One has to feel a little sorry for John Hickenlooper. Since formally announcing his intention to awkwardly elbow his way into the very crowded room of Democratic 2020 presidential hopefuls, the former Colorado governor has not been able to find solid footing.
His plan was to stand out as a moderate voice amid the cacophony of far-leftist rhetoric erupting from the rest of field. That lasted about as long as it took to schedule his first Sunday morning talk show, whereupon, evidently sensing that moderation was not going to get him anywhere, he demurred on the question of whether or not he considered himself a capitalist.
That raised a few eyebrows, inasmuch that before embarking on his political career Hickenlooper was an entrepreneur — a capitalist by definition.
A few months later, it becomes clear to him that he is not cut out for out-lefting the Maoist wing of his party, but it’s also clearer than ever that that he cannot win without them. Now Hickenlooper has taken to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal in an effort to redirect, equivocating every which way he can.
In his op-ed, headlined “I’m Running to Save Capitalism,” Hickenlooper tries to reassure everyone that, yes, it’s okay, he really is a capitalist after all. The problem, you see, is that capitalism is broken. He then outlines his plan to fix it, which consists of tossing out a handful of well-worn redistributionist tropes: making community college free, raising the national minimum wage, a national healthcare plan that provides a public option (he actually said “under my plan, if you want to keep your private coverage you can,”) and, the crux of his supposedly pro-capitalist platform, taxing capital gains at the same rate as income.
These are all very bad ideas. It’s useful to remember that they are coming from the candidate who wishes to posture himself as the centrist – that means that each of those very bad ideas are competing with an even worse idea for acceptance within today’s Democratic Party, like a mere public option vs. “Medicare for all,” or a capital gains tax hike vs. confiscation of all income above, say, $150,000.
It’s even more telling that the candidate espousing the slightly-less-socialist line is barely registering a blip on the Democratic primary radar. It raises the question of whether there remains a path open for a centrist or moderate to secure the Democratic nomination.
[Also read: Pete Buttigieg outs himself as a fake moderate]
The most obvious route, the one Hickenlooper was likely hoping for, is to let the plethora of far-left candidates split the peripheral vote among themselves and allow a more tethered candidate to scoop up the mainstream.
Enter former Vice President Joe Biden, who quickly ruined that plan for everyone else.
Biden, who has been running for president more or less continually since 1987, sucked whatever moderate oxygen there was out of the room when he entered the race about a month ago. Those Democrats who are getting increasingly desperate for a non-radical candidate to put up against President Trump are, if polls are accurate, pinning all their hopes on Biden.
But one’s imagination needs to be pretty elastic to consider Biden a moderate; he is, you will recall, the architect of the dismantlement of Robert Bork back when he first began seeing a president in the mirror every morning. Granted, there is little arguing that he is slightly to the right of the majority of his competitors, most of whom are joining with the Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party to denounce Biden as a reactionary. Then again, one wonders if even the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith might not have raised a cautionary finger of protest at some of the drivel emanating from that crowd.
No, what Biden possesses in far greater abundance than any sense of political moderation is an exceptional command of political stage presence. Indeed, most of the Bork theater was a direct result of Biden’s appreciation of the usefulness of television cameras in Senate committee rooms, the presence of which he had not long before voted in favor of. His soliloquies masquerading as questions in committee hearings are legendary.
So is it feigned quasi-centrism, or simply Biden’s oratorical ability and decades-old name recognition that has him leading the Democratic polls? Either way, Democrats who wish to wrest control of their party from the zealots who tend to command attention in primaries will need to find someone who can match the zealot’s hypnotic rhetorical appeal while simultaneously possessing the credentials to differentiate themselves from the pack. It is questionable if Biden meets the latter criteria, or if anyone but him can meet the former.
Kelly Sloan (@KVSloan25) is a Denver-based public affairs consultant, columnist, and the Energy and Environmental Policy Fellow at the Centennial Institute.
