WE GOTTA GET OVER BEFORE WE GO UNDER
Jennifer Rubin, one of the conservative voices on the Washington Post’s opinion page, wrote a smart column (link below) about what kind of Republican candidate could defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries, assuming Trump is still around by then. Most of Rubin’s advice makes sense for Democrats as well, so I’m going to use her four basic premises as a springboard for my own thoughts on what Democrats should look for in a presidential candidate – and in candidates for other offices, up and down the ballot.
First, as Rubin notes, Donald Trump’s modus operandi is generating chaos. Chaos can be exhilarating for a while, but by 2020, the adrenaline will have burned off and a lot of voters, even those who supported Trump in the beginning, will be emotionally exhausted. Democrats may be tempted to look for a liberal Trump, some celebrity who can win a verbal slugging match with Trump or whoever replaces him on the Republican ticket in 2020. I think what Democrats really need is a happy warrior, someone with the disposition of Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan (in terms of personality, not policies), who is passionate about the right things, but passionate in a calm, competent way.
We need a candidate who will replace Donald Trump’s strategy of divide and conquer with a pragmatic willingness to work with anyone, including Republicans and independents, who are willing to work with us. Moderation and compromise aren’t qualities that stir the blood, but they’re what we’ll need in post-Trump America.
I wrote this before the election, and I’ll repeat it now: Political parties need principles, but they don’t need dogma. In a pluralistic society, compromise is more than just important. It’s the only way to govern in a democracy. It’s what keeps the “United” in the United States of America.
Second, we need to avoid wasting time and energy on trying to convert Trump’s base. I’ve already written a long post explaining why that’s futile. I say, let Republicans have the Confederates and Nazis, and all the other voters who don’t mind being associated with that kind of garbage.
You may fairly ask how my enthusiasm for compromise squares with my rejection of Trump’s base, but there are plenty of other situations where compromise is a good strategy. The place for Democrats to start is by compromising with each other. Stop re-litigating the personal squabbles between Hillary and Bernie and their respective camps. Actual policy issues, of course, can and should be debated.
Democrats will also need votes from independents, and it will likely require some policy flexibility to win them over. In 2016, Clinton Derangement Syndrome drove some voters temporarily insane. They believed Jill Stein’s and Gary Johnson’s assertions that there was no difference between Clinton and Trump. Four million potential Democratic votes went to the Greens (who got a million more votes in 2016 than in 2012) and Libertarians (three million extra votes). An indeterminate number of potential Democratic voters simply sat out the election because they didn’t like any of their options.
It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to expose the foolishness of the claim that both major parties are the same. In eight months, we’ve seen what Republicans, unfettered by anything except their own incompetence, will do if given the chance. I believe that most of those four million voters will be sympathetic to the Democratic message in the next presidential election cycle.
Hillary Clinton, bless her heart, won’t be on the ballot in 2020. If Democrats can boost their own turnout, add a majority of repentant Green and Libertarian voters, and – this is crucial – find ways to outmaneuver Republican attempts to suppress the vote, it will be enough to take back the White House in 2020.
Third, in order to accomplish all this, Democrats need a candidate who can deliver a speech that doesn’t sound like a speech. Crooked Media podcaster Jon Favreau calls it a crisis of authenticity. Donald Trump introduced a new style of rhetoric into American politics. He isn’t eloquent. He isn’t even coherent. But even when he’s spouting gibberish, you know where he stands.
Mechanical stump speeches don’t connect with voters anymore. The best ideas in the world will put coffee to sleep if they come wrapped in clichés and delivered in stilted cadences. It’s not a matter of style over substance. In contemporary politics, style is a component of substance.
The good news is, Democrats have dynamic speakers, with distinct individual voices that haven’t been homogenized by decades on the campaign trail. Here are four names to remember: Jason Kander, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, and Joe Kennedy III. That’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a place to start.
Finally, Jennifer Rubin noted that it will take a candidate without baggage to mount a successful challenge against Donald Trump. She means Republicans who haven’t been Trump enablers. For Democrats, being a career politician is the thing that's more likely to hurt than help.
I admire the hell out of Bernie Sanders (born in 1941), Joe Biden (1942), and Elizabeth Warren (1941). I’d happily vote for any of them over any conceivable Republican candidate if it comes to that. But the Republican disinformation machine already knows how to attack those guys. They’d have work harder to get traction against newer candidates. They’ll come up with something, of course, because the Fox/Breitbart/Limbaugh axis of media evil will just lie if they have to. But we can at least make them break a sweat.
In his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Kennedy spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation. As a guy who’s older than Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, and with respect to the fine Democratic politicians of my generation, I say it’s time for Baby Boomers to pass the damn torch. I’m looking forward to fresh faces in the 2020 Democratic primaries.