4 Reasons Elizabeth Warren Should Run for President

4 Reasons Elizabeth Warren Should Run for President

By Scott Conroy - November 6, 2014

For most Democrats, Tuesday's elections were an across-the-board disaster -- a collective nightmare they'd rather not dwell on for another moment. 

In the case of Elizabeth Warren, however, the 2014 midterms could end up being a call to arms.

The Massachusetts senator has repeatedly denied interest in running for president, and there is no doubt that Hillary Clinton would remain the overwhelming favorite to become the next Democratic nominee regardless of whether Warren gets in the race.

But the first-term senator wouldn’t be the first ambitious politician to change her mind about running for the nation’s highest office (see: Obama, Barack), and the results of Tuesday’s elections crystalized the underappreciated reasons why it makes sense for her to do just that.  

At some point over the next couple of months, Warren will have to decide whether to keep her word about 2016 or throw caution to the wind and take on the Clinton behemoth.
 
Here are four reasons why she should choose the latter route.


1. She Fits the National Mood


Voters aren’t just dissatisfied with Washington, D.C. They’re angry, and they’re anxious.

According to exit polls conducted Tuesday, about two-thirds of voters said the country is on the wrong tack -- an even higher percentage than said the same thing during the Republican wave of 2010.

Additionally, voters by a 2-to-1 margin said they expect life will get worse for the next generation of Americans, while about two-thirds said that the economy favors the wealthy.

This sentiment is smack dab in the middle of Elizabeth Warren’s political wheelhouse.
 
No Democrat speaks as passionately and as effectively about issues related to income inequality, lack of functional governance, and the declining American middle class as Warren does. And during a campaign season in which Democrats had little to get excited about, her fist-pumping, high-decibel, populist harangues got crowds fired up wherever she went.

In a modern era that requires any serious presidential candidate to have the unquantifiable “it” factor, Elizabeth Warren already does.

No one knows this better than Hillary Clinton.

During her own appearances on the 2014 campaign trail, Clinton attempted to co-opt some of Warren’s “defender of the little guy” identity, telling a crowd in Boston, “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”

A clear overreach, the remark drew immediate ridicule in a variety of circles, as it was readily apparent that Clinton lacked fluency in Warren-ese.
Unlike the former secretary of state, Warren doesn’t have to work very hard to conjure up outrage over the privileges granted to Wall Street or the plight of the little guy.

These frustrations are the very reasons why the former consumer advocate entered politics in the first place, and they frame the issues that could propel her to the next level.


2. Clinton’s Current Standing in the Polls Won’t Last


As anyone who follows politics knows, at around this time eight years ago, Hillary Clinton was widely characterized as her party’s “inevitable” 2008 presidential nominee.

Her eventual loss to Barack Obama demonstrated once again the folly of considering anything in this business to be preordained. And yet, here we go again.

Proponents of assigning the “I-word” to Clinton’s 2016 candidacy insist that this time, it’s clear for all to see, she really is inevitable. There is no Obama waiting in the wings, they observe. And Clinton’s overall standing among key Democrats -- whether early state voters, key officials, or millionaire funders -- is without rival.

The woman is ahead by almost 50 points in Iowa, for God’s sake!

But here’s the problem with this argument: Clinton’s current poll position could change dramatically once Democrats are presented with a real choice in 2015-16.

Warren, after all, is still somewhat of an unknown commodity.
At this point in 2006, Obama was already a household name -- a political celebrity known for his soaring keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, as well as his compelling life story and vision for the nation that he chronicled in his best-selling books. 

Though Warren has already become a cult hero among many left-leaning activists, rank-and-file Democrats who aren’t political junkies just don’t know her all that well yet.

If she were to announce her candidacy for president tomorrow, Warren would still trail Clinton in the polls, of course, but the current gap she faces would almost certainly narrow amid the media attention she’d receive.

And in a one-on-one match-up, many Democrats might be surprised to find that they respond more viscerally to the bright new star on the scene than to the steadfast veteran whom they had expected to get behind.

And that’s a recipe for a real campaign.


3. Someone Has to Do It 


Despite her strengths, it’s difficult to conceive of a scenario in which Clinton becomes the first non-incumbent ever to run unopposed for her party’s nomination. Someone’s going to run against her.

6 reasons Elizabeth Warren should run for president

6 reasons Elizabeth Warren should run for president

Updated by Ezra Klein on October 24, 2014, 10:00 a.m. ET @ezraklein ezra@vox.com

 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Is Elizabeth Warren running for president? Maybe!

In the past, when asked if she's running for president, Warren has been pretty clear: "I am not running for president," she said in June of 2014. "Do you want to put an exclamation point at the end of that?"

But in a recent interview with People, Warren was rather less emphatic. "I don't think so," she replied, before saying: "If there's any lesson I've learned in the last five years, it's don't be so sure about what lies ahead. There are amazing doors that could open."

Warren's office, of course, insists "nothing has changed."

The truth is that at this point, Elizabeth Warren has no idea whether she'll run for president. The election is too far away, and too much could change, and she doesn't need to make a decision yet.


The more interesting question is the one she's probably asking herself: should Elizabeth Warren run for president? Luckily, the answer to that is easy, and obvious: of course she should. There are six reasons why.

1) She can

In 2012, 416 people registered as presidential candidates with the Federal Election Commission. But you probably haven't heard of most of them. Being taken seriously as a presidential candidate requires a rare mixture of money, supporters, staff, volunteers, poll numbers, luck, elite credibility and more. Warren has it.

There are already Draft Warren campaigns popping up around the country. There are already willing donors. There's intense media interest. She would instantly be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. She would be in every debate. She would have press at every campaign stop. She would have volunteers in every state. Not many people get that opportunity. Warren should take her shot.

2) She has something to gain

The best argument against Elizabeth Warren running for president is that she'll almost certainly lose — at least as long as Hillary Clinton is also running. I agree with that. It's just not a very good argument against Warren running for president.

There are a lot of reasons to run for president. One of them, of course, is that you just may win. But with the exception of the presidency itself,  there's no better platform for forcing your ideas to the top of the political agenda. This is true even if you lose.

