As in 2007, war hawk Clinton is less of a shoo-in, but Warren shines.
November 7, 2014
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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 r
ecent [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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
