Politico has a piece up about the pushback on Bob Kerrey’s candidacy for the Nebraska Senate seat:
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading booster of liberal candidates and causes, waited just two hours after Kerrey’s announcement this week before slicing up his record and seeking to advance the interests of his nominal primary opponent. “Before leaving Nebraska, Bob Kerrey voted to deregulate Wall Street, voted for NAFTA, and voted for the Iraq war. Since leaving Nebraska, he’s supported cutting Social Security benefits, raising the retirement age, and lowering corporate tax rates. Kerrey will clearly not be a priority for those looking to support populist candidates in 2012 — and Chuck Hassebrook will likely get a lot of attention,” said PCCC co-founder Adam Green.
Democracy for America, Howard Dean’s Vermont-based political action committee, also indicated that Kerrey can’t count on their blessing in his attempt to replace conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, who is retiring. “We aren’t looking for anyone to replicate Ben Nelson in Nebraska,” said DFA spokeswoman Levana Layendecker. “We’re not interested in supporting Democrats who we can’t count on to support us on the issues we care about like health care and protecting Social Security.”
James Joyner laments this turn of events:
This is just insane. And the Democrats are reasonable on this score compared to the Republicans, where the likes of Jon Huntsman–a popular two-term governor of the most conservative state in the Union–can be not only the most liberal candidate in a huge presidential field but widely excoriated at a Republican In Name Only.
I can at least understand the enmity against a Joe Lieberman or a pre-2008 John McCain, who seemed to go out of their way to go against their party on signature issues, reveling in the press attention it got them.
I think that you have to look at these situations individually. There are all sorts of differences between a presidential nominee and a Senator, and when looking at the latter the most helpful thing to know is not generally who the senator is (press-hungry or very publicly mavericky or whatever) but rather where the senator is from.
I completely understand the attempts to unseat Joe Lieberman. It has little to do with his tut-tutting, though, and a lot more to do with the fact that he was doing it from a perch in Connecticut. The same goes for John McCain and Arizona. In both of these cases, the partisans had real reason to expect better of a senator from that state. Arizona is keen on conservative politicians, and Connecticut on liberal ones. The compromise of having an establishment-bucking maverick-type does not need to be made in these cases. Arizona Republicans can knock McCain off and still have a good shot at their Senate seat. The same goes for Lieberman.
Kerrey, though, is a different story. For a variety of reasons, I am not exactly sure that Kerrey is the right nominee at the right time for that senate seat, but definitely not because he’s too moderate. Rather, because he’s someone that ditched Nebraska (for New York City, even) shortly after leaving his senate seat before. He can easily be portrayed as a creature of Washington who is out of touch with the average Nebraskan. But trying to keep him from getting the nomination because he’s not liberal enough strikes me as… problematic. He’s replacing Ben Nelson, who wasn’t liberal enough. Nebraska is not remarkably likely to elect a candidate who is liberal enough (Exon, the other somewhat recent Democratic Senator, would also qualify as “not liberal enough”).
It’s not about, in my view, how wonderful it is to have moderate senators. Naturally, a moderate would think that moderation is great in a senator. But why should we expect a liberal or a conservative to feel the same way? A liberal or conservative wants someone who will fight for their values. The rubber hits the road, though, when the two likely options are a moderate who will buck your party or a member of the other party. I can understand some of the frustration with Ben Nelson, but you accept Ben Nelson because there’s no Ned Lamont waiting in the wings. Ditto for Olympia Snowe. Without Ben Nelson, there’d be no PPACA.
Of course, this is not always the case. Sometimes you get someone who is the right face at the right time for an ideology that is not remarkably popular in that state. A conservative in Florida had good reason for supporting Marco Rubio, even if Charlie Crist was extremely popular in the state. Ditto for Republicans in Pennsylvania with regard to Toomey and Specter. Or Democrats in Arkansas, who had a good enough candidate in Bill Halter and a poor enough incumbent in Blanche Lincoln that it would have been worth the risk (to the extent that there was any risk – Lincoln lost). It is a common thing for people to believe “my policy preferences make for good politics.” Liberals, conservatives, and moderates often do this. But it often is not so. And you should always be careful taking advice from people who don’t have a vested interest in your ideology (Republicans giving advice to Democrats, vice-versa, and moderates giving advice to either party).
So back to Nebraska. If they can find a candidate who stands a good chance of winning, I think that liberals are right to try to find the best electable candidate they can for their ideology. In this case, though, they appear to be choosing nothing over something. I don’t think it’s just my mild affinity for Bob Kerrey that tells me this is a tactical error.
Many years ago, I took the Kimber/O’Reilly political test, which told me that I was a moderate Democrat in the mold of Kerrey or Florida Senator Bob Graham. I followed Kerrey closely after that. He’s not exactly my champion, but I would probably vote for him for the US Senate. Of course, I am resolved to vote D for the senate regardless. But in Kerrey’s name, I wouldn’t be holding my nose. The same goes for Tester in Montana, or Ashdown in Utah (who, to be fair, won’t win, and maybe that is a case where you nominate someone with the right message so at least then you go down fighting). In other words, I’d vote for these people even if I hadn’t already resolved to vote for the nominee of their party. And, at least in the case of Tester and Kerrey, I don’t think I am alone.
When picking a legislator, the rational voter ought to understand that compromise is inherently part of the game of making new laws and passing budgets. An inflexible, absolutist ideologue, whether on the left or on the right, is not tempramentally appropriate for the job. Someone with strong opinions and a willingness to fight for them certainly is, but at the end of the day if every legislator only voted for what they believe in, nothing would get passed. Like budgets. Logrolling, horse-trading, haggling, and negotiating are what the job is all about.