One of the ways that front-runners squash challengers is by co-opting their best ideas. Mitt Romney scrapped a perfectly sensible tax plan and replaced it with something much more mathematically inventive after Herman Cain got traction with his 9-9-9 pitch. Barack Obama brought out a serious health-reform bill and promised to make it a top priority in his first term after John Edwards and Hillary Clinton forced it to the front of the Democratic agenda.

But once the idea is co-opted, it becomes a campaign promise — and presidential candidates hew much closer to their campaign promises than most people realize. There's a good argument that Obamacare only happened because Edwardscare was a threat during the Democratic primaries.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

3) She has something to say

Elizabeth Warren is an unusual politician: she ended up in politics because she had big ideas that people really liked. That's a departure from most politicians, who basically don't have any original ideas at all, and who end up in politics because they badly want to be politicians.

Warren made her name as a Harvard law professor who became something of a public intellectual. She was early in recognizing how squeezed middle-class families had become, and in arguing for a consumer financial protection bureau, and in making the case against the spiraling complexity of Wall Street.

She's continued pushing some big thoughts in the Senate. She's been out front arguing for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, for instance. She's made interesting points about the pro-business drift of the federal judiciary. She's pushed hard on the idea that banks shouldn't become so big that they're effectively immune from criminal prosecution.

She's in politics, in other words, because she cares about policy, and because she's got some big ideas for improving it. A presidential campaign is her best shot at making those ideas the Democratic Party's platform rather than just Elizabeth Warren's press releases.

4) What else is she going to be doing between 2015 and 2016?

If Warren were, say, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and if Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and the presidency, then there would be a good argument that Warren could do more as a legislator than as a candidate. But Warren is, in real life, the second-most junior senator on the Banking Committee. And she's likely to be serving in a Senate controlled by Republicans, at a time when the White House is controlled by a Democrat, and absolutely nothing is getting done.

So it's not just that running for president could do an enormous amount to push Warren's issues forward. It's that hanging around the Senate isn't going to do anything for Warren's issues at all. It's hard to imagine two better years to spend away from the Senate than 2015 and 2016.

5) She might not get another chance

This is an argument Ryan Lizza made in December of 2005, in a piece arguing that Obama should do the then-unthinkable and run for president, so I'll just quote him:

The kind of political star power Obama has doesn't last. My favorite law of American politics is that candidates have only 14 years to become president [or vice president]. That is their expiration date … the majority of presidents since 1900 have fallen on the low end of this zero-to-fourteen-year spectrum: zero (Dwight Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft), two years (Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt), four years (Franklin Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge), and six years (George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Warren Harding). The lesson is that Obama must strike while he is hot or risk fading into obscurity.

You can pretty much swap Warren's name in for Obama's throughout that whole section. If Warren doesn't run in 2016 and Hillary Clinton does run and wins, then it will be at least eight years until Warren can run again. By then, she will likely have lost all or most of her star power. Wall Street reform will probably have faded as an issue. And she'll be 75 years old. Warren will have missed her moment.

6) And if she loses? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Warren isn't up for reelection in 2016, so there's no particular conflict between keeping her seat and running for president. And if she loses, there's no particular reason to think she won't join the illustrious ranks of senators who ran for president, fell a bit short, and then became even more important senators. That list includes Democrats like Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and John Kerry, as well as Republicans like John McCain, Bob Dole, and Richard Lugar. Senators don't get penalized for running for president and losing.

Which is all to say that the question isn't, "Why should Elizabeth Warren run for president?" It's, "Why shouldn't she?"

7 Things About the Inevitability of Hillary Clinton You Probably Haven't Thought About

  News & Politics  

AlterNet / By Guy Saperstein

7 Things About the Inevitability of Hillary Clinton You Probably Haven't Thought About

As in 2007, war hawk Clinton is less of a shoo-in, but Warren shines.

November 7, 2014  |  

In December 2007, just as the 2008 presidential primaries were beginning to heat up, and with Hillary Clinton 26 points ahead in national polling of Democrats, I wrote an article for AlterNet arguing that she was beatable, that she had vulnerabilities the other candidates did not have, that she had historically high “unfavorables,” that she polled poorly against Republicans and that Democrats should rethink the “inevitability” of her candidacy. Apparently, they did and we know how that turned out.

Once again, Clinton is riding high in polling of Democrats; once again, her supporters are claiming she is “inevitable;” and once again, she has vulnerabilities other candidates lack, including extremely high “unfavorables,” as well as additional liabilities in 2016 she didn’t have in 2008 — some of her own making, some not.

1. Worrisome Polling

Hillary Clinton has maintained consistently high “unfavorable” ratings since at least 2007 (ranging from 40 to 52 percent). In December 2007, they were running 45 percent and are still hovering in the 45 percent range today. In 2007, I wrote that her unfavorable” ratings “currently are running 45 percent — far higher than any other Democratic or Republican presidential hopeful and higher than any presidential candidate at this stage in polling history. Hillary may be the most well-known, recognizable candidate, but that is proving to be as much of a burden as a benefit.” That still seems to be true.

Before Chris Christie melted down in the Bridge-Gate scandal, Quinnipiac, a well-respected poll, had him running ahead of Hillary Clinton 43-42 percent. That doesn’t, in my opinion, mean Christie is a strong candidate — people hardly know who he is — but it suggests Clinton is a weak, or at least vulnerable, candidate. She is someone who has been on the national scene prominently for 20-plus years, people know her, yet a relatively unknown Republican runs even with her? Not a sign of strength.

In an April 24, 2014 Quinnipiac poll in Colorado, a state with two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor, Rand Paul is out-polling Clinton 45-40 percent and she is running 42-42 percent against the scandal-ridden Christie. Colorado is a blue state Democrats need to win in 2016 and having a well-known Democrat running behind a virtual unknown Republican is not good news.
And, in a recent [October] Presidential match-up poll by the Des Moines Register, Hillary trails Mitt Romney in Iowa by one point [44-43] and runs only one point ahead of Paul Ryan and three points ahead of Rand Paul.

