The emerging Democratic presidential primary field is not only remarkably small. It is also unreasonably civil.
Would-be Democratic candidates have begun to travel to early primary states to sniff out support for presidential bids. Just don’t ask them to criticize Hillary Clinton. That’s one place they so far won’t go.
“This is a woman I respect, clearly a very intelligent person,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont recently told Politico.
“At the end of [interviews], somebody has to ask me a question about Hillary, and I try not to attack her,” Sanders added. “Usually, no matter what I say, it becomes ‘Hillary Clinton.’ ”
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a former Clinton supporter who has been candid about his ambition to run for president in 2016, also has steered clear of attacks on Clinton. When asked by the New York Times to respond to a remark Clinton made on immigration, O’Malley responded, “I wasn’t really focused on her or what she was saying.” Then, he criticized the president instead.
In August, former Sen. Jim Webb, who has since announced he is exploring a bid for the presidency, was asked on an Iowa television program to evaluate Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. But Webb didn’t bite.
“I think there’s time to have that discussion later,” Webb said.
“Why not now?” the host pressed.
“It’d probably take up the whole show,” Webb laughed.
The awkwardly polite dynamic is illustrative of the unique, even unprecedented Democratic field: There is no likely candidate who, realistically, will be competitive with Clinton.
In public polling to date, Clinton has consistently outpaced her most competitive potential challengers by more than 50 points. The second-best performing Democrat in many polls, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, says she will not run for president.
Such concrete evidence of Clinton’s strength leaves other Democratic candidates with little incentive to directly call her record into question. After all, she and her allies might very well be leading the Democratic Party for the next 10 years, with Cabinet members to appoint.
The cloyingly civil dynamic on the Democratic side is in stark contrast to the aggressive jockeying already taking place among the emerging Republican field, one of the most competitive in many election cycles.
Sen. Rand Paul in particular has not shied from taking on his would-be challengers. Last month, the Kentucky Republican tweeted a photo of Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, who was then weighing a bid for president, with the message, “The same old candidates running for President #ThingsToRunFrom.” He has accused Bush of “hypocrisy” on marijuana policy. And Paul made a crack about former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s glasses in an op-ed defending Paul’s foreign policy.
Other digs have been more subtle. “I very much believe that our next president should be a governor,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said last month.
Sen. Marco Rubio delivered the counterpoint last month at a breakfast with reporters.
“The next president of the United States needs to be someone that has a clear view of what’s happening in the world, a clear strategic vision of America’s role in it, and a clear tactical plan for how to engage America in global affairs,” he said. “And I think for governors, that’s going to be a challenge initially, because they don’t deal with foreign policy on a daily basis.”
