After years of speculation, Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy for president. At this point it feels as though she has been running for three years or more. American election seasons have been way too long since the 1970s, particularly over the last few cycles. I personally think this has been accentuated by the emergence of the 24-hour news cycle and cable opinion/advocacy journalism, like FoxNews and MSNBC. I watch the latter more than most anything else, and I can tell you, they have been obsessing over 2016 since the day after the 2012 election, literally. It is permanent presidential electoral politics, restricted to horse-race coverage for the most part. (Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry and Rachel Maddow focus on policy more than their colleagues, to be fair.)
What about policy? It doesn’t look good, frankly, and it’s kind of depressing. Hillary Clinton is mouthing platitudes about inequality and being a “champion” for ordinary people, but that seems pretty clearly an effort to close off demand in her own party for a progressive alternative, like Elizabeth Warren. If she makes the right noises for a few months, it will be too late to mount any meaningful opposition. She is, of course, a mainstream interventionist on foreign policy, a supporter of the neoliberal order on economic policy, and generally a middle-of-the-road Democrat (or what was formerly known as a moderate Republican). Looking for a white knight – say, a Jim Webb? Don’t even. I just heard him obsessing over Iran this evening, like pretty much all of his fellow mainstream Dems. Warren and Sanders would have to abandon their political distinctiveness – i.e. their hostility towards bankers and lobbyists – to seriously compete in this money-heavy game, thereby abandoning any reason for supporting them.
Of course, the Republicans are the Republicans – all announced candidates reflecting their party’s modern identity as a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. The ludicrous Ted Cruz tries so hard at parading his reactionary credentials that he seemingly unwittingly ties himself in knots, like announcing that he would both abolish the IRS and simplify our tax forms. (I think one definition of insanity is the ability to hold two mutually contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time without dissonance.) Their deeply unpopular political positions will be treated with the usual respect and awe. Rand Paul, purported libertarian, felt the need to announce his candidacy with a battleship in the background (like Romney’s announcement of his running mate). So much for libertarianism.
Two bad choices inevitably lead to bad outcomes. The only way things are going to change for the better is if we organize outside the context of presidential politics first, then carry some relatively responsive president and Congress in on our shoulders. Up to us, but we’d best get started soon, while there’s still a world left to save.
luv u,
jp
It is often said that incumbency has its advantages, and it certainly does, but it has many drawbacks. One is that, as president, it’s harder to go around saying what you are going to do because the first thing people wonder is, well, why aren’t you doing it now? You are, in essence, applying for the job you already have. Your performance in that job is an actuality, not an abstraction. On the other hand, if you’re the challenger, you can promise anything, make any wild claim, run against mathematics itself, and act as though you have a big vat of miracle sauce locked up in your car elevator, and that once you take the oath of office, you’ll start ladling that stuff all over everything that’s bad and make it good.