This should be a serious concern for Democrats because in Presidential years, Iowa has become a fairly reliable Democratic state.  In fact, Romney lost Iowa by 6 points to Obama in 2012 and Obama won Iowa by 10 points in 2008.  To be trailing in Iowa by even a point to a Republican candidate who lost the state by six points just two years ago and, to date, has shown no interest in even running for President, is one more ominous indication that Hillary is not as strong a candidate as her supporters want you to think.  But this is not the only reason to think that Hillary's relationship to voters is not robust.  In the just-concluded 2014 mid-term election, of the Senate candidates Hillary personally appeared and spoke on behalf of, 8 won and 14 lost [one race remains undecided].  By contrast, Elizabeth Warren personally stumped for 11 Democratic Senate candidates: 6 won and 5 lost. Elizabeth Warren pulled voters; Hillary did not.

2. New Liabilities

By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college graduates can’t find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the economy, inequality is exploding — and neither party is addressing the depth of the problems America faces.

As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking change and there is no way Clinton can run as a “change” candidate — indeed, having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016. This problem is not really her fault, but it creates serious headwinds for her candidacy and makes her susceptible to any Republican candidate who does not appear to be crazy, who can say a few reasonable things and who looks fresh, new and different. The status quo is not going to be popular in 2016 and if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential candidate, even though she will try to harken back to the relative prosperity of the 1990s, she will not be able to escape being the candidate representing old ideas and an unpopular status quo.

3. Democratic Party Base

On nearly every important issue, except women’s issues, Clinton stands to the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, “We all got into this mess together and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” In her world — a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street — the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.

According to an April 29, 2014 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll done by Hart Research, only four percent of American voters have a great deal of confidence in the financial industry, while 43 percent have “very little or none at all.” With Wall Street at a historic low in popularity and respect, with her close ties to Goldman Sachs, Bob Rubin and the financial industry, Clinton will be perceived as Wall Street’s candidate.

Clinton has not explained why she supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall legislation, which deregulated banks during the Clinton administration and contributed significantly to Wall Street speculation, the meltdown of big banks and the trillion-dollar federal bailout. She has not explained her support for NAFTA, which has eroded the manufacturing base of America and cost American workers a million-plus well-paid jobs; nor her support as Secretary of State for the Trans Pacific Partnership, which has been described as “NAFTA on steroids.” On all these core financial issues, Clinton is well to the right of the Democratic base, so how is she going to fire up the base the way Obama’s promises of “Hope and Change” fired it up in 2008?

Clinton is no more in-tune with her Democratic base on foreign policy issues than on domestic issues. She is not simply a hawk at a time when the Democratic base (and the country) is sick of expensive and counter-productive foreign adventures, she is a superhawk, consistently trying to outflank Republicans on foreign policy issues. We all know she voted in favor of invading Iraq in 2003, despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and despite the fact that evidence of WMDs was sketchy at best. She has never recanted that vote, shown any remorse about not examining classified reports about Iraq, reports that were made available to her before the vote nor expressed any qualms about the fact that the U.S. blew $3 trillion down a rat-hole in Iraq and Afghanistan with nothing to show for it. Then, five years later, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan collapsing, she strongly urged new President Obama to escalate the commitment of troops in Afghanistan, advice that proved disastrous. It is no surprise that General David Petraeus has endorsed Clinton for President. He knows a military hawk when he sees one.

More recently, she supported invading Libya and bombing Syria. And, at a time when Obama was trying to moderate Putin’s behavior in the Ukraine and get our European allies to support economic sanctions against Russia, Clinton threw gasoline on the fire by comparing Putin to Hitler, a comparison which is ridiculous on many counts, but which played very badly with our allies.
Ironically, Rand Paul represents the concerns of the Democratic base far better than Clinton about foreign interventions and the excesses of the National Security State and if he were the Republican presidential candidate, would undermine her support among Democrats in an unprecedented way.

4. Assets

Clinton’s biggest asset, in my opinion, is that she is a woman, and America is long past the time when a woman should be elected President. But Democrats already win the women’s vote and lose the vote of men, so what is the net advantage? She also has the highest name-recognition of any candidate, which is why she is polling so highly in Democratic polls, but name-recognition evaporates in any high-profile campaign and is an ephemeral asset.
Indeed, that is the essence of her problem: She has a small and active hardcore base of feminist supporters and donors; a large core of conservatives who hate the Clintons; and among others, her support is a mile wide and two inches deep — which is why a relative unknown ran her down and beat her in 2008.

5. Bill’s Legacy

Hillary Clinton's campaign will harken back to the glory years of the Clinton administration, but how much is that going to help? Certainly, Bill Clinton deserves credit for some things. He increased taxes on the rich, wages grew in his second term and jobs were created in his eight years as President (helped in no small part by the tech revolution and the financial bubble he helped create and which ended in disaster 10 years later). Bill also expanded the earned income tax credit, which helped working people. But there are a lot of things his administration did which don’t look very good in hindsight.

With help from Newt Gingrich, he enacted a Draconian welfare reform program; he overrode the opposition of labor to enact NAFTA, again with mostly Republican support; and, he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which deregulated Wall Street. As he described himself to Bob Woodward, “I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?” Conservative Alan Greenspan, whom Bill twice appointed to chair the Federal Reserve Board, said, “Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in awhile.”

So here we are, 20 years later, with wages of average workers in decline, CEO pay and Wall Street bonuses accelerating at obscene rates, pensions disappearing, the loss of millions of jobs to developing countries thanks to NAFTA and exploding wealth inequality. Yes, we can blame Bush/Cheney for their contributions to these trends, but the major policy changes that started the ball rolling steeply downhill for workers and the middle class began in the Clinton administration.

