UPDATED: DEC 12, 2007 

“THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2008: DEMOCRATIC CONSIDERATIONS”        

Last week we looked at the Republican race for the Presidential nomination.  This week we will look at the Democratic side.  The considerations are rather different for the two.  While the Republicans differ quite a bit from one another on style and personality, on basic Republican policies, despite what they tell you, they are pretty much in synch.  They are for continuing the War on Iraq forever (except for Ron Paul who is very far to the right on everything else, being an economic libertarian), cutting taxes further for the rich, continuing the Bush policy of destroying the Federal government except for its military, oppressive, and protecting-the-interests-of-corporate-America wings, outlawing abortion (to a greater or lesser extent), promoting homophobia, and blaming every possible one of the nation’s ills that they possibly can on the undocumented aliens, while offering no solutions to the problem that can possibly work, and so on and so forth.  So in terms of policy, it doesn’t much matter who wins the nomination.  The Republicans need be concerned only with electability.

The Democratic candidates on the other hand, have major differences on policy.  There are also major differences on electability.  So in the Democratic primaries there are two concerns: policy if the nominee gets to be President, and electability.  As they have done in the past, the center-right Democratic Leadership Council is this time around running what in Standard-Breed (trotters and pacers) horse racing terminology is known as an “entry.”  In these races, one owner can enter two horses and bettors can bet on the “entry,” so that if either one wins, places, or shows, the bettor collects.  In 2004 their entry was John Edwards and Richard Gephardt.  The latter was one of the founders of the DLC (although in the 2004 primaries he did wander off the reservation on the so-called “free trade” [otherwise known as the free export of capital] issue).  John Edwards was a rather different person and politician back then than he is now.  I remember back in 2002 or so when he got a Sunday Times Magazine cover, and was hailed as the fair-haired boy of the Democratic “middle” (really center-right).  Neither won, of course, but the DLC was able to project the perennial loser Bob Shrum into the Kerry Campaign and we all know what happened.

This time the DLC has an entry as well, but Edwards ain’t part of it.  He has grown as a person and a politician and is now much more of an old-style Democrat in the Roosevelt-Truman-Johnson (before Vietnam) tradition.  The DLC entry is ---- yes, indeed, Clinton and Obama.  They don’t like each other much, and each does indeed want to be President.  But their central philosophy is much the same and many of their policies are rather similar too.  The philosophy is better articulated by Obama.  But functionally, even though her rhetoric may be a bit harsher, Clinton is woven from the same fabric.  And so, Obama talks about the “politics of hope,” about “bringing the country together,” about “crossing the partisan divide,” as if Ronald Brownstein, author of the mis-named “The Second Civil War” is correct and that the problems facing our nation today are the result of a “partisanship” that both parties are responsible for.  Hillary Clinton has talked in the past about “reaching out to the other side,” on such issues as abortion rights.

Well folks, the partisanship that is seen in Washington and elsewhere is not the responsibility equally of the two major parties.  It is the Republican Party that has, since the days of Goldwater, gradually abandoned the bipartisan agreement about the bedrocks of the New Deal that Dwight D. Eisenhower himself said would never disappear from American life.  It is Republicans who have lied us into war and saddled us with a national debt which we could conceivably never be able to pay off.  It is Republicans who are well on their way to destroying Constitutional government in the United Sates.  It is Republicans who want to break down the barriers between church and state.  It was the Republicans who declared all-out war on the last Democratic President from the day he took office, and tied up much his Presidency with “investigations” of financial impropriety that turned out to be nothing and the prosecution of his engaging in an affair with a consenting adult.  And so on and so forth.

And so, Senators Obama and Clinton, how does one reach “out” and “across the aisle” on such issues as the war (you are either for withdrawal by a time certain or you are not), abortion rights (you are either for freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy based on your personal belief as to when life begins or you are not), the preservation of Constitutional Democracy (you are either for it, with all of its provisions, or you are not), a balanced budget for all governmental functions including war-making, a fair taxation system, a Federal government that works and providing the funds to have it do that, fair elections and the expansion not the contraction of voting rights, or not, and so on and so forth. 

