I was in Los Angeles last week to catch a Dodgers game, and
had a few hours to kill before the game began. Yelp sent me to a hipster watering
hole on Sunset Blvd where I sipped on a local IPA while taking in the LA social
scene. I found myself seated next to a group of 20-something hipsters and,
being a researcher, decided to conduct some ethnographic research by observing
the LA hipster in his natural habitat (basically, I eavesdropped on their
conversation).
Their conversation was wide ranging, but eventually turned
to politics, and, wouldn’t you know it, one of their number was a full-fledged
Bernie Bro. I listened with fascination as he tried to A) explain the
difference between socialism and democratic socialism to his hipster friends,
and; B) convince his pals of Bernie’s ideological purity.
I don’t think anyone understood his socialism rant
(certainly I did not understand him), but the second part of his lecture was
representative of the type of nonsense I’ve come to expect from Bernie Bros:
“Bernie has been fighting for the same things his entire
life. He’s been consistently progressive. Hillary is a flip-flopper. She’s
always having to go back and apologize for things she did 20 years ago. She
isn’t a real progressive.”
As I sat and listened to this, I couldn’t help but think
about Hillary’s record in comparison to who I think is the most fascinating
President of the 20th Century – Lyndon B. Johnson.
If you have not read Robert Caro’s four-part series on LBJ,
I highly encourage you do so. In those books, Caro carefully dissects LBJ’s
complicated, seemingly incongruous record as a Senator from deeply conservative
Texas. LBJ came of age and was first elected to Congress while FDR was
President, and in his first congressional campaign, ran as an ardent New Dealer
– an economic populist who would support FDR’s agenda. Over time, as the
depression faded into distant memory, Texas became more and more conservative,
and the once progressive young New Dealer had to walk a fine line between
supporting progressive policies that would establish his bona fides in the
national Democratic Party while not alienating his increasingly conservative
base back home. An ambitious man who wanted desperately to be President, LBJ’s
tightrope act in the Senate lasted for over a decade, even while serving as the
Senate Majority Leader.
Every Democrat in the Senate thought they knew the “real”
LBJ. The southern segregationists gave him a free pass on signing the Southern Manifesto, a full-throated rebuke of desegregation signed by all southern
Senators with the exception of Johnson (who was “allowed” to not sign because
of his role as Majority Leader and the understanding they all had that signing
would doom his Presidential ambitions) and Tennessee’s two senators (Al Gore
and Estes Kefauver, who were both progressives on civil rights). Despite LBJ
not signing the manifesto, the southern segregationists were convinced that
Johnson was one of them. His first speech as a senator (“We of the South…”) was
a rebuke of federal overreach into civil rights issues. He had willingly
watered down the civil rights bill of 1956 to the point that, while significant
in that it was the first civil rights bill passed since Reconstruction, it
accomplished very little in actually promoting civil rights. The Strom Thurmonds
and Richard Russells of the world were convinced that Johnson was one of them.
Meanwhile, Johnson had successfully convinced the liberals
in the Senate that he was actually one of them. He would privately support
their initiatives, work behind the scenes to help pass their bills, and would
explain to them in private conversations that his voting record was not
necessarily a reflection of his actual views, but rather those of his
constituents back home in Texas.
The voting public, meanwhile, was left only to speculate
that Johnson was a fairly conservative Southern Democrat based solely on his
voting record – he regularly voted against federal involvement in civil rights
issues, was hostile towards organized labor, and had a decidedly hawkish record
on foreign policy; policy issues that made him popular back home in Texas, but
not in the national Democratic Party.
Then, at the 1960 Democratic National Convention,
presidential nominee John F. Kennedy was looking for a running mate. A New
England liberal, he knew he needed a moderate southerner or westerner to help
bring balance to the ticket. As leader of the Democrats in the senate, Johnson
was the obvious choice – besides, Kennedy was one of those progressive Senators
who was convinced that Johnson was really in the progressive camp.