6. Accomplishments

There is no question Hillary Clinton is smart, hard-working and competent. She does her homework, shows up for work every day and works long hours. Yet she has been on the world stage for more than 20 years, so it is fair to ask what are her accomplishments over those 20 years. She led a healthcare task force in Bill Clinton’s first term, but that effort failed, largely because she was not collaborative and failed to involve Congress, despite the fact Democrats controlled it. She repeatedly claims credit for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, passed during Bill Clinton’s second term, and while her role has been disputed even by the bill’s sponsors, she played an important role in supporting it within the White House and later publicly.

In 2008, however, she tried to bootstrap many accomplishments of her husband by exaggerating her role as First Lady and got roundly mocked for her exaggerations. She had a term as U.S. Senator, and was re-elected, but can anyone identify anything of consequence that she accomplished during that period other than facilitating Republican idiocy by supporting Bush’s war in Iraq? Then she spent four years as Secretary of State, which certainly improved her public profile, but can anyone identify any substantial accomplishments she had as Secretary of State?

Clinton came to the role of Secretary of State with a huge asset — her strong relationship with AIPAC and the Israeli government. She, like President Obama, supports a two-state solution, opposes Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory and seeks peace with the Palestinians. There was hope when she was appointed that she would leverage her strong relationship with AIPAC and move Israel away from aggressive settlement activity and toward the peace process. That did not happen. Clinton is cautious, by nature, and I have little doubt she feared angering her wealthy Jewish donors by pushing them hard on peace negotiations. So she didn’t act and whatever leverage she had was wasted; it was not until John Kerry replaced her as Secretary of State that peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine resumed. Likewise with Iran, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a consistent advocate of tough sanctions and serious peace negotiations did not begin until John Kerry replaced her.

7. Foreign Policy Credentials

The Arab Spring exploded on her watch, but Clinton and U.S. foreign policy drifted. There were no long-term strategies and with her stewardship, America supported whoever looked like a winner. When it was Mubarak, she supported Mubarak. When he was going down, she supported elections. Then when they had elections and the military tossed out the winners, she supported the military. Of course, she is not the only person responsible for the policy drift, but where did she leave a positive imprint on the direction of American foreign policy?
In my opinion, she has been wrong about almost every major foreign policy question in recent American history. She probably lost the Democratic presidential primaries and the presidential nomination due to her ill-advised vote to start a war in Iraq, a vote which ultimately gave Obama’s candidacy substantial impetus, and it is reasonable to assume she will face some amount of accountability with voters for her consistently hawkish and unpopular views on foreign interventions.

In the past few months, Hillary has double-downed on her hawkish positions in the Middle East by her continued unconditional support for Israel, despite its murderous assault on Gaza which killed 2,000 mostly defenseless people, her criticisms of President Obama for not arming Syrian rebels and her hawkish stance about making a peace deal with Iran.

In an August interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, published in The Atlantic, and elsewhere, Hillary said, “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled." This is mostly fantasy. The U.S. invested trillions of dollars in Iraq trying to train an Iraqi Army and utterly failed in the effort. What could possibly make Clinton think the U.S., with far fewer resources available for Syria, had the capacity to train a competent rebel army, let alone even determine who the "good rebels" were?  Is she unaware of how bad---and counter-productive---America's track record has been arming and training fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere? And, if she really believed Syrian rebels needed to be armed, why didn't she protest publicly at the time? The fact that she remained silent as Secretary of State shows lack of conviction and no courage.

In the interview, Hillary also took a very hard line on Obama's negotiations with Iran’s nuclear expectations: “I’ve always been in the camp that held that they [Iran] did not have a right to enrichment,” Clinton said. “Contrary to their claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right. I am well aware that I am not at the negotiating table anymore, but I think it’s important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran. The preference would be no enrichment. The potential fallback position would be such little enrichment that they could not break out.” When asked if the demands of Israel, and of America’s Arab allies, that Iran not be allowed any uranium-enrichment capability whatsoever were militant or unrealistic, she said, “I think it’s important that they stake out that position.”

Claiming Iran has "no right to enrichment," is, at best, a half-truth. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not expressly grant a right to uranium enrichment to any nation, but it also doesn't prohibit enrichment, so long as enrichment is not done secretly. Hillary, of course, knows this, but by choosing to emphasize only parts of the Treaty and ignore the rest, intellectually she is little different than right-wing evangelicals who only want to read the parts of the Bible they like, while ignoring everything else.  It all cases, it misleads and inflames the discussion. In the case of Iran, misinformation feeds right-wing opposition and potentially could jeopardize a peace agreement with a country with an educated population and democratic traditions [destroyed by the CIA coup in 1953] which could be a stabilizing force and America's ally in the Middle East.

Ironically, as Secretary of State, Clinton explicitly recognized that Iran could enrich uranium under the terms of a negotiated comprehensive deal, which, of course, is exactly what Obama is seeking to do, but now, as a potential Presidential candidate, Hillary appears to want to distinguish herself from Obama by criticizing him from the right.

Concerns about these types of hawkish positions by Clinton are not academic or inconsequential. Becoming enmeshed unnecessarily in long-term sectarian conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of people, including 5,000 Americans, and cost U.S. taxpayers $3+ trillion, and counting, as 500,000 war-damaged American vets get healthcare, most for the rest of their lives. Worse, U.S. military intervention inflamed a situation America never had control over, or ever could have control over, promoted recruitment of thousands of militants by terrorist organizations, and made America, despite this huge investment, less safe.

It has been a total clusterfuck, but apparently Hillary Clinton is willing to repeat the policy mistakes which caused it. Voters should be concerned.

Is There a Democratic Alternative?

Bernie Sanders has declared his intent to run, but Sanders is technically a socialist; more importantly, his candidacy is unlikely to present a formidable challenge to Clinton.

The name on people’s lips is Elizabeth Warren, who is the harshest critic of Wall Street excesses and who speaks to the populist zeitgeist. Would she run, despite having said she is not interested?

I think we should take her protestations of disinterest seriously. Running for President is a brutal task: Two years of living in motels; two years of banquets and bad food; two years of glad-handing people; two years of dialing for donor dollars; two years of facing attacks from Republicans. No rational person would do it. Unless they wanted to change the world.

