Friday, April 26, 2019

About that Presidency

Edited to add: This was written just before Biden officially declared -- very early days in the primary race. As my Dad reminded me, there's a lot we don't know yet, and we should view our assumptions with a lot of skepticism.

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Here's how I see the next presidential administration, should the Democrats win it (I give them a fifty-fifty chance; maybe sixty-forty.)

The Senate will still be firmly in Republican hands. The House will probably remain Democratic. It's four more years of legislative deadlock, head-butting, name-calling, maneuvering. In office or out of it, Trump will still be tweeting like a lunatic, with a devoted following and a Fox News amplifier. He'll be slightly discredited, but he'll also be back where he loves to be, flinging dung from the outside. It will be very, very hard to get anything at all done. The fighting will not be clean. It will be an ugly four years, regardless. The Senate Republicans will resume their obstruct-the-president-at-whatever-cost approach.

What will the president's role be, then? What will be required of her?

Two things. First: she'll need to present a coherent and appealing picture of the path forward, so that people -- especially people in states that presently field Republican senators -- will want to give the Democratic Party a chance. The vision thing.

Second: she'll need to fight hard, scrappily, ferociously and continuously. It's going to be a fight from day one, an exhausting one. She's going to have to know where all the levers of power are and how to pull them. And she's going to be heading up a vast bureaucracy, the Federal Government, that will be depleted and demoralized, largely paralyzed by the legislative deadlock. So she will need high-level managerial skills, and extraordinary discipline.

Then perhaps we win the 2022 and 2024 elections. Perhaps we don't. That's a long ways out. At that point maybe we can implement some version of the Green New Deal. But that's not what we're doing right now. Right now, we're picking our champion for a brutal, four year slugfest.

To lay my cards on the table: right now my favorite candidate, by far, is Elizabeth Warren. She's become the de facto Democratic policy engine. She's laying out what we need to do, and she's doing it well. I have a soft spot for wonks, after all. I made phone calls for Dukakis. But: I doubt I'll be voting for her in the primaries. I don't think she's a particularly good campaigner. She's nearly as old as Joe Biden. I think she'd struggle to win back the midwestern states that we lost last time. And if she did win -- she's never managed anything larger than a Senatorial office. She knows the legislative process up and down, but I'm not sure how much good that will do us if Congress remains paralyzed.

Who does that leave? Well, there's Sanders. He does "the vision thing" but I don't see him as a scrapper, or a bulldog. He would keep the vision front and center, and we need that. But he's even older than Warren. Would he be able to get down into the pit and wrestle for the scraps, which are all we're going to get next time? I doubt it. Detail and discipline are not his strong suits. And as far as campaigning goes, we haven't yet seen what happens when the oppo machine gets to work on him. They'll have a lot to work with.

Biden? Well, older again. Not a particularly good campaigner either -- his previous presidential bids have fizzled out ingloriously. He tends to go on and on, and periodically to put his foot in his mouth. He does have the experience of the Obama administration, so he ticks that box. But his vision is locked in to the world of the 1970s (as is Sanders', for that matter: Biden is the 70s "Old Left" -- it was old even then -- and Sanders is the 70s "New Left.")

No. The two I look to, when I look past Warren, are Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris. Buttigieg strikes me as very like candidate Obama: someone who is able to project an aura of being new and exciting while actually being a cautious centrist. Obama won me over by running an incredibly brilliant, disciplined campaign. I never much liked his centrist policies, but his political abilities were astounding. Buttigieg may be a similar wunderkind; I don't know. He has the silver tongue, but whether he has the managerial skills, I don't know. His resume is pretty skimpy. I do think Buttigieg is the only candidate in the field who understands why anyone would have voted for Trump, and has thought constructively about how to bring those people back. We need to bring those people back. They're not going to evaporate just because they lose an election. We're going to be living together from now on, decade after decade. We can't roll the Republic back four years: we're going to have to find a way forward.

