by Scott Winship
For those who just can’t get enough of my netroots obsession, the American Prospect has published a piece by yours truly that synthesizes the various posts I’ve written here and refines the points I’ve been trying to make. Like everything in The Daily Strategist, my opinions and perspectives do not represent The Democratic Strategist, and I suspect that only one of my bosses would fully embrace the article. I still like the other two though.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 22: Ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Can’t Decide Which Bad Ticket She Wants to Join
One of the odder phenomena of the 2024 presidential election is a certain 2020 Democratic candidate who has strayed very far since then. I took a look at her options at New York:
A month ago, when ex-Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential wannabe Tulsi Gabbard showed up at a Mar-a-Lago event, I wrote about the logic that could make her a highly unconventional but not entirely implausible 2024 running mate for Donald Trump. Once a major backer of Bernie Sanders, Gabbard’s trajectory toward MAGA-land has been steady since she left the Democratic Party in the fall of 2022, a main course she served up with a side dish of jarring candidate endorsements (e.g., of J.D. Vance). Even when she was still a Democrat running for president, though, her orientation was more MAGA-adjacent than you might expect, as Geoffrey Skelley explained in 2019:
“Gabbard’s supporters … are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016, hold conservative views or identify as Republican compared to voters backing the other candidates. …
“In fact, Gabbard has become a bit of a conservative media darling in the primary, with conservative commentators like Ann Coulter and pro-Trump social media personalities like Mike Cernovich complimenting her for her foreign policy views. In a primary in which some 2020 Democratic contenders have boycotted Fox News, Gabbard has regularly appeared on the network. Just last week, Gabbard even did an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, a far-right political outlet. She’s also made appeals outside the political mainstream by going on The Joe Rogan Experience — one of the most popular podcasts in the country and a favored outlet for members of the Intellectual Dark Web, whose purveyors don’t fit neatly into political camps but generally criticize concepts such as political correctness and identity politics.”
So her parting blast at Democrats as controlled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” didn’t come out of nowhere.
But much as Gabbard might be an outside-the-box running mate for the 45th president, it does seem there is another 2024 presidential candidate whose extreme hostility to mainstream institutions and difficult-to-categorize views might make him a better match for her: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And sure enough, according to NBC News, the wiggy anti-vaxxer is interested in Gabbard:
“The four-term former member of Congress from Hawaii is now getting consideration for both former President Donald Trump’s and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tickets, two sources familiar with the candidates’ deliberations told NBC News.”
The prospect of choosing between these two politicians appears to have left Gabbard feeling she’s in the catbird seat:
“As one source said, Gabbard would be more likely to seriously consider running as Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee had she not been swept up by the possibility of serving with Trump. This person said Gabbard ‘was enticed’ by the chance of serving on Kennedy’s ticket but is now focused on the possibility that Trump will select her.
“’My understanding is that Tulsi is convinced that Trump is going to pick her,’ this person said. ‘Had that not been the case, she probably would have gone with Kennedy.’”
Since Kennedy has scheduled a running-mate reveal for March 26 in Oakland, we’ll know soon enough whether he chose Gabbard and Gabbard chose him. Others rumored to be on his short list include New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and California entrepreneur and major RFK Jr. donor Nicole Shanahan.
As NBC notes, it’s more than a bit unusual for people to be considered for multiple presidential tickets:
“[I]t’s exceedingly rare for a politician to attract interest from more than one presidential ticket or party. (Ahead of the 1952 election, Democrats and Republicans led dueling efforts to draft another politically ambiguous veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, for the presidential race.)”
It’s hard to say what Tulsi Gabbard would think of this comparison. After all, Ike was a bit of a warmonger.
I think your critique is only a partial picture of the Netroots. I am both a member of the Netroots and a member of the Democratic establishment (working on campaigns since 1996). It is not that the Netroots expects ideological purity, but it does expect Democrats to stand up on important issues. For instance, I think few people believe that the Democrats who voted for the Iraq resolution were fooled by bad intelligence or thought that Iraq was really a major threat. The problem for me is not fighting a war, but not taking a principled stand on an issue of the greatest importance for our country.
I consider myself a hawk and in the lead up to the war I could think of many greater threats than pre-2003 Iraq. I thought (and still do) that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda were all much greater threats. Unfortunately time has shown that invading Iraq was not in our interest. I just wanted a Democrat to stop cowering and say just that: Invading Iraq is not in our interest or let’s get Bin Laden.
What is the point of having representatives if they will not risk their office and power when issues of highest national importance are being debated? What is the point of power if you do not use it to protect your country in its time of greatest need?
