Editors at the Washington Examiner ponder the future course of the Democratic Party, in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidency.
On Monday, we discussed the calamity Democrats suffered by pushing common-sense Democrats such as Jim Webb out of their party. On Tuesday, we pointed out how time has proven President Obama’s agenda was too radical for anyone except the most skilled politicians to survive.
But the simultaneous end of Clinton’s and Obama’s careers obliges Democrats to choose between two political formulae that were once successful. It is unclear which, if either, would revive their electoral fortunes faster, or whether they should pursue something completely different.
One choice, Clintonism, is tarnished by Hillary’s complete failure, but the precise cause of that failure is a matter of debate. Was it that she was simply such a dreary and uninspiring candidate? Was it the Clinton clan’s unseemly self-enrichment and paranoia? Or was it actually the core strategy of their politics, which was corporatists, triangulating and getting cosy with Wall Street, all of which alienated the left?
An embrace of Clintonism is counterintuitive, and Democrats seem poised to choose Rep. Keith Ellison, of Minnesota, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He as one of the first members of Congress to endorse against Clinton in the 2016 primary.
Yet if the story of 2016 is that working white America abandoned the Democrats, is abandoning Clintonism wise? Bill Clinton, after all, had a strong appeal among working class voters, white and black.
But so did Barack Obama. Some people want to see the 2016 election as hinging on racial resentment, but this does not pass the smell test. Trump won several states and many counties that Obama carried in 2008 and 2012.
The obvious alternative to Clintonism is the more sharply left-wing brand that propelled Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, so strongly during the primaries. Many Democrats argue that the answer to Trump’s moderate-right populism is a left-wing populism.
This would shift the party leftward beyond even that point to which it was taken by Obama, and might well set the party on a similar course to the one that the British Labour Party took after it’s last election defeat.
