Wayne O'Leary

They’re Off and Running

Don’t look now, but it’s already that time again — nomination time for presidential candidates. The process has started earlier than ever for 2020 on the Democratic side, much the way Christmas shopping now begins after Halloween. Part of the urgency is an understandable desire by Democrats to get underway ridding the country of Donald Trump and company; open season on Republicans can’t come soon enough.

The manic start, which resembles the Oklahoma land rush of a century ago, owes a lot to the sheer number of candidates, nine and counting last time I checked. Before it’s over, the number of Democratic hopefuls looking in the mirror and seeing a president is expected to top two dozen, necessitating among other things a multitiered system of debates.

The acknowledged big dogs in the race (Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders) have held back and (as of mid-February) not declared, trusting in their name recognition, national reputations, and developed political networks to remain relevant; the announced newcomers (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney) have more to prove and are out early trying to prove it. Several more (Sherrod Brown, Andrew Cuomo, Beto O’Rourke, Jeff Merkley, Michael Bloomberg, Steve Bullock, Eric Swalwell, Jay Inslee, Terry McAuliffe, and others) have yet to decide, or are waiting for the opportune moment.

[After this was written, Sanders declared his candidacy.]

One thing established figures in the Democratic Party have to reckon with is that voters are enthralled with “the new” and susceptible to superficial appeals. In American politics, especially for Democrats, the demand is always for difference or novelty, for unprecedented leadership that will lift us above the mundane concerns of everyday politics to a place where the battles of the past don’t have to be refought because everything has changed. But as President Harry S. Truman once wisely remarked, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” He was right, of course; still, in the American political context, it’s a hard sell.

The constant yearning for new messages and new messengers in our politics appears to derive from a belief in the existence of something we haven’t seen or heard or tried before. This year’s proliferation of Democratic women candidates for president is hailed by some in the overwrought media as one such profound and long-awaited departure that will make all the difference; in reality, it’s merely the latest version of “the new,” a social phenomenon unlikely, in and of itself, to result in pragmatic advances.

The fundamental division in modern politics, particularly American politics, is what it has always been: a left-right division on economic issues revolving around the extent to which the business and financial communities should control society and set the national agenda. How one feels on this core issue — the struggle between capital and labor, between private interests and the public interest — is what separates (or should separate) serious presidential candidates; it’s always been the substantive matter dividing people in a capitalist democracy.

Fence straddlers like purported “independent” businessman Howard Schultz attempt to obscure that essential duality by appealing to both sides. Intellectual dishonesty alone should rule the former Starbucks chairman out from consideration, since his vehement opposition to universal health care, subsidized college tuition, and a wealth tax marks him as a true man of the right, protestations notwithstanding.

For Democrats, the nomination choice boils down to identifying who’s who ideologically and who is sailing under false colors. With this in mind, let’s examine the Democratic field for 2020, an exercise in which the party label alone offers precious little help. As befits a country that is totally fragmented along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, the party’s old bugaboo, identity politics, has reared its ugly head, threatening to splinter the solid phalanx of economic populism crucial to defeating the Republicans.

Although every Democrat running seems to be a self-described “progressive” (increasingly, a weasel word), there are thus far only four potential nominees who are genuine progressive populists: Sanders, Warren, Brown, and Merkley. Many of the others are frankly representing constituent groups or using social identity as their primary calling card. Feminists are rallying around Gillibrand, Blacks around Harris and Booker, Hispanics around Castro; the Gillibrand and Harris campaigns appear to be vying for designation of Hillary 2.0.

Except for the four strong populists, the field leans centrist (albeit center-left), expressing a consensus preference for bipartisanship and for addressing social, rather than economic, issues and including a revanchist Wall Street wing led by “moderates” McAuliffe and Bloomberg that trends center-right. The latter group rejects such proposals as single-payer health coverage and upper-income wealth or estate taxes of the sort advanced by Warren and Sanders.

Then, there are the two anticipated wild cards in the race, neither of whom can be easily categorized: Beto O’Rourke and Joe Biden. O’Rourke is, to borrow Churchill’s phrase, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” So far, he’s running on charisma, inspiration and national reconciliation, and needs to fill in the programmatic gaps; ideologically, the ex-congressman (who was for Clinton in 2016) could fall anywhere along the center-left of the spectrum.

O’Rourke, like almost all prominent contenders, has endorsed a variation of single-payer or Medicare for All, which has become the main Democratic litmus test for 2020. The question is, which of the candidates, himself included, really means it and would seriously pursue implementation? That will be a key area of inquiry over the coming year. The populist cohort would certainly attempt to follow through; the intentions of the more centrist bloc remain open to speculation. Single-payer could easily become the Employee Free Choice Act (“card-check” unionization) of the next Democratic administration — given campaign lip service and then quickly abandoned.

Finally, lest we forget, there’s Joe Biden, former vice president and perennial candidate for the top job; it may just be his time unless someone lesser known emerges and catches fire. Before the left of the party writes him off as hopelessly centrist and passé, it should consider that Biden’s office, staffed by such left-leaning advisors as Ted Kaufman and Jared Bernstein, was a center of economic-populist opinion and labor advocacy within the Obama administration. Democrats could do worse in a nominee, should a seasoned transitional figure be what’s needed to both bridge intra-party differences and harness the new populism.

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 15, 2019

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