The Netroots just wants politicians to fight for what is right, to be a little better. Many members of the netroots maybe Liberal, but so what, being Liberal is not a bad thing. Both parties live and die by their ideological bases. The Netroots supports conservative Democrats when that is the only viable option. That is what got Lieberman in trouble. If he were from Montana, most of us would accept the political reality and support him, but he is from Connecticut. Democrats do not have to hold their noses in Connecticut…
There seems to be a flawed conflation of data that is being used by many to discount the significance of this particular argument. Time and again I see the citation that contends that because a majority of Americans favor a withdrawal from Iraq (the latest data shows that a majority of Americans favor a withdrawal within a year), the netroots is therefore ideologically aligned with mainstream Americans. That conclusion ignores data on the left / right make-up of the voting public.
The problem is that the sentiment on the war cannot be extrapolated to conclude that a majority of Americans are aligned with the netroots…it is merely a measure of disfavor with the war…but cannot be concluded to be a fundamental leftward voter shift. It may happen in the future but the current data doesn’t support that reality.
The “Hillary Meter”, an ongoing Rasmussen survey that gauges her proximity to the center point of voter left / right sentiment demonstrates that she remains notably left of center. At the same time Clinton is seen to be a DLC centrist and that puts her too far right for the netroots. Therefore, one cannot reasonably conclude that the majority sentiment on Iraq…despite the fact that it coincides with netroot sentiment…will translate into a netroots defined Democratic voter majority.
read more observations here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
I think the netroots comparability with the larger population of the Democratic party will become apparent during the primaries.
I predict Feingold won’t be much of a player as a candidate, contradicting his very high support in the netroots. And the eventual winner, whomever that is, will at best be a 2nd or more likely 3rd favorite of the netroots.
This will answer a lot of questions and focus many minds.
Hello Scott,
I read you piece in the American prospect. You are correct in your findings that netroots readers are overwellmingly liberal.
Where I disagree with you is that this will force that Democratic Party to chose an overwhelmingly liberal Presidential candidate.
You overestimate the ideological rigidity and underplay the pragmatic flexibility of the liberal activist. Netroots people are fully aware that the most liberal guy will not always make the cut or win out and we are willing to work with that. What we also know is that America can not get back to the center unless there are liberal positions and truly liberal candidates to compromise off of. You see, in the far right environment we are in now, you can’t get to to center by just picking the center, you need to push to the left as much as possible and then tack back to the center as little as possible just to end up a little bit less to the right then we are now.
It’s about making the political environment safe again for liberals so that we can have sensible politics again, and we really wish centrist strategists would begin to understand this. When you shoot at the left you blow up the center.
I think that you want to have it both ways. You admit that the “idealogy” of the netroots has only two real components: opposition to the Iraq war and anti-corporatist populism. Everything else is optional, depending on the situation (even reproductive freedom; see Casey in PA). While you criticize “liberalism” as being unpopular, you don’t really address whether the populist anti-war position also unpopular.
If polls give any hint, I think you are wrong, and the netroots idealogy is broadly popular. People don’t like the war and they don’t like legislation that amounts to corporate-friendly give-aways. Tell me, why isn’t that a winning position?
Aren’t you ignoring, in your piece, that the race in question occurs in CT?
Beyond the fact that there is no sillier model than the median voter one… shouldn’t liberals have different standards re ideology on the basis of the state in question?
Lieberman is to the right of his Republican predecessor; that’s… odd, esp. in a state that has become more Dem in Presidential elections since 1988, not less.
Additionally — where was the analogue GOP anguish re PA 2004?
Scott –
From reading your article, I think it would be useful to distinguish between two groups: (1) the political junkies that read and comment at liberal weblogs; and (2) those widely read hosts of liberal weblogs that are also active in Democratic political circles.
As to the former, they are what they are, and the rise of the net has probably only broadened the awareness of, and ability to communicate with, each other. You need to mobilize them to vote for you in elections but, as a candidate, you may not want to emphasize every one of their preferences (hence, no Democratic running on a pro-conscientous objector platform). Nothing new there.
Given their wonkishness, you correctly assess that they would much rather engage in a debate over the merits of a particular issue (e.g. universal health care) and formulate a strategy to successfully advance that issue. Conversely, they tend to be critical of unprincipled pandering (see H. Clinton – flagburning).
Their loyalty to the Democratic Party relies on the Party being able to advance these interests. When Party leaders are seen as compromising liberal interests, disappointment and criticism will ensue. In this regard, they are no different than so-called centrist Democrats (would the New Republic become dovish in the Middle East if polls showed it was crucial to a 2008 victory?).
Similarly, free-market conservatives and values conservatives seem to speak out when they feel elected Republicans are ignoring them, Reagan’s commandment notwithstanding.
It really seems you are putting forth an argument to marginalize the second group – the bloggers becoming influential in Democratic political circles. Maybe you are right that they should not be managing campaign strategy. However, they are still going to be making their arguments for thousands and thousands to see. So, you are still going to have to roll up your sleeves and engage them.