When Kennedy floated Johnson’s name to party insiders as a
potential running mate, it was met with outright hostility. Civil rights
leaders did not support Johnson’s positions on race. Labor leaders threatened a
full revolt because of his poor record on labor issues. These constituents were
interested in a candidate with ideological purity – someone like Hubert
Humphrey. Bobby Kennedy very famously tried to convince his brother to change
his mind, even going so far as visiting LBJ’s hotel suite to try and convince
him to decline the nomination. But LBJ was an ambitious man, and he knew that
his only path to the Presidency may very well lie in accepting the VP
nomination, which he did.
We know the rest of the story – Kennedy was fairly ineffective
at getting his program passed through Congress, while Vice President Johnson
was relegated to the “kids table” and was rarely involved in any major policy
decisions. Then, in November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson
became President, and in a period of two years pushed some of the most
progressive legislation of the 20th Century through Congress: The
Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Higher Education Act of
1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the War on Poverty….the list goes on and
on.
In a speech to Congress urging passage of the Civil Rights
Act, Johnson spoke of his time as a young man teaching in an impoverished
school in Cotulla, TX, a largely immigrant town near the Mexican border.
Johnson stated in that speech that he had vowed, as a young school teacher,
that if he ever had the power to help people like those children he knew in
Cotulla, that he would do so, famously stating “Well, now I have that power.
And I intend to use it.”
Those Southern Democrats who were convinced that Senator Johnson
was really one of them were shocked by what they saw in President Johnson. This
was a man they did not know. Richard Russell, Johnson’s mentor in the Senate,
was famously quoted as saying he felt personally betrayed by Johnson. This man
– who had spent his entire career performing an intricate tightrope act, trying
to convince both liberals and conservatives that he was one of them – finally
showed his true colors when he became President. His domestic agenda is rivaled
only by FDR’s in its impact on disenfranchised people in America. His record as
a senator was anything but ideologically pure, but once he was freed of the
need to please the electorate in Texas, he was able to let his ideological
purity shine through. LBJ was, in fact, a progressive, and his liberal bona
fides are evidenced by his legislative achievements. But he had to become President before we
could truly find that out. And he succeeded where Kennedy failed because he
understood what it took to get legislation through Congress. He knew all the
levers of power, and he knew how to use them.
Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton. Hillary rivals LBJ
in ambition. It is clear that, much like the fictional Claire Underwood, she
has been angling for the Presidency for most of her adult life. She has
strategically and surgically picked her path, and despite a few setbacks (a
political upstart named Barack Obama and a little misunderstanding about email
servers), she has methodically plotted her path and now stands on the threshold
of the highest office in the land.
But the Bernie Bros who demand ideological purity above all are
now standing in her way.
Ideological purity for many elected officials is a luxury
they can ill-afford. Bernie has had the benefit of serving as a Senator from
the most liberal state in America. He has never really had to weigh his liberal
convictions against those of his constituents and vote in a way that violated
his conscience (his controversial stances on gun control being the only
possible exception – a stain on his ideological purity that his supporters seem
willing to overlook). He has enjoyed a luxury that LBJ could have only dreamed
about as a Senator.
The model for electing Democratic presidents for the last 75
years has been simple – pick a moderate- progressive from the South. Harry
Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all fit this rule. The
two exceptions to that rule were both young, passionate, handsome, articulate
first-term Senators named Kennedy and Obama who took the political world by
storm, who broke all of the rules of Presidential politics and who, despite
their reputations, ran and largely governed as moderates.
Now, take a look at the “ideologically pure” liberals who
have run for President in the last 75 years whose last names were not Kennedy
or Obama: Adalai Stevenson (trounced by IKE not once but twice), Hubert
Humphrey (trounced by Nixon), George McGovern (trounced by Nixon), Walter
Mondale (trounced by Reagan), Michael Dukakis (trounced by Bush 41), and John
Kerry (beaten handily by Bush 43).
The only outlier in the dataset is Al Gore, a moderate
Southerner who lost the election but WON THE POPULAR VOTE!
So if you are a Democrat who wants to be president and are
not as handsome or rhetorically gifted as Kennedy or Obama, your formula for
becoming President in the last 75 years was to be a Southern moderate.