There is, of course, a group of Democratic candidates who agree with all or most of the above. John Edwards now clearly sees that there are “Two Americas.”  Joe Biden is, among other things ready to start impeachment proceedings if Bush were to attack Iran without Congressional approval (and, much to my delight, called for the impeachment of Cheney first, see my TPJ column of Jan. 4, 2007, “The ‘I’ Word) and goes after the Georgites on a whole range of issue on a regular basis.  When asked, Chris Dodd actually puts the restoration of Constitutional Democracy at the top of the list of his concerns.  Dennis Kucinich is “right” on every left-Democratic issue, and has never had to apologize for his vote on the war-authorization resolution.  And finally there is Bill Richardson who, other than Kucinich, has the most clear-cut position on war policy of any of the Democratic candidates.  One very important characteristic that all of the five have is that they spend little time attacking each other, not too much time attacking either of the front runners, and the bulk of whatever time they do get on attacking the Republicans and trying to show why they would be the best President and/or Presidential candidate.

So, where do we go from here?   “The pundits” are still primarily focused on Clinton and Obama who, increasingly, are focused on each other rather than either the Republicans or the other Democratic candidates.  For my mind that is a good thing.  For I think that neither is electable and even more importantly, I think that neither would make a good President.  The mutual lack of electability has been much discussed elsewhere.  As for the Presidency, Clinton does indeed seem not to have a “core philosophy” as Sean Hannity screams out every day.  (Be careful what you wish for, Sean.  Clinton is the only Democratic candidate who could not win the general election against your favorite candidate and the one most likely to get the nomination, Rudy, while any of the others could.)  Like her husband, she is poll driven (and he was poll driven not only in his two campaigns, but also in office).  Thus she has not shown leadership on any issue, and leadership is what we will need most if the Democratic Party somehow manages to capture the White House in 2008.

As for Obama, he might be able to win, despite the race issue.  But how well he could stand up to the kind of campaign the Republicans would run against him, especially if their nominee is Racist Rudy, has to be a matter of great concern.  Of more concern to me is just how would “govern from the middle,” were he to be elected.  Just how would he “pull the country together” on issues like ending the war and abortion rights, on which there is no middle ground?  And Clinton is right on one of those things.  While he is very, very smart (one of his Harvard law school professors described him as the smartest Harvard law student, ever [!]), he does lack any significant experience either in national politics, or in running anything, or in foreign affairs.  He cannot be compared to JFK who was similarly inexperienced when he took office but grew up in a household in which politics and power were at the center of the dinner table very night and whose father (unfortunately, as an admirer of Hitler) ran foreign policy for Franklin Roosevelt right up to Dec. 7, 1941.

So, of the five remaining, who might one plump for?  Edwards is running third and on politics and policy has a lot going for him, in my view.  Richardson is running fourth and is by his extensive experience in many aspects of government is clearly the best-qualified of all of the candidates.  However, from what I have seen of him (admittedly limited, to be sure) he is not good on the stump (at least on the TV stump).  None of the other three, as admirable as they are, have come close to any kind of breakthrough.

What do we need in the Democratic candidate?  One who recognizes that modern Republican Party policy really is antithetical to Constitutional Democracy and to the interests of the bulk of the American people.  One who can Attack on Defense (see).  One who can hang George Bush around the neck of whomever the Republicans nominate.   One who has read the Preamble to the Constitution and believes that it, not Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, and the Republican/Libertarians, set the parameters of the goals and functions of the Federal government. One who will pledge to investigate criminality in the current Administration.  One will get us out of Iraq in a constructive way (see) And so on and so forth, you know the drill.  My ticket, then?  Edwards-Richardson.   And if Clinton and Obama succeed in knocking each other off, we might just get it.  As Bob Murphy, the late great radio voice of the New York Mets used to say, going into the bottom of the night of a tight game at home: “Fasten Your Seat Belts!”

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