- Kelly O
- You need to tell Hillary Clinton that you want to support a progressive candidate in the 2016 election.
David Catanese at US News & World Report‘s terribly titled politics blog The Run says “Ready For Warren—a group attempting to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., into the 2016 presidential race—is seeking to obtain 100,000 signatures for its cause by Presidents’ Day” in February of next year. The signatures are on a letter reading “Dear Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Our country needs a strong progressive champion as its next leader. We’re asking you to run for president in 2016. Sincerely, The Undersigned.”
But Elizabeth Warren has said repeatedly that she’s not interested in running for president. She’s said it so many times that I’m starting to believe her. So what happens if the signatures don’t sway her? Catanese explains when “one supporter raised the prospect of potentially getting behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the self-avowed socialist who is considering a campaign, [Ready for Warren campaign manager Erica] Sagrans said that decision would be made only after they ran out of options to persuade Warren.” It sounds to me that Ready for Warren is more than just a personality campaign; it’s interested in pushing the 2016 Democratic primary to the left, which should be a concern of every progressive-minded voter.
I’m concerned that Clinton will only move as far to the left as she is pushed. She doesn’t even need a convincing opponent to be pushed, she just needs to be joined on the debate stage by a non-kooky candidate who is fearlessly progressive. (Because even if you’re not a Clinton fan, you have to acknowledge that she’s very likely going to be the Democratic candidate. Conventional wisdom suggests that Clinton is not the inevitable Democratic nominee, because she was inevitable in 2008, too, but that’s a gloss over two very different situations. In 2008, Clinton was positioning herself as the inevitable candidate, but she’s now polling at least twice as high among Democrats as she was at this point in the 2008 campaign cycle. She would have to run a catastrophic campaign this time to not win the nomination. Which is possible, but not likely.)
Even if you’re a Clinton fan, even if you’re going to vote for her in 2016, I think it’s important—if you care about income inequality and want to keep it at center stage during the 2016 election—that you sign Ready for Warren’s letter. This is a natural part of the election process; a candidate doesn’t lead the party, the party leads the candidate. And if you want the entire race to move leftward, you have to tell the candidates that in as clear language as possible. This is one way to do that.
Democrats need to run a vital, exciting campaign in 2016, because at least one element of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns—the whip-smart data analysis—is no longer going to be a one-party advantage. You should read Mike Allen and Keneth P. Vogel’s scary Politico report about how the Koch Brothers “are pumping tens of millions of dollars into a data company that’s developing detailed, state-of-the-art profiles of 250 million Americans.” The firm also demonstrates “in-house expertise in polling, message-testing, fact-checking, advertising, media buying, dial groups and donor maintenance” as well as “mastery of election law, a corporate-minded aggressiveness and years of patient experimentation — plus seemingly limitless cash.” In order to win this next election, it’s going to take more than strategy and numbers—it’s going to take a message that excites the American people. It’s our job to agitate for that message.