Do you suspect Hillary Clinton has noticed this trend, as
well? I suspect she has.
Her husband ran and governed as a moderate because that was
the winning formula. Some people are now questioning his record and ideological
purity, but he governed during a time when compromise was not a bad word. He
was a progressive Democratic governor from a conservative southern state, was
President during a time in which the county was still coming to terms with
social issues that now seem straightforward (particularly issues surrounding
gay rights), and took pride in working with the other party in order to
accomplish objectives. He was more interested in effectiveness than he was in
ideological purity. His record of accomplishment is now under attack by those
who demand ideological purity (interestingly, the Tea Party demands ideological
purity of its candidates, as well).
Hillary has carved out a similar path. Her record as First
Lady, as Senator from New York, and as Secretary of State is that of a moderate
progressive – staying true to the ideals of her Democratic base, particularly on issues related to women's rights, children and healthcare, but not so far
to the left that she would be written off as “too liberal,” all the while
plotting her run for the Presidency. She has fastidiously followed the only
formula that has worked in Democratic Presidential Politics for the last 75
years, and at no point in her career had the luxury of calling herself a
Democratic Socialist or compiling the type of voting record that Bernie has
been able to compile as a back-bench Senator with not a single significant
legislative achievement to his name.
So to the Bernie Bros seeking ideological purity, I offer
this: be careful what you wish for. The Democratic Party has fallen into the
“ideological purity” trap before, and it has led to disastrous results on
election day. And let us learn a lesson from LBJ’s legacy and ask ourselves an
important question - what might a President Hillary Clinton do once she is
unshackled from the chains of moderation? Once she is given the power of the
Presidency, how might she use it? Like LBJ, might we see her true colors? Do we
really doubt that, in her heart, she is just as progressive as Bernie or any of
the other liberal icons of yesteryear? Do we REALLY believe she is a corporate
sellout aiming to do nothing more than protect her Wall Street cronies?
Hillary has methodically followed a formula for the last 40
years. It was and remains the only tried and true formula to elect Democratic
Presidents. Does that make her disingenuous? A sellout? Untrustworthy? If we
begin hurling those monikers at her, who else might we need to hurl them at?
She was and is the Democratic Party’s best chance at keeping the White House,
and I suspect that, like LBJ, she would go down in history as one of our most
progressive Presidents if given the chance.
Don’t mistake this blog as my endorsement of Hillary – I am
still weighing all of my options, and am becoming increasingly interested in
the possibility of a Libertarian as president. But as a registered Democrat who worked for John Kerry and voted for Obama twice, and as someone who cares
deeply about a progressive social agenda in this country, I have zero doubts as
to Hillary’s liberal bona fides. Frankly, I am sick and tired of hearing the
Bernie Bros pound their chests while extolling the virtues of Bernie’s
ideological purity and discarding Hillary’s “moderation” with self-righteous
indignation. Bernie Sanders would be a horrible president, not because he is a
horrible person (to the contrary, he seems like a really great guy), but
because he has zero chance at getting any of his agenda passed through
Congress. He has never passed a bill as a Senator – what makes anyone think his
legislative prowess will suddenly change once he becomes President?
So if you want progress, and you want a champion for social
justice and economic equality who actually has a chance to get things done and
not just talk a good game, it may be time to begin rethinking your options. Ideological
purity never got us anywhere. I’ll take effectiveness over ideological purity
any day of the week. Kennedy was ideologically pure, but ineffective. It took
ideologically impure but legislatively effective Lyndon Johnson less than 12
months to do what Kennedy failed to do in more than three years. I’m not
interested in a candidate who makes me feel good – I’m interested in a
candidate who will get things done. Hillary, not Bernie, is that candidate for
the Democratic Party.
What wing of the White House will have a Bill and Monica room? Hillary is supposed to be a Methodist. Bill is a so called Baptist. I want a role model as my President. Hillary is not it. Of course if we want to go back to the days of Lyndon....she will do fine.
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