The Generals really do love to refight the last wars, don’t they?
Aging generals reliving the glory days of Bill Clinton’s political wars are advocating for the blueprint that worked for Clinton in 1991. That is, they want Democrats to nominate a moderate Governor from a red state who offers a modest agenda, namely Montana Governor Steve Bullock.
The Atlantic describes the development:
“…there’s a distinctly Bill Clinton–esque sensibility to many Democratic Party veterans urging Bullock to stick with his presidential campaign, despite his failing to make the September debate stage and remaining, at best, in the margin of error of most polls. They see another popular, moderate governor of a small, conservative-leaning state who started his campaign late and is being written off, and they don’t just feel nostalgic—they feel a little déjà vu. They insist they are not being delusional. Paul Begala, the former Clinton strategist and current CNN pundit, earlier this week went on Twitter to encourage people to donate to Bullock’s campaign.
For several reasons, nominating Bullock would be a mistake.
WRONG IDEOLOGY. While Bullock offers a modest moderate agenda that fits the Clintonites’ dusty blueprint, survey research is showing that America is much more progressive in 2019 than it was in 1991. In fact, Vox recently reported that University of North Carolina James Stimson says America is more liberal than it has been in six decades:
“Public support for big government — more regulation, higher taxes, and more social services — has reached the highest level on record in one of the most prominent aggregate surveys of American public opinion.
“The annual estimate for 2018 is the most liberal ever recorded in the 68 year history of Mood,” (Stimson) wrote. “Just slightly higher than the previous high point of 1961.”
Similarly, The American Prospect recently published a long list of recent poll findings from a variety of polling firms showing that Americans overwhelmingly want liberal policies, not a re-run of Bill Clinton’s cautious “third way,” “triangulated,” Dick Morris-shaped policies.
WRONG PROFILE. Like Bill Clinton, Steve Bullock is a white male, which in 1991 was pretty much the only profile for presidential candidates that anyone could imagine being effective. But Barack Obama broke that barrier, and the electorate is much more diverse in 2019 that it was in 1991. The Democratic party is even more racially and ethnically diverse than the nation as a whole, and much more female-heavy. CNN explains:
Over the past decade, the electorate in the Democratic presidential primary has grown more racially diverse, better educated and more heavily tilted toward female voters, an extensive new CNN analysis of exit poll data has found.
Party strategists almost universally expect those trends to persist, and even accelerate in 2020, as minority, white-collar and female voters continue to recoil from President Trump. Just two of the demographic groups most alienated from Trump — white women with college degrees and African-American women at all education levels — could compose as much of two-fifths of all Democratic primary voters next year, the CNN exit poll analysis suggests.
Those trends are not exactly crying out for Democrats to nominate yet another white male. To beat Trump, Democrats need a nominee who can appeal to women, and generate historically high turnout from traditionally under-voting groups, such as people of color and young people. A moderate white male is hardly the ideal profile to inspire those key voting blocs.
WRONG GUY. Performance matters, not just profile, and Bullock’s performance has been underwhelming to the electorate. The reason Bullock is no longer on the debate stage is because he simply didn’t stand out to voters when he was on the debate stage. Therefore, even in relatively moderate, white Iowa, Bullock is polling at a paltry 0.07 percent.
While Bullock and the Clintonites like to lecture progressives on the importance of choosing an “electable” candidate who can beat Trump, electability is best shown, not told. Bullock seems like a decent guy, but in sharp contrast to Bill Clinton, he simply isn’t proving that he can excite the electorate.
WRONG AGENDA. Finally, the Clintonites are wrong about nominating a moderate because our 2019 problems require much bolder solutions than our 1991 problems required. For instance, at a time when the planet faces an existential climate change crisis, we can no longer nibble around the edges. We need major changes as soon as possible, and the biggest obstacle to those changes are powerful oil and coal lobbyists and donors.
Facing this stark reality, Governor Bullock remains true to Montana’s Big Coal and Big Oil, as Huffington Post reports:
“(Bullock’s record as Governor) includes protecting the state’s coal industry and railing against Obama administration greenhouse gas limits and a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands. He supported the development of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and blasted President Barack Obama for his decision to block the project in 2015. He voiced “deep concern” about the Obama administration’s proposed hydraulic fracturing regulation in 2013, aimed at better protecting water resources.
Bullock has also said fossil fuels will remain part of the nation’s energy portfolio for decades to come and dismissed the idea that the nation can wean itself off dirty fuels within the timeframe some are calling for.”
Climate change isn’t just any issue. Scientists say we have about a decade to dramatically change course before we hit a catastrophic tipping point. With the planet in crisis, Begala and the Clintonites should think twice about pushing the most pro-fossil fuels candidate in the field.
Whether driven by ego or inflexible thinking, the Clintonites recycling their simplistic “nominate a moderate red state Governor” formula is a bad idea. Bullock had his shot. Now he should drop out of the overcrowded presidential race and head home to win Democrats a Senate seat.
On a somewhat related issue, this interesting article from Fivethirtyeight.com makes the case that making a policy argument to appeal to moderates, independents and undecideds is really difficult to do. Excerpt:
“The upshot of all this is that if you’re a campaign trying to appeal to independents, moderates or undecided voters — or a concerned citizen trying to make sense of these groups in the context of an election — policy and ideology aren’t good frames of reference. There just isn’t much in terms of policy or ideology that unites these groups.
Anybody who claims to have the winning formula for winning moderate, independent or undecided voters is making things up. Perhaps more centrist policies will appeal to some voters in each of these categories — but so will more extreme policies.
And come election day, these potential swing voters may not ultimately care all that much about policy. They don’t tend to identify themselves based on ideology, and they don’t follow politics all that closely. They’re more likely to decide based on whatever random events happen at the last minute (like, say, a letter from the FBI director). These are even harder to measure and generalize about. (The good news for pundits and campaigns is that they leave even more room for open speculation and political fortune-telling.)”
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-moderate-middle-is-a-myth/?ex_cid=story-facebook&fbclid=IwAR2hFsXiUHyS6fOViWkvExDzQ_HSymPFrlGAE2kZgDr_2sMMsfN-EAK9nRU
I read that Fivethirtyeight column too. And you’re right about both Bullock and the Clinton formula, which seems very 20th century now. I am, however, uncomfortable with judging someone’s fitness for office using race and gender as parameters. I know many people are probably doing that on an unconscious level if not explicity, so I think it’s important that we speak openly about that dynamic.
If we were using race and gender in the opposite direction, to maintain the (white male) status quo of who gets to run, that would ignite an outcry. Yet our current liberal politics allows it to promote non-white males and females. Should a white man be barred from running if he has good proposals? I am writing as a person with multi-racial family roots, which I mention only because saying things like this nowadays often produces cries of racism from the Left, along with charges that the offending speaker is a white nationalist and/or sexist.
I have two grown sons who are not “racially pure” but who are, for all practical purposes, white. I would be very disappointed if they couldn’t run for an office because of the bodies they were born into. My mother immigrated to this country partly to get away from that sort of stuff.
Other than that one thing, I agree with you.