I believe there are five scenarios that would make it possible, perhaps even likely, for Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016:

1. Elizabeth Warren ran for the U.S. Senate because she wanted to change the world, most immediately to break the stranglehold on American politics and the economy that Wall Street currently holds. If she sees Hillary Clinton continuing to suck up to the financial industry and offering the failed economics and deregulation beliefs of Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, Warren might rethink what she can accomplish in the U.S. Senate. She is a person of great principle; she has fought for her principles, often against brutal odds. In the end, principles could prove more compelling than the easier and more comfortable path of stepping back.

2. I have been told by friends of hers that Warren likes her job as senator and thinks she can make important contributions in that role. But if the Democrats lose the Senate in November 2014, she might need to rethink that, because as a member of the minority in a rigidly controlled Republican Senate, it is unlikely she could accomplish anything.

3. Warren might rethink the clock. She is 64 now and would be 67 on Election Day 2016. 2016 could be the only chance she has to run for President.

4. Clinton could choose not to run. In December 2012, she suffered dehydration and fatigue, fainted, fell and hit her head, suffering a concussion. She was rehospitalized two weeks later and her condition was described as a clot between her brain and skull. She previously had suffered a large blood clot in her leg. These medical issues could cause her to rethink undertaking the rigors of a presidential campaign, which are brutal.

5. Warren raised a record $42.5 million to run for the Senate and Democratic donors would come out in droves to fund her presidential campaign. A challenge to Clinton and Democratic Party orthodoxy by Warren would be like catnip to the media. So the minute Warren declared to run for President, she would have $100 million worth of free advertising from the media telling her story and playing up the differences between her and Clinton. Even if Warren lost, she would have pushed Clinton away from Wall Street and toward more progressive Democratic Party positions and ignited a new generation of Democrats opposed to neoliberalism and dedicated to making America a more fair and equal society.

Barbara Bush recently commented that America should have more choices for President than two family dynasties. This may be the first time I have ever agreed so strongly with Barbara Bush.

Guy T. Saperstein is a former civil rights attorney and past president of the Sierra Club Foundation. He is a board member of Brave New Films, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Northern Sierra Partnership.

The Hillary Difference

By E. J. Dionne

The Hillary Difference

May 5, 2014 12:00 am Category: Featured Post, Memo Pad, Politics 36 Comments A+ / A-

WASHINGTON — There are two majorities in the country right now. One disapproves of President Obama. The other is still inclined to vote Democratic. The key question for the 2014 elections is whether voting this fall — and Obama’s approval ratings — can come into line with the electorate’s broader Democratic leanings?

There is also this: Obama’s difficulties do not appear to be hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency in 2016.

These are the findings just below the surface of the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week. Obama’s approval rating in the survey was just 41 percent, both with the general public and among registered voters. But in a hypothetical matchup with Jeb Bush for the 2016 presidential race, Clinton was favored by 53 percent of registered voters, Bush by 41 percent.

The roughly one-eighth of voters who disapprove of Obama but nonetheless support Clinton for 2016 may be the most important group in the electorate. If Democratic candidates can collectively manage to corral Clinton’s share of the national electorate this fall, the party would likely keep control of the Senate and might take over the House of Representatives. The latter outcome is now seen (even by most Democrats) as a virtual impossibility. These Hillary Difference Voters, as we’ll call them, could find themselves the most courted contingent in this year’s contests.

Who are they? A comparison of those who back Clinton but disapprove of Obama with the group that is both pro-Clinton and pro-Obama suggests that the swing constituency is much more likely to be blue-collar and white — 71 percent of the mixed group are white, compared with only 57 percent of the pro-Obama, pro-Clinton group, and it is also somewhat more Latino. Whites without college degrees constitute 47 percent of the Hillary Difference Voters but only 30 percent of the pro-Clinton, pro-Obama group. In keeping with this, 62 percent of the Hillary Difference Voters have incomes of less than $50,000 annually.

Ideologically, the swing group includes significantly fewer self-described liberals. Among the Hillary Difference Voters, only 29 percent call themselves liberal; among those who both favor Clinton and approve of Obama, 43 percent are liberals. Nearly a third of the mixed group are white evangelical Protestants, compared with only 10 percent of those who react positively to both Democrats. Clinton also runs ahead of Obama’s approval rating among voters aged 30 to 49, among white Southerners, and among independents, including those who say they lean Republican.

Interestingly, while the swing group is 63 percent female — yes, Clinton does have particular appeal to women — this is not hugely different from the pro-Clinton, pro-Obama group, 59 percent of whom are female. Both numbers show how important women have become to the Democratic coalition.

As for the fall elections, the poll found that overall, 45 percent said they would vote for the Democratic candidate in their congressional district, while 44 percent said they would vote for the Republican. Not surprisingly, Democrats win the pro-Obama, pro-Clinton group overwhelmingly, 86 percent to 7 percent. But the Hillary Difference Voters split only 56 percent Democratic, with 26 percent choosing the Republican, and most of the rest still undecided. Again, this is the group in which Democratic support has room to grow. (Thanks to Peyton Craighill, The Washington Post’s polling manager, for pulling together these numbers.)

The findings call into question easy comparisons of Clinton’s establishment standing with the populist appeal of Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat whose new book A Fighting Chance is becoming a bible for the party’s economic liberals.

While Hillary Clinton, like her husband, can reach moderate voters — thus her popularity among non-liberals — the contours of the Hillary Difference constituency are decidedly populist. The voters Obama and the Democrats need to re-engage are a less affluent, non-elite group for whom the economy is the central concern. In their different ways, both Clinton and Warren may end up pointing the party and the president in the same direction.

This is why Friday’s very encouraging jobs report was about the best sort of news Obama could get. It’s also why he has been spending a lot of time talking about the minimum wage — and why Bill Clinton gave a stemwinder last week touting his own economic record as president. The swing voters this year are motivated by economic discontent. They don’t trust the Republicans but aren’t happy with the Democrats. Hillary Clinton has many of them. Obama needs them to come back his way.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Wall Street GOP's dark secret: Hillary 2016

POLITICO

WALL STREET GOP’S DARK SECRET: HILLARY 2016 — 

NEW YORK — The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing.
The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb says no.

