously accepts the homage of the national security Repubs, realist and neocon, who sincerely believe Trump might destroy the world and Clinton won’t, because they’re right on that point, and she really doesn’t need to triangulate to prove it to them. I don’t think Robert Kagan needed to be begged to support her, and he and others have been very clear endorsement doesn’t mean they agree with her on many issues, they just think she’s qualified and Trump isn’t.
And the same really should go for her pitch to women, which is part of what that LA Times article focuses on; it’s not a pitch to Republican women per se, at all, it’s a pitch to women who have been pawed or insulted or stiffed on wages by disgusting old men, which surely includes a lot of Republican women.
I appreciate I”m a little too quick to think any time somebody criticizes Obama they’re calling him a war criminal or tool of Wall Street or both, and I should maybe try not to get into the same habit about Clinton. It’ll be beautiful if Trump has now fucked up so badly we can stop worrying about the presidency altogether and focus our attentions on Congress.
Count the number of national security grand old men and experts she has accumulated as mentors and endorsers. The scholar whose greatest accomplishment was to unleash Pol Pot on Cambodia is only one of the oldest and most honored ones among the group itself. Sadly, he counts as the Vietnam generation’s George C. Marshall.
What the Trump candidacy has proven is that Republicans are not motivated by policy. Those who are deserting Trump are not deserting him over policy; no one can pin him down there. They are deserting him over what they care about most (so they say); character.
No doubt a bunch are deserting him over personal experience with Trump and his businesses’ policies.
If I’m getting this right, the plan is to:
But does that actually work? Won’t the very voters she can get with this vote Republican down ticket if they trust their congressmen and senators? Wouldn’t it be better to hang Trump around their necks like the Albatross that he is?
I never understand the Democrats pursuit of Republican voters. Republicans who are thinking of voting for Democrats stop calling themselves Republicans. They become Democrats or Independants. Clinton has far more gettable voters on her left than on her right. A “Sister Souljah” moment is more likely to lose her votes than gain her any. Her best bet is to sell a positive image of herself as a candidate of with a hopeful, optimistic view of the country and it’s future. If she generates half as much enthusiasm among the youth vote as Obama did in in 2008, this election will be a landslide.
Clinton wants to preserve the current superstructure of the two-party system. She has to help them survive in Congress to do that. Because if they succeed in going off the cliff and destroying themselves, the Democratic Party becomes the de facto center-right party, the center moves leftward, and the vacuum begs for filling by some coalition of left-wing parties who might not be so in the bag for capitalism.
That might expand the policy possibiities available for debate in some weird and European directions without the safety valves of an established multi-party election and post-election ruling and opposition coalitions process.
We are already halfway to that coalition form on the right-wing. The Freedom Caucus and Tea Party have acted as if they were multi-party coalition parties and the Hastert rule gave them power within the coalition. But at the district level, the three caucuses duked it out for the one seat from the district in elections. Still kind of a hybrid trying to keep the ideological party alignment alive.
Trump had the effect of undermining any logic of alignment of factions within the party in his cult of personality. The factions were target markets instead of political partisans that must be unified into a single party.
Will be very curious to see if any efforts are made to wrench the DNC leftwards to stop the bleed in the various legislatures. If that is a failure, the Rs might be able to stick around. So will it still be Israel and Schumer? Or their ilk?
“We are already halfway to that coalition form on the right-wing.”
Are we really,though? Republicans currently control both houses of Congress, and enforce lock-step agreement among their members. They have single-party control of the executive and legislative branch in 24 states and use it to pass a a party-line right-wing agenda. Running the worst candidate in history, they’ve come within single-digits of winning the Presidency. They have 50/50 odds of keeping the Senate and better than even odds of taking it back in 2018, even if they do lose it this round. The Republican agenda is unifying because it’s simple: it’s the opposite of whatever the Democrats want, updated daily. They are unified in that above all other things. Clinton cannot appeal to that side any more than Obama ever could.
While Congress is almost certainly the most powerful branch of government, that is only true if that branch of government actually governs. Which the Republican party is not interested in doing, as it would require compromise with the Democratic party that controls half the Senate and almost half the House.
Political parties that are unable to compete for the White House start to crack, which we’re seeing now, as the Republican coalition is splitting along different lines. Fiscal conservatives, Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, Trump’s Chumps, etc. And changes like this can take years to decades. It took nearly 45 years for many red states to turn red, and even now some red states have more voters registered as Democrats than Republicans because of the civil war 150 years ago.
If you can’t win the White House, you don’t control the executive branch. And you also don’t get choose the judicial branch.
The Republican party will survive in red states just fine for the foreseeable future, but Republicans in purple and blue states who have dreams of working in the Article II and Article III branches of the federal government are going to need to decide whether they want to remain state actors, or become national actors.
I’ve been waiting for years for the Democratic party to take its rightful place as the sane, reasonable conservative party, so that liberals and progressives could start pulling the country and the government to the left.
But before liberals and progressives can move anything to the left, the Republican party must be effectively destroyed as a national political party. If the sane, reasonable, ambitious Republicans join the right wing of the Democratic party, I’d happily let them break it off so that progressives can have a party of their own, with policy ideas that already poll well but are hindered by the right half of the party.
Revolution isn’t electing Sanders to the White House and nothing being accomplished. Revolution is the progressive wing of the Democratic party getting to finally argue with the right wing of the Democratic party over what becomes national policy.
Has anybody considered a Brady effect?
I’ve lived in the South as a privileged white person and I saw it change from the civil (surface civil anyway) to the mean snakepit it now is for whites of a liberal bent. By no means do I imply that I had it as hard as a black person at any time in the past or present. All I can speak to is MY experience.
If you are a woman, living around Trump supporting men, there is NO WAY IN HELL that you are going to tell anyone ANYTHING except that you will vote for Trump. However … the ballot box is silent. We’ll see in November.
I guess this is the opposite side of AG’s coin.
Yes,
This time it’s more likely the ‘silent majority’ are Hispanics working in the service industry rather than whites in manufacturing.
.
Hmm, curious what the general health and wealth of that contingent was doing over your observation period?
How many lost their homes? Their jobs? Loved ones? It’s quite common to point and laugh at Republican base for NOT voting their economic interests. But even the Republican elite are dropping the pretense of caring about them. Hmm.
BooMan, how can you make these impassioned pleas towards the genuine (while quoting the same David Foster Wallace passage twice) and then pine for a “Sister Souljah moment”?
Jeezus.
Pining for a Sister Souljah moment?
There are ways to signal that you have some small degree of agreement with moderate Republicans or disagreement with extremists in your own party without making blacks your punching bag.
Clinton hasn’t really made any effort to pander to voters who might be gettable, which says a few things.
I’ve been reading on this blog for several months now, every time that some GOP worthy endorsed Hillary Clinton, that every such endorsement comes with a quid pro quo of adopting elements of the GOP program. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve read statements like that here.
What now? Retraction? Re-evaluation? Or doubling down?