It was nice for progressive Democrats while it lasted: Sanders and Warren, arm in arm, standing at Armageddon and battling, if not for the Lord, then for a reinvigorated economic populism and an end to corporate domination. But that was then and this is now. In the heat of the Iowa primary, the progressive standard-bearers have been distracted, perhaps fatally, and have taken their eyes off the prize.
In the run-up to the final pre-primary debate on Jan. 14, “anonymous sources” (presumably, Warren partisans or staffers) informed CNN of purported remarks made at a private December 2018 meeting between the two candidates wherein Sanders supposedly told Warren a woman couldn’t win the presidency in 2020, a reasonable argument to make considering past history. (Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote in 2016, but her vote was in the wrong places vis-à-vis the Electoral College, so the issue remains in doubt.)
Perhaps Sanders did say what was reported, or perhaps Warren misinterpreted an objective analysis of the specific difficulties of running against Donald Trump, whose willingness to employ low-down tactics knows no bounds. Just as possibly, the meeting revolved around two people making respective arguments to get the other’s support: he suggesting she endorse him, she suggesting he endorse her. Discussions of this sort go on all the time in politics, but normally they’re kept private.
The controversy arose because, after a year’s silence, Warren violated confidentiality at a crucial juncture by choosing to go public, or by giving her campaign free rein to do so, which amounts to the same thing. The excuse she used was that the Sanders campaign was out to “trash” her in Iowa, as evidenced by its canvassers (unbeknownst to him, Sanders says) selectively employing talking points that implied Warren would be the weaker progressive nominee because her more affluent liberal base was socially narrow and couldn’t be sufficiently broadened for the general campaign.
Again, it’s a legitimate point — Sanders does have more blue-collar backers — but while redolent of tough, hardball tactics, it doesn’t rise to the level of a personal trashing of Warren; her outraged reaction (if genuine) suggests excessive sensitivity. But Warren may be protesting too much, expressing (like Captain Renault in “Casablanca”) shock (shock!) that politics is taking place in Iowa and using a contrived opportunity to inject gender into the campaign — playing what’s known as “the woman card” by suggesting Sanders is among the retrogrades who think a female can’t hold the highest office, which, it appears, he never said.
But there’s something else at work here. The fact is the Sanders campaign has lately been surging, while the Warren campaign has been either static or sliding backward, something that may be the real story behind the great Iowa kerfuffle. If desperation in the Warren camp due to polling data is the motivation for a sudden swerve toward identity politics, it would be both disillusioning to Warren admirers and a disservice to her political brand.
The disheartening Sanders-Warren detour into Hatfields-and-McCoys territory couldn’t have come at a worse time for Democratic progressives, since it opened the door for an undeserved resurgence of the party’s lackluster “moderate” faction, which otherwise did poorly at the Des Moines confab. Joe Biden was his usual vague, semi-coherent self; Mayor Pete Buttigieg (now, horror of horrors, an ex-mayor) was largely AWOL; and professional Midwesterner Amy Klobuchar, the “senator of small things,” went on interminably about her minor legislative accomplishments and home-state electoral successes.
The unexpected star of the evening was Tom Steyer, whose creditable performance validated his inclusion on stage. If the Democrats must have a billionaire nominee, born-again progressive Steyer should be the one; Mike Bloomberg, the political shape-shifter who’s been a Democrat, then a Republican, then an independent, then a Democrat again (but at all times a conservative-leaning centrist prone to fund GOP candidates), is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.
But there’s another shape-shifter in the nominating process who’s less obvious in his maneuverings than Bloomberg and therefore more threatening to the progressive movement inside the Democratic Party. That would be boy wonder Pete Buttigieg, whom supporters see as the white Barack Obama and critics view as too slick by half. There’s more than a little of the “Tricky Dick” and “Slick Willy” in Buttigieg’s approach to politics. Like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, ex-Mayor Pete is the opposite of a conviction politician; he’s a political chameleon who finds it easy to switch positions and adapt to the moment.
A case in point is the Buttigieg stance on health care. Where once he was an advocate of some form of Medicare for All (as late as last spring, according to a Washington Post compilation of candidate positions published on May 24), he now distains it, accusing proponents Sanders and Warren of pushing a program likely to throw millions of insurance employees out of work. What Buttigieg calls the “Sanders-Warren vision” of health care would, he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in December, “eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country” – a gross overstatement Sanders for one has explicitly rejected. This is apparently Buttigieg’s attempt to capitalize on concerns about Warren’s financing mechanism for her particular plan.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, who profiled Buttigieg for The New Yorker late last year, perceived an essentially conservative establishmentarian tone to ex-Mayor Pete’s campaign, one stressing national reconciliation, Eisenhower-era consensus, vacuous generational change, and an incrementalist approach to policy. The mix included lots of Wall Street money, counselling from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and cordial outreach to Republicans. What was lacking, Wallace-Wells noted, was anything resembling a spontaneous populist spirit. But the product was smooth, oh so smooth.
That’s in keeping with the Buttigieg campaign former rivals Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro encountered on the primary trail and remarked upon, a well-oiled marketing operation driven by test polling, consultants and focus groups — all wrapped in a self-proclaimed cocoon of “Indiana values,” Indiana being the deep-red state long distinguished as a dead zone for liberal Democratic aspirations.
This, then, is what could displace the wounded insurgencies of Sanders and Warren. There’s still time to turn things around, but as Finley Peter Dunne’s Mister Dooley observed, “Th’ dimmycratic party ain’t on speakin’ terms with itsilf.” Sadly, that goes double right now for its progressive wing.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2020
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