Then there's Kamala Harris, whom I suspect I will end up supporting. She has administered a large bureaucracy, as AG of California. She is very smart. She hasn't always done the vision thing terribly well, but she has surprised me lately by her boldness: she seems to have been biding her time, but she has emerged as a genuine Green New Dealer. And she has incredible discipline. She will stay on point, totally focused, for as long as she needs to. She's young enough to be able to pound her way through four years of exhausting fighting. And for what it's worth, I like her, for the same reasons I liked Hillary Clinton. I like that she chose the difficult and murky ways of the inside paths to power. She's understands that it's all trade-offs, if you're going to try to make things happen in the real world. You do the work, and you let people call you names, and you smile.

So there we are. At the moment of going to press, I'm for Harris. I guess like Warren better, but I like Warren mostly as a wonk, not as a fighter or a figurehead. She serves as a wonk as well in the Senate -- or better -- as she would in the White House.

In any case, I will support whoever the Democrats choose. The party is the only thing that really matters, in American politics, and the sooner we understand that the happier we will be. I like the Democratic Party better than I have ever liked it, in my long years of grudging support: so there's that.

10 comments:

Joyce Ellen Davis said...

Shared <3

Sabine said...

Interesting. But you must include the fact that by 2024 most certainly even America will experience the effects of possibly still unmitigated climate change and that whatever rhetoric promising candidates are providing, not only people with access to and understanding of science will begin to panic - or to rebel.

Dale said...

Well, we can hope so. Panic, certainly: but that won't make them wise :-( It might make them run straight into the danger.

Dave said...

I do feel that primaries are for voting one's ideals, so I'll be voting for Warren for exactly the reasons you lay out. But yeah, whoever wins the nomination will get my support in the general. I don't think Warren is all that old, at 69. Biden at 76 and Sanders at 77 do give me pause, though I don't think the former is a serious contender. Agree that Harris is a good fighter and may well end up being our first female president.

Tom said...

It seems to me that in the United States and in the UK, and perhaps a little here in France, the point of the governmental system is simply not to govern. Whether that attitude stems from the top or from the electorate seems to make no difference. There is nothing hopeful or uplifting in this mess; and it tends to destroy faith in government and even democracy [whatever that is!]. Jo Biden seems to be the one Trump is afraid of, but the former will have a rocky road to travel if certain 'me too' ladies have their way. Apart from him, I wonder whether any other Democratic Party 'hopeful' has what it takes to stand up to the Republican Bully and his cohorts.

Dale said...

Dave, I can't imagine ever having the opportunity to vote my ideals, but yeah: the primary votes are my opening offer, and my general vote is what I'll settle for.

Tom, I think I'm a "me too" lady myself, so we may not be entirely on the same page there. But I'll certainly vote for Biden if I have to. I certainly agree that the total lack of hopeful & uplifting is the signature of modern American politics, and that it's deeply distressing.

Tom said...

Hello Again; I should add that I was making no judgements regarding the 'me too' people. I was only saying what I thought might happen to Joe Biden in the coming months, and wondering how coming events might affect his run for the White House. I can see a possible, if not conflict of interests, a conflict of wishes. We will see in the fullness of time.

Dale said...

Yeah. Of course every election cycle people are appalled by the fact that we Democrats don't all agree, and talk about circular firing squads, and all that. I actually think it's a sign of health that we squabble and point out each other's faults and weaknesses in the run-up. American political parties are wholly unlike parliamentary parties -- our primaries are really more like miniature versions of general elections. It would be foolish to expect to agree with everyone in our party even on major policies.

The strengths of our electoral system were much touted in my youth. Its weaknesses are glaringly apparent these days. I wonder nowadays if it's going to last.

Wil Hathaway said...

Hey School Chum,
Haven’t read your blog in quite awhile & ran across this entry.
I had been for Harris, before she had announced she was running.
Even have bought a tee (a 70’s graphics style) & made two $5 donations.
But after a particularly lousy debate & her also going off in reaction to the Hawaiian candidate’s critique, I’ve switched to Warren.
Like you, I will be voting for whoever is selected. If Trump were eliminated before the election, all bets are off. Also if there is a military takeover etc.
And to think that I learned how the Electoral College works, while playing a board game w/you...nearly a half century ago.

Ellena F said...

Thanks for writing this.