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Hillary Clinton's uncontested nomination is dangerous for her and her party
- Vox

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/17/8047957/hillary-clinton-opponents

Hillary Clinton's uncontested nomination is dangerous for her and her party

Hillary Clinton is essentially running unopposed for the Democratic Party
nomination in 2016. Yes, Bernie Sanders is in the race
<http://www.vox.com/2014/10/14/6839305/bernie-sanders-running-for-president-2016>.
But he has so little support that his natural core constituency is pouring
all its time and energy into trying to nudge Elizabeth Warren into the
race. But she's not running
<http://www.vox.com/2015/2/6/7991655/mandy-grunwald-elizabeth-warren>.

It's a problem. A problem for the Democratic Party, a problem for the
United States of America, and ultimately a problem for Hillary Clinton
herself.

Not because there's anything wrong with Clinton as a nominee per se. But
because there's a lot wrong with a non-existent primary campaign and an
untested candidate. Everyone — in many ways including Clinton herself —
would be better off if a serious candidate such as Warren, Joe Biden, or
someone else managed to enter the race with enough backing and plausibility
to force Clinton into a real campaign. That would mean real debates, real
media strategy, real policy rollouts, and all the other accompaniments of a
presidential nominating congress.

Anything less leaves her dangerously unprepared as she heads into the
ultimate contest with a Republican who will have emerged battle-tested from
an unusually deep field of plausible contenders.
The un-candidate

The most proximate way in which Clinton's lack of opposition hurts her is
in allowing her to maintain her current state of un-candidacy. This means
she continues to give high-dollar buckraking speeches
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/report-65-secret-service-agents-hand-hillary-clintons-paid-speech-canada_824237.html>
with no clear end-date on the calendar
<http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-adds-paid-speech-march-complicating-2016-timeline>.
For Clinton personally, this is a balancing act. On the one hand,
buckraking has some downsides in terms of public perception. On the other
hand, she gets money. For the broader Democratic Party, though, it's all
downside. An actual primary campaign would shift Clinton's balance of
considerations — focusing the mind on doing what has to be done to win the
presidency.

But the bigger problem is simply that running for president is hard.

A vigorous primary campaign is a means through which, among other things,
the key potential vulnerabilities in a candidate's biography get aired. Was
Clinton lying about her opposition to gay marriage the way David Axelrod
says Obama was
<http://www.vox.com/2015/2/10/8010871/obama-lying-gay-marriage>? Have too
many years at the pinnacle of American politics left her out of touch with
middle class struggles? Can she distance herself from Obama administration
foreign policy initiatives that didn't work out (settlement freeze? Russia
reset?) without sounding disloyal or ineffectual? Can she answer questions
about the complicated finances underlying her husband's foundation?

As long as she's "not running" we just don't know. And the closer she gets
to obtaining the nomination without answering the questions, the more
vulnerable the position she leaves herself in for the general election.
Unprecedented dominance

Clinton's problem isn't that these are devastating weaknesses. It's simply
that like all candidates she has some weaknesses. And normally one function
of the primary campaign is to give everyone an opportunity to make sure
that the eventual nominee is someone who is able to parry these questions
in a reasonable way. In 2012 both Rick Perry and Tim Pawlenty looked like
strong candidates on paper, but their inability to deliver competent debate
performances gave party leaders a chance to ditch them rather than deal
with an embarrassing meltdown in the middle of a general election campaign.

But Clinton's odds of securing the Democratic nomination are so
overwhelming that it seems doubtful she'll be tested in any but the most
cursory of ways.

She's not by any means the first overwhelming favorite to win a nomination.
But even presidential primary juggernauts like Al Gore and George W. Bush
in 2000 faced more-than-token opposition from Bill Bradley and John McCain.
The underdogs in both cases had at least *some *endorsements from elected
officials and couldn't be simply ignored. Bradley's challenge, in
particular, proved rather easy to brush back. But Gore still had to show
up, campaign in key states, mobilize volunteers, and debate the issues
<http://www.c-span.org/video/?154474-1/democratic-candidates-debate>. The
likes of Jim Webb and Bernie Sanders
<http://www.vox.com/2014/10/14/6839305/bernie-sanders-running-for-president-2016>
aren't even remotely in that class.

To be clear, I *like* Sanders, but the fact that his natural constituency
is spending all their time on a doomed effort to get Elizabeth Warren into
the race
<http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7216141/elizabeth-warren-presidential-campaign>
tells you what you need to know. Webb's idea of running on an agenda of making
Democrats friendly to white men
<http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/jim_webb_wants_to_be_a_white_man_s_democrat_the_former_virginia_senator.html>
is, merits aside, a mathematically impossible way of securing the
Democratic nomination even if he had endorsements or money (which he
doesn't).

This isn't opposition Clinton needs to deal with in any way — not with
debates, policy initiatives, or anything else. She'll just ignore them, hit
the GOP field, and coast to the nomination without the party ever getting a
real chance to kick the tires.
A thin electoral resume

Given the extraordinarily long period of time during which Clinton has been
in the public eye, this may not seem so bad. But despite being perhaps the
single most-covered person in politics over the past quarter century, her
record as an actual *candidate for office* is a bit thin. She ran about
five points behind Al Gore in New York in 2000, vanquished nominal
opposition in the Democratic landslide year of 2006, and then botched a
2008 primary campaign in which she held formidable advantages.

There is much more to political than electioneering, and Clinton's
considerable political skills shouldn't be discounted.

Her ability to secure the Senate nomination in a state where she'd never
lived, her 2008 reconstitution of her husband's political operation, and
her dominating position in 2016 are all testament to those skills. But in
terms of dealing with the media, speaking extemporaneously, and wooing the
voters she's had at best a mixed record of success. When she popped her
head up for a quasi-campaign book tour, she immediately fumbled and
interview claiming to have been "dead broke"
<http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5796396/only-a-rich-person-could-go-as-broke-as-hillary-clinton>
when she left office. At the end of the day, presidential campaign gaffes
rarely seem to matter much
<http://themonkeycage.org/2012/09/17/mitt-romney-and-that-47/>. But they
surely don't help. And one reason they don't matter is that nobody makes it
through the nominating process without showing they can take the heat.

In 2016, Clinton isn't going to have to show that. And it might cost her —
and her party — dearly down the road.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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