Let’s try this again.
The situation:
2016 appears to be a very rare snowflake of a presidential election. There have been only two or three like it since George Washington was sworn in back in 1789. A sitting president is not seeking a new term in office AND
–he is popular, especially and wildly so within his own party
–he is unmarked by scandal
–he is in full vigorous health
–he is willing to campaign for the nominee from his party to replace him, and that candidate welcomes his participation*
It happened back in 1836 when Andrew Jackson threw strong support behind Martin Van Buren and got the latter elected. In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt went all in for his buddy William Taft, and got the latter elected. If you like, we can include 1988, when Reagan pitched in for Bush (although if you want to argue that this is a poor example because Reagan’s health was on the ebb and that Bush’s strategists really didn’t want Reagan campaigning because they felt like their candidate was fully insulated from Iran-Contra questions and didn’t want to dig up that dirt, I’ll agree).
Anyway, other than that…nada. In any other situation, the sitting president was either scandalized, unpopular, in too frail of health…or, as what happened in 2000, the two candidates simply didn’t get along.
This has more implications than the Presidential campaign, too. Congresspersons, Senators, Governors, Lieutenant Governors, State Treasurers, State Attorneys General…they all stand to benefit from having a sitting president who is popular doing campaign work, because that person also raises campaign cash and fires up a base to come out and vote. All of those folks with a stake in the coming election tend to have one other thing in common with each other: they’re superdelegates for the Democratic party.
And so as we started the 2016 campaign, Hillary right has run as a proud, policy-making, high-ranking member of the Obama Administration. She can point to low unemployment figures, a tremendous record on job creation, low gas prices, at least an official cessation of wars (yes, I know), reasonably strong economic indicators, and a national healthcare plan going into effect in the last 8 years. Democrats, from this lofty height on down to state legislatures will also hope to frame things like this and run on that record, and well they should. There are plenty of arguments to be made on the validity of those claims and Republicans will make it (and they should.) But the fact remains that any Democratic candidate for elected office will need to frame all of those things as significant accomplishments of his or her party over the last eight years as part of each person’s respective candidacy. It’s a winning argument, and one they need to make.
And this should be self-evident. If you argue that the last 8 years have not been good, you are inviting the Republican running against you to point out that if things are crap with a Democrat running things, why elect another one?
Which is where Bernie’s run off the rails. In the Senate, he’s an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, but that allows him to not get caught in political party deal making and compromises to get spending bills and funding bills passed. He can float above it all, which gives him a nice advantage. But in running for the Democratic nomination, he can’t float above it. That “D” is attached to him now. He’s gotta wear it.
And so.
I would make this point. Bernie could stand for ALL the things he’s standing for right now–Wall Street reform, single payer, affordable secondary education–without repudiating the 8 years of Barack Obama. And, I’d also make this point. Up until about 8 weeks ago, that’s exactly what he was doing, and it had a strong correlation with Bernie’s surge in popularity. It’s a position that could be nuanced fairly well. He didn’t need to run an outright insurgent campaign by any means.
But, and especially in closed-state primaries, which are coming up, it’s Democrats who are voting. It’s also cost Bernie dearly with superdels. Not only aren’t any going to defect to him, it puts a bit of a chill on picking up undeclareds.
Bernie’s message has always been sexy to liberals. They’re not the ones he’s ever needed to win over. Bernie, from day one, has needed to win over Democrats. And he’s decided not to do that, and it might be to late to repair that damage now.
Trying to win the nomination of the Democratic party for president while pissing off Democrats is probably not going to sit within the realms of what I would call a brilliant strategy.
And all of that failure to nuance, to fully comprehend that if he really wanted to challenge Mrs. Clinton, he’d have to embrace the gob-smacking obviousness of being a Democrat at some point is why I find his strategy to be rather rubbish.
It can’t just be the message, as the democratic primaries over the years have been full of candidates forever polling at 3% with idealistic messages who go nowhere.
The 2008 Democratic primary field:
Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Tom Vilsack and Dennis Kucinich. Of all those candidates Kucinich was the only one pushing an idealistic message.
2004: Edwards, Lieberman, Kerry, Clark, Mosely-Braun, Gephardt, Kucinich, Sharpton, Dean. Of those candidates, I’d grant you ideology on Kucinich again and maybe Dean, although other than his anti-war stance, the rest of his platform was pretty Democratic Party standard stuff.
Just saying, not “full of”.