By BEN WHITE | 04/28/14 8:02 AM EDT

and MAGGIE HABERMAN

NEW YORK — The biggest parlor game on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms these days is guessing whether former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will run for president and save the GOP’s old establishment base from its rising populist wing.

The second most popular game is guessing what happens if Jeb says no.

Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.

Most donors and Wall Street titans have not lined up with any candidate yet, waiting for the field to take shape after the midterms. But if Bush doesn’t run, the list of Republican saviors could be short. Some donors fear Christie will never overcome the Bridgegate scandal. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin so far seems more inclined to stay in the House than to run for president. And to varying degrees, other candidates — such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio — are either unknown or untrusted.

(PHOTOS: Who’s talking about Hillary Clinton 2016?)

The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.

“If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine,” one top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said over lunch in midtown Manhattan last week. “We could live with either one. Jeb versus Joe Biden would also be fine. It’s Rand Paul or Ted Cruz versus someone like Elizabeth Warren that would be everybody’s worst nightmare.”

Most top GOP fundraisers and donors on Wall Street won’t say this kind of thing on the record for fear of heavy blowback from party officials, as well as supporters of Cruz and Rand Paul. Few want to acknowledge publicly that the Democratic front-runner fills them with less dread than some Republican 2016 hopefuls. And, to be sure, none of the Republican-leaning financial executives are so far suggesting they’d openly back her.

(Also on POLITICO: Jeb Bush: I'm 'thinking about' 2016)

But the private consensus is similar to what Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said to POLITICO late last year when he praised both Christie — before the bridge scandal — and Clinton. “I very much was supportive of Hillary Clinton the last go-round,” he said. “I held fundraisers for her.”

People close to Blankfein say the same calculus applies to a Jeb Bush-Hillary Clinton race as it would to a Christie-Clinton contest. “Those would be two very good choices and we’d be perfectly happy with them,” a person close to Blankfein said. Blankfein is a self-described Democrat, but his comments about Christie and Clinton reflect the ambidextrous political approach that many Republicans and Democrats on Wall Street take.

There are, of course, other GOP candidates who could emerge as favorites of the financial industry after making their case over the next few months.

Rubio, even with his rocky start on immigration, has impressed many on Wall Street, including the Blackstone Group’s Steve Schwarzman, during his forays to the city.

(Also on POLITICO: Warren hopes Clinton runs in 2016)

Both Walker and Ryan will be in New York on May 13, Walker for an Republican National Committee fundraiser and Ryan for a reelection event hosted by a wide range of major donors, including hedge fund magnates Cliff Asness and Paul Singer and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. Walker also will be holding meetings in New York this week as the “Wall Street primary” continues. Kasich, a former Lehman Brothers managing director, is viewed as a candidate who might fit the consensus, center-right mold favored by Wall Street. But multiple GOP operatives and donors said they see few signs Kasich, who is in the midst of a reelection fight, is currently organizing for a run.

Instead, the donors, financial executives and Washington representatives offered a consistent refrain: If we can’t nominate someone like Bush or Christie from the pro-business wing of the party, and if the GOP nominee is from the far right, then we will hold our noses and tolerate Clinton.

“Most people in the industry find her approachable and have a track record with her,” one Republican financial services executive said. “They wouldn’t align with her on every policy, but they won’t view her as hostile to the sector. If it turns out to be Hillary walking away with it, there would not be any panic.”

(Also on POLITICO: GOP preps as Christie stumbles)

Clinton, after all, was New York’s senator for eight years, where the financial district was a key constituency. She had many Wall Street rainmakers as advisers and friends. Her family has continued to work that network to try to stock the Clinton Foundation with a $250 million endowment before a presidential run. And she’s been out on the financial services speaking circuit, giving talks to Goldman Sachs and fireside-style chats with the heads of the Carlyle Group and the investment firm KKR.

Clinton warmed some hearts on Wall Street during a paid, closed-press speech to Goldman Sachs executives and other big donors last year when she said of the financial crisis, in essence: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. That line, as the people on hand interpreted her speech, reflects the feelings of many financiers. They know they played a role in the 2008 financial collapse but argue that many other factors did as well, including federal housing policy and irresponsible borrowers lying on mortgage documents. Wall Street sees in Clinton someone who would not look to score easy political points at its expense.

This is not to say that Clinton is the preference of Republicans in the financial sector — far from it. Most shake their heads when asked directly if Clinton is someone they could support. But when the contrast is against some of the non-establishment hopefuls, their comfort level becomes clearer.

This line of thinking is a direct response to fiery rhetoric from people like Rand Paul, who used the 2013 CPAC conference in Washington to rip the financial industry, saying “there is nothing conservative about bailing out Wall Street.”

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Ted Cruz, whose wife works at Goldman Sachs, is viewed negatively by many in the industry for his support of last year’s government shutdown and scorched earth approach to political battle. Cruz fired up an activist gathering in New Hampshire earlier this month with the kind of provocative populist message that makes bankers very nervous. “The rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power, are getting fat and happy,” Cruz thundered. At the same event, Paul argued that the GOP “cannot be the party of fat cats, rich people and Wall Street.”

That kind of talk leaves some rich people contemplating the notion of supporting Clinton in what would amount to a reversion to 2008, when Wall Street money went nearly 2 to 1 for then-Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain. Even those who could never back her don’t see her as a huge threat to the business community.

“I tell you this, I hope he does decide to run,” Al Hoffman, a GOP megadonor who chaired George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, said of Jeb Bush, noting the former Florida governor’s positions on immigration reform and national education standards rile populists but line up well with business groups and the broader electorate.

He said his clear preference is not to see Clinton as president, and he hopes GOP ideals will triumph in 2016. But he added: “Is [Clinton] anti-business? I don’t think so. I hope not. I don’t have any reason to believe that.”

