The Future for Democrats

Leadership requires a leader.   A spokesman and candidate, with all the strengths and weaknesses and baggage of a real person.

People to watch--Some previews of the Democratic Bench.   

A premise of this blog is that in the current media environment political leadership is formed largely on big picture body language, branding, and tone.  Voters have presumptions and beliefs that are amplified--not informed nor challenged-- by media silos.  The die is largely cast in the first impression, both of what a candidate presents about him or her self and what an opponent says about the person.   People get labeled.

I have likened the 2016 election to professional wrestling.  The contestants come out in broad costumes representing certain archetypical characters: the bully, the thug, the hero, the pretty-boy.  Trump's characterization of Little Marco and Lying Ted, and then Crooked Hillary worked for him.  There was little close analysis of Trump's positions and they were fluid and contradictory.   

By election day a great many people thought they knew what they needed to know:  Hillary was crooked and Trump was an outsider who was going to shake things up and try to get jobs back in America by getting tough on immigrants and foreigners.

Or, conversely, they knew what they needed to know: Hillary was competent and had baggage but Trump is a wild, uninformed, temperamentally-flawed jerk.

In the fulness of time Democratic candidates will express positions on issues and they will run through a gauntlet of Democratic primary vetting, which exercise will likely push candidates toward positions which will please the coastal elites in party leadership and the constituencies of blacks, women, Hispanics, and the LGBTQ community.  The candidate who can meet that test and simultaneously not alienate the white working class voter will be a candidate who can prevail in 2020.  

Candidates already come to the table with a biography, a skin color, and positions that reflect their current constituency.   Kamala Harris is stuck with San Francisco, and all that means for a national candidate.  Cory Booker is stuck with sounding like he is very well educated and not a redneck.  Some elections demand a redneck connection.  Depending on how the economy goes, a critic of the financial industry to appear to the public to be exactly right--or the whining of a scold and sore loser.

Meanwhile, some people are making their moves.

Peter Sage and Jeff Merkley

Senate Democrats are jockeying for visibility.   At the senate level Oregon's Jeff Merkley is appearing on cable news shows, denouncing Trump and his cabinet picks plus calling for investigations on Russian involvement in our election.  He is not rivaling Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but he is positioning himself as a liberal spokesman for the kinds of things they say, making him, at this point, an alternative, not a substitute.  Merkley is raising money for his give-away war chest so that he can re-distribute it to Senate candidates who need help, which is a method for gaining influence within the Democratic caucus.  Merkley is making a move.  Readers will see him on TV.  He presents like an earnest Senator, not a president.  I include him because he is the Democratic senator I see most visibly attempting to change his senate positioning, from back-bencher to leader of the liberal wing.

Presidential candidates are emerging.  

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders look young and healthy and they are plausible candidates in 2020.  Age would be an issue if Trump were not age 70 himself today and 74 in 2020, but neither are young.  They are both well known and both would be strong spokesmen for financial reform.   If the US economy is weak or in recession in 2019--or if the financial de-regulation being reflected in the stock market gains for financial stocks turn out to create problems--then either Warren or Sanders could be the "its the economy, stupid" candidate.   Trump promised reform, via draining the swamp.  If Trump's reforms end up looking like more crony capitalism then Warren or Sanders voicing the "you were conned" meme will be ripe.

 O'Malley supporters in New Hampshire

I watched Martin O'Malley in New Hampshire.   He is well spoken and competent, words that are intended to be faint praise.  He has less sparkle and charisma than does Hillary.  It is possible that 2020 will be the era of the anti-charisma candidate because people will have had enough drama and charisma with Trump.  They may want solid. (Remember, in 1976 people wanted pious, so they got Jimmy Carter.)  If so, O'Malley may fit the times.   He has baggage in a Democratic primary:  as a Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor he endorsed "broken window" policing--that style of aggressive community policing intended to squelch violence in tough urban neighborhoods.  In 2016 that was the wrong side of the issue as Sanders and Hillary Clinton vied to reverse police policies that resulted in black men dying at the hands of white policemen.  Then there was rioting in the streets of Baltimore.  By 2020 he may be able to voice a strong, clear, persuasive argument for his policing policy or more generally for a positive vision for America, but the fact that he could not do it in 2016 makes this unlikely.   

Harris

Kamala Harris just won a Senate race in California, having formerly been the state Attorney General.   She is archetypal "mixed race" and has a law enforcement background.  Her actions as a state prosecutor and as Attorney General will be troubling to many Democrats.  She was involved in suppressing exculpatory information relating to shoddy police lab practices, keeping the information from defendants.  She followed in the tradition of police departments and prosecutors everywhere of defending policemen and potential convictions even in the face of actual innocence.   The charge that she wanted  convictions more than she wants justice will come up in a primary election struggle among Democrats, but it could serve her well in a general election.  She is black enough to have some immunity and Democratic grace on this issue--she calls herself Afro-American and she graduated from Howard University--but she presents as a tough on crime prosecutor.  But she is also from the San Francisco Bay Area, which endorses sanctuary cities, respect for gays, a clean environment, etc.  San Francisco is a symbol to conservatives of what they hate. 

Booker

Cory Booker is a New Jersey Senator and former Mayor of Newark.   He has star quality sparkle in his presentations.   He has degrees from Stanford, he was a Rhodes Scholar, then a law degree from Yale Law School, an essentially perfect resume for establishment elite--elitist--leadership.  He was brought up in a religious household and he had experience in the trenches of poverty as a city councilor and mayor of Newark, so he has some street cred, but his presentation, his resume, and his politics put him squarely in the position of being "elite" in the mode of the Clintons and Obama--not populist. He does not sound or act "blue collar man of the people". He has time to position himself as an insider critic of the elites and special interests, but it will be a challenge for a New Jersey senator since a great deal of "Wall Street" actually resides in New Jersey.  He looks rather like Obama and Obama may be at the height of his popularity 4 years out of office and by then people may be thinking about the Good Old Days, and Booker can be the New Improved Obama.  This could work for him.

Kennedy

Joseph Kennedy, III is a congressman from Massachusetts representing Brookline, Newton and suburbs to the south.   He has an established brand, due to his name.  He graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School.  The Kennedy brand gives him credibility as an old style union and working person's kind of Democrat--the alternative to the college-town-latte'-Hillary Clinton Democrat.  He has a demanding town meeting schedule, agreeing to meetings in each of the 34 towns in his district, something which projects a kind of man-of-the-people spirit.  The 2016 cycle demonstrates that a candidate does not need a long resume if one has an established brand, and Kennedy has one via a family name.  He was born in 1980 and is 36 now and would be 40 in 2020, which is probably too young.  The Kennedy brand projects strength and pugnacity, making him a stand up rival to Trump.   In the professional wrestling optics of politics Kennedy could be the young aggressive reformer versus the old comb-over crony capitalist--assuming that Trump falls prey to having his administration captured by the businessman-friendly tone he is projecting so far in the transition.

There will be other candidates this blog will explore.  This is a solid start for a presidential bench