by Gary Pearce, Talking About Politics, April 8, 2015.
The debate in the Democratic Party isn’t even whether Hillary Clinton should be the nominee. It’s whether anyone should even have the audacity to challenge her.
This is truly remarkable, when you think about it. Democrats always want a fight. Every year in modern times when no incumbent Democratic President was running for reelection, there was a fight: 1960, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Sometimes there was a fight even when there was an incumbent: 1968 (before LBJ pulled out) and 1980 (Ted Kennedy challenged Carter).
Two old Democratic heads have taken the two sides of this debate: the ever-contrary Gary Hart (for a challenge) and one-time Clinton tormentor Jerry Brown (against a challenge).
Hart, who almost knocked off Establishment choice Walter Mondale in 1984, says there should be and will be a challenger, former Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who happens to be a former Hart campaign staffer.
Hart said, “The job of a challenger is to force specificity: Here is my plan, now let’s see her plan.” He decried dynasties: “If you’ve got to have a billion dollars to run for president, how many people can do that? Only the Clintons and the Bushes and one or two others. This country is 330 million people, and we should not be down to two families who are qualified to govern. … When you create dynastic networks, you shut a lot of people out.”
On the other side is Brown, the past and present Governor of California. Brown ran against Bill Clinton in 1992, famously angering Clinton in a debate when he accused Hillary Clinton’s law firm of benefiting from its relationship with the-then Governor of Arkansas.
But now he says, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather have less if I were running for president than to have a competitor in the primary. The primaries get into all the little nuances and small differences of candidates of the same party. What Hillary needs is a good debate drawing the distinctions between where she stands and where all these Republicans, these wannabes running around, (stand).”
“There’s some big differences, and they’re more with the Republicans. So let’s have the debate and let’s see where America wants to be. I don’t think running some couple of Democrats would illuminate the process.”
Brown, always good for a good quote, also took a shot at Republicans who oppose President Obama’s immigration executive actions, calling them “at best troglodyte, and at worst, un-Christian.”
For now, while a new Republican candidate announces every week, Clinton has four unannounced but real opponents: her own perceived shortcomings as a candidate; Bill Clinton, who is like one of those flashy basketball players who can keep both teams in the game at the same time; her huge campaign team’s potential for discord and dysfunction; and the media, which seems suspicious and even hostile to her.
She has enormous strengths: experience, a proven record, toughness and the historic momentum behind electing a woman to the Presidency.
The question for Democrats is whether a challenge would make her stronger or expose real flaws.