The current fervor for Bush, stoked by the former governor’s multiple appearances in New York and elsewhere in which he has said he‘ll decide about a presidential run after the midterms, follows the rapid decline of Christie as a Wall Street darling.

Thus far, nothing has come out directly tying Christie to the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, and lawyers hired by his office released their own internal review exonerating him of involvement. But his association with the debacle and the ongoing inquiries about it have left even Christie’s biggest boosters unsure about his chances in 2016.

“He is basically one email away from extinction,” said one deep-pocketed Christie supporter, who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly.

One Christie backer said the New Jersey governor’s political fate could rest on the ascension of people like Paul and Cruz, arguing their rise could force the party’s donor class to embrace Christie’s positives as a candidate, even with the baggage that Bridgegate may bring.

“The bulk of the big money guys are either Big Boy or Jeb,” said one top GOP donor, referring to Christie. “Rand Paul still is a grass-roots phenom and a boardroom horror show.”

Paul has made multiple efforts to woo the donor class, including appearing with a handful of Mitt Romney backers and his finance director Spencer Zwick in Massachusetts just last week. But many New York financial bundlers remain concerned.

Others say Christie receding and Bush’s indecision has left the GOP 2016 field in a state of limbo as donors focus on the midterms.

“There’s a good sense on the GOP side that we’ve got a decent chance to win a majority in the Senate and thus make a major impact on legislation in the next two years,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union and former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. “Most of the major donors who I know are keeping their powder dry in terms of the presidential elections. It’ll take a longer time for major donors to get comfortable with the major contenders than it has in previous years.”

That may be true for all the candidates except Bush, who already inspires great confidence on Wall Street and would have little trouble collecting the money in both direct and super PAC donations to play a long game in the primaries should he lose an early state or two to a candidate perceived as more conservative on social or fiscal issues, as happened to Romney in 2012.

So the big question remains, will Jeb run?

People close to him say that he’ll decide over the summer whether issues in his family life, including his wife’s Columba’s distaste for the public eye, will allow him to enter the race in a fully committed way.

Bush, who has worked hard in recent years to build up a sizable nest egg, also would face questions over his business dealings, as highlighted in a recent New York Times article that noted his work on behalf of Lehman Brothers and a bankrupt Miami building materials company.

So far, people close to Bush say that nothing has arisen that would make the former governor decide against running. “Most of the issues that could be raised have surfaced,” said a person who knows Bush. “The immigration reform issues and now the business dealings and the family questions. And that’s it. There’s no more big surprises out there.” This person described Bush’s decision as a true tossup.

Others big donors who do not know the governor well say they are much more skeptical that he will ultimately decide to run given the fierce attacks he would face in early primary states from presumably very well-funded conservative candidates.

Should Bush announce after the midterms that he is not running, a frenzy would ensue among others to fill the establishment slot in the primaries.

“If a scenario unfolds where neither Christie nor Jeb Bush are running, what you would see in the major donor community would be regional factionalization clustered around the sitting governors,” said Phil Musser, a GOP consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. “What Jeb and to a slightly lesser degree Christie have is the ability to reach nationally and solidify major donor support if they were to enter the race.”

And if none of the sitting governors or a Wall Street-friendly candidate like Ryan can wrest the nomination from the likes of a Paul or a Cruz?

“In that situation,” one Wall Street executive said, “then Hillary seems relatively tolerable.”

Rand Paul’s “youth” snow job: Why he’ll never, ever, ever win over young voters

SALON

Saturday, Mar 22, 2014 06:30 AM EDT

Rand Paul’s “youth” snow job: Why he’ll never, ever, ever win over young voters

 

Republicans and pundits say Rand Paul could appeal to millennials in 2016. Here's why that's totally ridiculous

 
Elias Isquith

Topics: Rand Paul, Pew Research Center, Millennial Generation, Joe Gandelman, Barry Goldwater, Ross Kaminsky, Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, GOP, Republican Party, Tea Party, Election 2016, American Spectator, The Week, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Howard University, Media Criticism, Libertarianism, Jamelle Bouie, NSA, Drone, The Washington Post, Fox News, Editor's Picks, Media News, Politics News

 

 

Rand Paul (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

 

With a Chris Christie comeback looking less likely and a Jeb Bush shadow campaign only just now entering its preliminary stages, the political media that isn’t tethered to the Hillary Clinton beat — where news of no news is treated as news — has turned its eyes to Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, the man who will singlehandedly bring his party into the 21^st century by referencing modern cultural touchstones like Pink Floyd, Domino’s pizza and Monica Lewinsky. The narrative, pushed by Paul’s office and accepted by bored, middle-aged members of the press, is that the 51-year-old libertarian is just what Republicans needs to win over millennial voters and reclaim the White House in 2016. 

To be blunt: This is a stupid narrative and everyone who isn’t being paid by the Republican Party to promote it needs to stop.

Before getting into why the idea of Millennial Man Rand Paul is nonsense, it’s worth unpacking the argument. To be fair, it’s a bit more sophisticated than what I’ve described above. As Joe Gandelman put it in a deeply unpersuasive article for the Week, the curly-haired lover of liberty “has appeal to millennials disillusioned by intrusive government surveillance and aggressive drone strikes,” and that means he “could really boost his numbers in GOP contests if he’s able to mobilize young voters…” This could “snowball,” Gandelman writes, so long as Paul can convince the kids that he’s “truly a candidate of change,” a proposition made all the more likely by the fact that “Paul would be the first GOP nominee whose ideology is genuinely anchored in libertarianism, with positions that often can’t be neatly categorized.”

Putting those last two assertions aside — I’d say Barry Goldwater’s ideology was quite clearly “anchored in libertarianism” and that libertarian positions can, in fact, be “neatly categorized” as, well, libertarian — Gandelman’s argument boils down to the following: Young people don’t like the NSA and drones, so they might vote for Paul, who is also a skeptic of the post-9/11 national security paradigm. Yet while he’s right that millennial voters are far less comfortable with spying and drone strikes than the rest of the electorate, Gandelman exaggerates the intensity of their disaffection. 

