Perhaps Hillary Clinton will not run for president. Or perhaps the one potential opponent who could actually give her candidacy an existential challenge, Elizabeth Warren, will reverse field and run. Either of these eventualities could make 2015 an exciting prelude to an exciting 2016 Democratic nominating contest.
But more likely than not, Clinton will run and Warren won’t. And that will more than likely mean that Democrats will enter the caucuses and primaries resigned to but not necessarily “ready for” Hillary, and strongly favoring a challenge aimed at—to use the term so often heard—keeping her honest.
Democrats mean different things by such language. Some simply think it’s inherently a mistake to send a nominee into battle with a vicious Republican opposition without being battle-hardened by a primary challenge. Some particularly fear a fat-and-happy Clinton campaign loaded with dead wood from nearly a quarter century of her and her husband’s national political efforts going into the general election like a lead zeppelin. In the more ideological regions of the party, there is considerable fear and loathing of Clintonian “centrism” generally, and the couple’s Wall Street connections specifically. And underneath this dyspeptic feeling is the suspicion that Democratic progressives have been serially seduced by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, with Hillary now poised to compound their evil temptations with a combination of Bill’s electability argument and Barack’s “history-making” appeal, consigning a “true progressive” revival to 2020 or 2024—if ever.
Now, it’s possible to overestimate anti-HRC sentiment among Democrats (as opposed to worried support for HRC). Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal’s Reid Epstein and Peter Nicholas created a stir with a survey of Iowa Democratic county chairs (or a little over half of them) revealing a widespread desire for a liberal challenge to HRC. You had to read pretty far down into the piece to see a powerful non-ideological motive for this feeling:
State Democratic officials also want a contested race because that boosts the party apparatus and fundraising. Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign attracted scores of volunteers who remain active in the party. Various presidential hopefuls, moreover, serve as star attractions for fundraising dinners and barbecue cookouts across the state.
John Stone, party chairman in Cerro Gordo County, throws the annual Wing Ding supper in Clear Lake in August. When Mr. Obama spoke there in 2007, he drew nearly 700 people, with attendees paying $25 a ticket to benefit local candidates in 17 northern Iowa counties. Without a big name, the dinner draws closer to 400 people, Mr. Stone said.
Early-state folk in both parties loath uncontested presidential nomination contests that deny them the mother’s milk of money and talent from actual and potential candidates; this is precisely why they fight so hard to protect their early-state status. So it’s reasonable to suspect their views on a primary challenge to HRC might be pretty much the same if she couldn’t bring herself to be in the same room with a banker or a general.
Still, there’s a pretty broad constituency for a primary season to keep Hillary honest, defined as a challenge that tests her commitment to progressive values and gradually builds “base” enthusiasm for the ticket. (In addition, there are probably some centrist HRC fans who want a lefty primary challenge she can crush for the absolute opposite reason: to show her independence from “the base.”)
But how, exactly, is this project to be executed? By definition, keeping Hillary honest requires a challenger credible enough to be taken seriously in Hillaryland, but not one who will empty her coffers or leave her weakened entering the general election. And presumably it would take someone disinterested enough in victory to avoid personal attacks that might be picked up and hurled later by Republicans, and willing to bow out gracefully when the time is right.
Where is this saint? And where are the campaign workers willing to put their lives on hold to undertake a losing effort (and perhaps risk the wrath of a successful nominee) and the donors to finance it?
I don’t see the brooding, sometimes angry Jim Webb as cut out for this mission. What seems most to motivate him is a demand that Democrats respect non-college educated white men. While they are indeed a target for virtually all Democrats, Hillary’s assault on the glass ceiling does not provide an auspicious moment for Webb’s attacks on affirmative action. Martin O’Malley might force HRC to run a real nomination campaign, but he’s not the full-spectrum progressive who would keep pressure on her left flank.
Perhaps Bernie Sanders, who has a career-long stake in creating a major leftward shift in the range of acceptable opinions in this country, is a candidate who could articulate an unmistakably issue-oriented progressive message that would generate some heat for Clinton without threatening her nomination. But against Sanders she might be tempted to do some “I’m not a socialist” triangulation, which is probably not what progressives have in mind by “honest.”
Perhaps the best hope for left-bent Hillary fans is that she could make this whole discussion moot with some strong and consistent progressive rhetoric and positioning of her own. Then everyone could take credit for shining a light onto her path without backing a rival candidate. Only the poor Democrats of Iowa, bereft of money-generating competition, will be unhappy.
Ed Kilgore is the principal blogger for Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist, and a Senior Fellow at theProgressive Policy Institute. Earlier he worked for three governors and a U.S. Senator. He can be followed on Twitter at @ed_kilgore.
