The Real Race for the Democratic Nomination

The need to replace the Fascist-in-Chief is so desperate that the race for the Democratic nomination carries a sense of urgency that I cannot recall in any of the presidential campaigns to which I’ve paid heed, basically back to 1960.  There are presently 20 contestants running for the nomination with the possibility of a few more who could still enter. There are polls and pundits and prognostications, and a lot of it this far out is utter nonsense. But what is not nonsense are the unforced errors everyone is already making: DSA endorsing Bernie Sanders long before it was necessary precisely to handicap the organization’s potential support for Elizabeth Warren; Joe Biden announcing on one day and then (a) refusing to apologize to Anita Hill for enabling a perjurer and abuser onto the Supreme Court, (b) coming down for the prosecution of marijuana possession and (c) allowing his first fundraiser to be hosted by a Comcast exec – a 24-hour trifecta of serious blunders; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) refusing to work with any consultants who challenge incumbent Neanderthals, attempting to prevent any more Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type candidates from unseating the Joe Crowleys of this world, making the Democratic party safe for Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry. All of this bodes ill for a race that is always the incumbent’s to lose, and an incumbent in this instance only too willing to let foreign powers put their Hulk-weight thumb down on the scales of opinion and the electoral college.

It would be useful here to remember what history teaches.

No Democratic centrist has won the electoral college since 1996 – 23 years and counting. It’s true that both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but that and $5 will get you a vente Americano at Starbucks with an extra shot of espresso. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in 2008 by running to her left as the anti-war candidate: one of several tragedies that we can grieve over about his actual administration was that while he ran as a progressive, he governed as a centrist. A few cases in point: (1) he ran as the anti-war candidate to Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy, but then put her in charge of that policy; (2) he “rescued” the economy from the Bush Recession, but did so (a) without punishing a single banker beyond Bernie Madoff for the abuses – crimes – of the previous decade and (b) perpetuating Goldman Sachs’ hold over US government policy; (3) he had no plan, indeed no evident interest, in building a progressive movement in  the US, leaving state and local Democratic candidates to fend on their own with almost no support from his office or the national Democratic Party, resulting in a red wave of state legislatures ready to use voter suppression, gerrymandering and other “business friendly” legislation to set social policy as far back toward the 1920s as possible.

The lesson of the past 23 years is inescapable: centrism will always lose to its alternative, if there is one. The reason is that Democratic centrism, neoliberalism if you will, is built around the central presumption that a progressive administration can do anything so long as it does not threaten capital (Goldman Sachs in ’08, Google-Facebook-Amazon today). Unfortunately, the world’s problems, from climate change to military conflict to social inequality, all can be traced directly back to the fact that an economic system predicated on the notion that “greed is good,” and that the perpetual need for growth will always take precedence over absolute fixed limits of natural resources (land and its mineral contents; water; sunlight), presents an impossible conundrum that is only addressable by confronting capital head-on.

From this I conclude that the one thing the Democrats must not do is to put up a centrist against Trump. The inside-the-beltway notion that Trump is so far to the right that everything to his left is up for grabs fails to translate into how voters actually cast ballots. The idea that the most conservative or centrist candidate will occupy the largest portion of the political spectrum and deny Trump victory has already been tested with Hillary Clinton and we can see what that got  us. But it’s the same logic that got us two terms with George W Bush as well. Voters have been telling us for 20 years that they get it that neoliberalism doesn’t work. More of the same will enable Trump’s demented absence of any real policy to be perceived as an assault on capital elites – it’s not (really) – and that is a prescription for four more  years and at least two more Supreme Court justices to perpetuate the stranglehold over policy of white male privilege.

When I look at the Democratic field with this in mind, I see some clear enough divisions: four plausible progressives: Sanders, Warren, Andrew Yang, and conceivably John Delaney; a lot of Obama-esque faux progressives (run left, govern from the center) of whom Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have the greatest name recognition at the moment; some candidates who are trying to put themselves forward with no policy objectives at all (e.g., Beto and Buttigieg, but check out Mary Williamson); and one unrepentant centrist in Joe Biden.

From this, I come away with two conclusions: of the 20 declared candidates, there are just a couple who (a) could win and (b) could govern with enough success to give us a fighting chance to survive the coming cataclysm that climate change plus the resulting massive global displacement are sending our way. There are, however, quite a few others who might be able to beat Trump and his Apocalypse Now administration. The only candidate who cannot beat Trump, under any circumstances, is Biden. For the rest, I think the question for the not-quite-progressives comes down to who could be persuaded to pursue an administration that would challenge capitalism’s catastrophic endgame with the encouragement of a lot of outside agitation. Right  now that is deep weeds speculation and I’m not ready to wade into it here. But make no mistake, the bill on failing to rid ourselves of capitalism is coming due very rapidly. It is not only the next administration’s job one, but in many respects its only real job. Anything less is just Trump Lite.

After Super Tuesday on March 3 of next year, this race will telescope down to no more than three real candidates: one progressive, one “anybody but the socialist” candidate (Biden has the edge, but 10 months is a very long time for him to not self-destruct), and probably Kamala Harris, who will win California and may well have the faux progressive lane to herself by then. There will still be other candidates, just as there were in 2008 when the Iowa Caucus turned the race into a Hillary versus Obama contest, but they will be dropping like flies as their funds dry up. This means that the first four contests, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, matter terribly for anyone without immediate national name recognition. If Harris carries either South Carolina or Nevada, her position becomes far stronger.

One lesson of 2008 was that Hillary Clinton was prepared for any of the white male candidates (Edwards, Dodd, Biden) who might emerge as the “anybody but Hillary” candidate following the Iowa caucus, but she was caught off-guard by Obama. She could not pose her project of neoliberalism’s third term as change or new against a candidate who better represented the base of the party and was running to her left. My gut feel in late April is that how it plays out in 2020 will depend on who is the third major candidate against Sanders-or-Warren and Harris. If it’s any of the faux progressives, then I think that the advantage goes to Bernie or Liz, while Harris would be stronger if the third lane is occupied by Biden – it’s the one lineup in which her own policy history might not be a weakness.

Bernie, like Biden, has a capacity for a tin ear on positions that make his campaign a little like watching Charlie Chaplin on a tightrope over a very deep ravine. Ten months is a very long time, especially when getting there means you still have seven-plus months before the general election. Getting the DSA endorsement early was more important than people thus far have acknowledged in that it shuts out Warren from a major source for volunteers right when volunteers are most needed. She has her own blind spots to worry about, but she is much better positioned than Yang or Delaney if Bernie makes a misstep.

For the baby Obamas, the faux progressives, from former Goldman Sachs exec Cory Booker to Mayor Pete and Beto, Tulsi, Amy and Kirsten, I seriously think their best shot comes not from competing with Kamala Harris over a lane that she already has locked  up, but rather moving right to a more purely centrist position and becoming the heir apparent the minute Biden stumbles. Inside the beltway where most elected officials and pundits live, the idea of a Democratic Party that challenges capitalism sounds like a prescription for self-destruction – never mind two-plus decades of evidence to the contrary – and I do think Harris is their primary opponent at least until Super Tuesday.

And on March 4^th? That is when the real race for 2020 will begin.