Hillary’s Headache

The Clinton-Sanders contest has rekindled an old tension in the Democratic party. On one side are professional politicians in charge of maintaining the coalition in government. They are progressive, but they generally like the status quo and will bargain with Wall Street, health insurance companies, and other leftist bugaboos (so long as they cough up campaign contributions). On the other are left-wing activists who want to upend the status quo by reducing the role of money in politics, corralling corporate America, and radically redistributing income.

Interestingly, a large portion of Democrats do not fall cleanly on either side. Working-class whites, African Americans, and Latinos are all major players in Democratic primary politics, yet none is a main combatant in this struggle. It is a quarrel among socioeconomically upscale whites. While average Democrats tell pollsters they prefer left-wing policies, historically they have backed establishment candidates.

The establishment-activist schism is not apparent in every Democratic nomination. A lot depends on who runs. There was no serious left-wing champion in 1976 or 1992. Jesse Jackson was on the far left in 1988, but his support was limited to African Americans. In 2008 Obama won the hearts of activists as well as broad support among the establishment, which is why he raised so much money. Similarly, Ted Kennedy’s challenge to Jimmy Carter in 1980 was an attempt to unite the left wing of the party with the establishment against a president deemed too conservative.

The divide has been pronounced five times in 50 years: 1968, 1972, 1984, 2000, and 2004. In some cases, the candidates themselves did not fit neatly into either category, but still became proxies for this larger conflict. Moreover, foreign policy has been important several times, which does not translate directly to domestic policy. Yet all these battles were, at least in part, plebiscites on whether the next Democratic administration should govern like the previous one or break decisively from past practices.

The establishment has won every contest except 1972. Edmund Muskie won early primaries against George McGovern but badly mishandled campaign attacks, leaving McGovern to win by default. Muskie’s collapse was peculiar; most of the time establishment candidates run superior campaigns. So the better question is not whether the establishment will win, but how tidily its candidate will defeat the insurgency.

In 2000, Al Gore dispatched Bill Bradley with surprising ease after the New Hampshire primary, thanks in part to John McCain. The Arizona Republican drew independent voters to the GOP primary, undercutting Bradley. And McCain’s surprising showing captured the media’s imagination, starving Bradley’s campaign of attention. In 2004, Howard Dean claimed to represent the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” but he peaked too early. John Kerry surged late to win Iowa, prompting Dean to collapse and giving Kerry smooth sailing the rest of the way. 

In other cycles the contest was messier. The 1968 nomination predates the modern system of open primaries and caucuses, but it is illustrative. Eugene McCarthy mounted a principled campaign that wooed grassroots liberals, but Hubert Humphrey ultimately won the nomination because he controlled the party’s machinery. Walter Mondale pulled off a similar feat against Gary Hart in 1984. Though the latter won the California primary, Mondale claimed the final victory because of  “superdelegates” who were free to support any candidate.

Based on this history, it is a good bet that Clinton will dispatch Sanders. There are only two avenues of potential trouble for her: She suffers a Muskie-like collapse or a fusion candidate enters the race. The former is very unlikely, but the latter is a possibility. The parallel would be 1968, when McCarthy’s strong showing in New Hampshire against Lyndon Johnson prompted Robert Kennedy to enter the contest. RFK broke decisively from LBJ on foreign policy, but he corralled a substantial portion of the broader party (although, given Humphrey’s control over the nomination process, he probably would have lost eventually, even if he hadn’t been assassinated during the campaign). Thus Clinton should fret not about Sanders beating her, but rather Sanders damaging her enough to attract an insurgent with broader appeal—perhaps Elizabeth Warren.

Even if Warren remains sidelined, Clinton should worry about an ugly victory. This is where the calendar becomes nettlesome. Dates are still in flux, but the Iowa caucuses will come first, in early February, followed quickly by the New Hampshire primary. Iowa facilitated McGovern’s rise in 1972, and its low-turnout, high-intensity caucus makes it perfect for a grassroots insurgency. New Hampshire has also been unpredictable over the years, and, worse for Clinton, it is next door to Sanders’s home state. 

Sanders could win both contests, at which point Clinton would have a real mess on her hands. Clinton would probably win Nevada and South Carolina, but she would not get to secure the nomination until Super Tuesday, March 1. Even then, depending on the states that participate, Sanders could hold his own. He might win some caucuses in the West and primaries in liberal redoubts like Massachusetts. That could postpone the date of Clinton’s triumph further.

Still, Sanders will ultimately fall short, because his appeal outside the antiestablishment left is limited. Clinton won white working-class and Latino votes in 2008 and should do so again. While she lost African Americans to Obama, it is hard to imagine them backing Sanders. Nobody but the most naïve leftists thinks Sanders can be president, so the party establishment will vigorously dispatch him should he get too close to victory. 

Clinton nevertheless has a lot to lose. The 2008 primaries helped Obama refine his skills as a candidate and build campaign operations in the swing states. Clinton may derive similar benefits from Sanders’s challenge, but the downside is substantial. The longer she is in the national spotlight, the worse she wears. This pattern has recurred in each of the last three decades, with steady declines in her ratings in the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s whenever the public examined her closely. A protracted fight with Sanders will force her to linger in the glare just to win the nomination. This has never been good for her.

Worse, it could undercut the image she seeks to cultivate. She clearly hopes to mimic Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign: present herself as a reliable steward of the national interest, appear above the fray, and bolster the sense of inevitability. Her various scandals, combined with the Obama administration’s foreign policy, have already damaged public confidence in her leadership. A stiff challenge from Sanders might undercut the other premises of her candidacy. Sanders is bound to highlight her ties to Wall Street, which will not help her favorables. She can’t be above the fray, moreover, if she’s pandering to the left to beat Sanders. And who will think her inevitable if she loses Iowa or New Hampshire to a septuagenarian socialist?

Ultimately, Clinton has nobody to blame but herself. A strong candidate could unite the grassroots and the establishment, but Clinton is weak. Her limited appeal was evident in 2008, when Obama beat her. Sanders cannot replicate that victory, but he may yet remind the country of her substantial liabilities.

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.