Is an ideological moderate necessarily going to be better, or at least more willing, to engage in this sort of behavior than a liberal or a conservative? I think no because this is a function of personality, interest, and creativity rather than belief, policy preference, or priortization — but I do think that the moderate is in a better position to both broker a deal between conservatives and liberals on the one hand, and on the other hand if compromises from an original campaign position do have to be made, the moderate probably has more political flexibility to maneuver to get to a result.
That’s a long-winded way of justifying a cynical strategy for voting: if there is a high degree of polarization in the body, then one way to game the system to your state’s (or district’s) advantage is to be the jurisdiction that elects the swing vote. You’ll get a lot more pork thrown at you. Nebraska could do a lot worse than to elect Kerrey for that reason alone.
And not a word of this applies to an executive like a Governor or a President.
Bravo!
Not for a leadership position, perhaps, but ideologues serve their purpose. I won’t be voting Ron Paul for President, but I’d vote for him for congress. He provides a particular, comparatively uncompromising voice. And a relatively consistent vote in a particular direction that, though I often disagree with it, adds value to the House. To a staunch liberal, or a staunch conservative, having a voice in the Senate has definite value.
But… they have to get elected. Which is the rub. So Vermont voting for Bernie Sanders isn’t a problem, or Kentucky with Rand Paul (or South Carolina and DeMint, if you prefer). But Nebraska?
I agree that states that vote too consistently one way or the other sometimes get a raw deal as far as that goes. If one is not ideological, then, it might make sense to do so for the pork. But that does the ideologue little when nobody is in congress representing his worldview because everybody is trying to get porkmeisters.
Of course progressives have every right to promote their preferred candidate, and that candidate has every right to campaign as seriously for the nomination as the more moderate candidate.
But the language there sounds one hell of a lot like “purging” language.
And maybe, in the long run, that’s good. Let the Democrats and Republicans both successfully purge themselves of the ideologically impure, and there might finally be a critical mass of impure moderates who decide they’re close enough to each other to say, “fish it, let’s bury the hatchet with each other and create a new party to capture the middle and bury the extremists.”
At least I can dream. Awake, I realize just how fishing stupid it is for liberals/progressives to follow the path of conservatives/reactionaries.
This slicing-up of Bob Kerry seems insane to me. He’s about the only Democrat out there that has a sliver of a ghost of a whisper of a chance of being elected from Nebraska.
Beyond that, I’m a long-time fan of Kerry. He is thoughtful and non-dogmatic. And the senate could use a few of those.
And that’s really what I am getting at with the Kerrey case in particular. If there were a young up-and-coming populist time (like Halter), then okay, maybe you take your chances. But I know of no such thing in Nebraska.
The only other announced Democratic candidate is a lawyer who has never held significant public office. The Democrats in my home state have done this repeatedly (Hey, let’s put a county Party Director up against a three-term senator! This’ll be great! That other guy who has held statewide office, well, he refuses to embrace Obama, and we need party solidarity).
(Just in case there is any confusion, I am not positing this as a uniquely Democratic Problem. I mean… Delaware. Good grief.)
I don’t consider purging to be an inherently bad thing. I mean, John Birch Society and such. It’s often a question of who is getting purged. Purging at the center rather than the extreme may be a viable strategy if you can produce enough votes at the extreme in order form a governing coalition. Of course, the problem with that is that you rarely can. Almost definitionally, since we’re talking about “extremes.”
No one gets purged, though – at least among Democrats in non-solidly-liberal states (which you astutely point out is the salient territory). These advocates talk a bit, as they’re paid by their donors to do, and then at some point they’re done talking. And then life goes on. That’s the extent of the goings on. They don’t dictate anything; in fact, they have almost no influence. Bob Kerrey will be the nominee, and lots of liberals will be perfectly happy about it.
The people issuing these criticism are not “the Democrats.” They’re ideological advocates. This is what they do: it’s all they do; it’s all they’re for. They have their say. Then, in the Democratic party in Red and swing states like Nebraska, the party recognizes the Trumanic reality and nominates the moderate, and he sometimes gets elected. It’s the most ho-hum, routine thing imaginable. You can count on Democrats continuing to do it. So yeah, where they’re concerned, keep on dreamin’. The only place there’s any doubt whether this is going to happen is in the republican party.
These people have their say. Then they get ignored. They’re not the party, especially the state party. It’s a non-thing. So let them have their say.
Eh, this is a bit of an overreaction by Politico. Even over on DailyKos, people have accepted the idea of Kerrey being the only electable candidate in Nebraska.
Seriously, ignore the PCCC. Adam Green is a professional pain in the ass (and hey, more power to him – that’s literally all he’s trying to be). He is completely rootless – I don’t know if he’s a creature of Washington or what, but has absolutely nothing to do with Nebraska, or Wisconsin, or Connecticut, or any other place in particular. He just meddles, and has basically no influence anywhere he does. He’s an annoyance. The idea of trying to make his bleating anything like an actual force of immoderation, to say nothing of purging, among Democrats, is laughable. The ida of trying to put it next to the strong currents that gave us the likes of Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell and ended the careers of Mike Castle and bob Bennett is absurd.
I realize you didn’t intend to have been, Will, but you’ve been taken in by just another false equivalency from a notorious purveyor of Both-Sides-Do-It(-When-They-Really-Don’t-Do-It-To-a-Remotely-Comparable-Extent)-ism here.
Michael, my point was not really to tut-tut the Democrats. It was actually as much as anything to say that sometimes it makes sense to scotch moderates in favor of ideological stalwarts. And also to point out that different situations are different (you mention Castle and Bennett, and those cases are *way* different).
I agree that the threat is not serious (they don’t even have a candidate!), but the moaning and groaning is counterproductive regardless.