On spying, for example, it’s true that young voters are more concerned with civil liberties; but as a 2013 Washington Post poll found, 18- to 39-year-old Americans still think investigating terrorist threats is more important the preserving civil liberties, by a breakdown of 52 to 45 percent. On drone strikes, meanwhile, a 2013 Fox News poll finds the conventional wisdom to be even more out of touch: by a score of 65 to 32 percent, respondents under the age of 35 said they approve of the U.S. using drones to kill suspected terrorists on foreign soil. In fact, the only scenario for which a majority of the under-35 crowd disapproves of drone strikes is if the suspect is an American citizen and the strike takes place on U.S. soil. Even then, it’s hardly a blowout, with 44 percent registering their approval.

So Gandelman’s pretty wrong, any way you slice it. But a better argument for Paul’s appealing to young voters is possible, and was indeed offered by Ross Kaminsky in the American Spectator. Instead of leaning so heavily on the assumption that kids these days hate Big Brother, Kaminsky notes that on issues where millennial voters really stick out from the rest — marriage equality and immigration reform — Paul has tried to “thread the needle” by adopting positions that are slightly more nuanced than the GOP norm. Paul’s against same-sex marriage, yes, but he thinks it’s an issue best “left to the states” and has argued that a reform of the tax code, “so it doesn’t mention marriage,” would save the country from having to “redefine what marriage is…” On immigration reform, too, Paul ultimately votes with the rest of his party, but does so while leaving some wiggle room for expanding the work visa program and legal immigration in general.

Better is a relative term, however. While it’s true that Paul doesn’t usually sound like an unreconstructed homophobe on the issue of gay marriage, it’s also true that Paul has jokingly compared same-sex marriage to polygamy and bestiality, putting himself in the same company as that noted champion of individual rights, Rick Santorum. Moreover, while nuance is nice, the fact remains that Paul is, objectively, against marriage equality. Why would a millennial voter who cares about LGBTQ issues support the guy who opposes marriage equality, and compared same-sex partnerships to bestiality, over a candidate who doesn’t do either of those things? Because nuance? Further, why would a millennial voter who wants to see immigration reform happen in this country support a candidate who doesn’t? Because he’s willing to accept immigrants as a source of labor, even if he doesn’t think they deserve a path to citizenship? Because, again, nuance?

Granted, Kaminsky and his fellow travelers would probably say that while Paul won’t win millennials over on these issues, his “balanced” approach might be enough to keep them from dismissing him before listening any further. There’s probably something to that. But there’s still a problem: It’s not like millennials are exactly in sync with Paul’s views on economic issues, either. Kaminsky’s implication that younger voters would thrill to Paul’s doctrinaire laissez faire approach to the economy, if they could only look past social issues, just doesn’t withstand even a little bit of scrutiny.

It’s true that millennial voters are not nearly as enthusiastic about the positive role government can play in promoting social and economic equality as they were in the early days of the Obama era. Back then, according to a 2009 report from the Dem-aligned Center for American Progress, as much as two-thirds of young voters said that government should provide more services, while three-fourths said there were more things the government could and should be doing. A half-decade of Democratic incompetence and Tea Party obstruction has definitely taken its toll. 

Nevertheless, a Pew Research Center report put out earlier this month found that the majority of millennials still want to see their government do more, not less, to even the playing field. Asked to choose between smaller government with fewer services and bigger government with more services, 53 percent of millennials chose the latter while only 38 percent picked the former. And even though 54 percent of them oppose Obamacare, only 44 percent agree with Paul that it’s not the government’s job to ensure health insurance coverage for all. Perhaps the most telling finding of the whole report in this regard concerns Social Security, that longtime bugaboo of Paul and libertarians like him. Despite the fact that a whopping 51 percent of millennials believe they’ll receive no Social Security benefits by the time they’re eligible, and despite the fact that 53 percent of millennials think government should focus spending on helping the young rather than the old, a remarkable 61 percent of young voters oppose cutting Social Security benefits in any way, full stop.

Persuasive as they can be, though, polls can’t tell us everything. As mentioned earlier, History happens, and people’s views can change. Demography may be a more reliable metric, then (even if too many Democrats have succumbed to the fallacious “demography is destiny” belief that a more racially diverse rising electorate will guarantee Dems a permanent majority). Paul certainly appears to be thinking about the country’s demographic changes; he seemingly can’t go 10 minutes into an interview or public statement without noting that his party must be more “inclusive” and “welcoming” to what Republicans like to call, in a triumph of euphemism, “non-traditional” voting blocs.

But as his much-discussed speech last year at Howard University — and his recent decision to chide Obama for failing to remember how Martin Luther King was spied upon — can attest, Paul’s version of outreach is not without its blemishes. He deserves some amount of credit for recognizing that non-white voters matter, too, I guess. But as is the case with immigration and same-sex marriage, Paul’s attempts at nuance are more than outweighed by his concrete policy stances. Simply put, I doubt that a young voter of color is going to look sympathetically at the image of a white, Southern conservative whitesplaining Martin Luther King to the first African American president — especially if that voter happens to know that Paul supports modern versions of the voter suppression tactics King and other civil rights heroes risked their lives to end. And what do you think the chances are that a Democratic presidential candidate would bring up Paul’s infamous attack on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during a national campaign? I’d say they’re pretty, pretty, pretty good.

To recap, here’s the case for Rand Paul, millennial hero: He’s against surveillance and drone strikes, two issues on which the millennial vote is divided; he’s against comprehensive immigration reform and same-sex marriage, two things that millennial voters strongly support; he’s against big government and universal health care, two more things a majority of millennial voters back; and he likes to talk about getting people of color to vote for him, despite supporting voter suppression and the right of businesses to engage in race-based discrimination. Oh, and he’s comfortable telling the first black president, the one who “surrounds himself with Martin Luther King memorabilia in [the] Oval Office,” how he’s failing to live up to King’s legacy.


So can we stop with this nonsense now? Please?

Elias Isquith is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on politics. Follow him on Twitter at @eliasisquith, and email him at eisquith@salon.com.