Hillary Clinton And Some Potential Challengers For The Nomination

With the midterm elections behind us, it finally makes sense to talk more about the 2016 presidential election. NBC News has a recent report claiming that Hillary Clinton will be announcing her candidacy in January, but Politico reports that she still has a paid speech scheduled for February 24, which may or may not give a clue as to her plans:

It isn’t clear that the speech says anything about Clinton’s time frame for declaring a decision about a second White House campaign. Her timetable is a topic of disagreement among her supporters: Some people think she is already being attacked and defined by Republicans and only adds to the perception that she’s being coy the longer she waits. Others say she should stick to her stated time frame of early next year.

Clinton could, of course, cancel the appearance or decline a speaking fee if she announces a campaign before the speech. It’s highly unlikely she would continue to give paid speeches once she’s a candidate, something Republican Rudy Giuliani did in 2007 and took heat for.

But the fact that Clinton is still signing up for speeches also gives weight to what a number of people close to her say: that she hasn’t completely made up her mind about running. The conference is about women in the workforce, an issue Clinton is also focused on at her family’s foundation.

While Clinton leads in the polls, there is less enthusiasm for her candidacy among many on the left. The reluctance to have the Democratic Party led by someone as conservative as Clinton may have been intensified by the midterm election results in which Democratic candidates ran away from Democratic principles, only to see Democratic voters stay home. Polls show considerable support for liberal positions on the issues, but voters are not going to turn out for Democratic candidates if they cower in fear and run as Republican-lite.

There has been no lack of condemnation for Democrats who, among other acts of cowardice ran away from the Affordable Care Act rather than promote how successful it has been. One of the more recent such comments came from Andrew Sullivan:

Yes, there has been a mountain of propaganda against it. But that doesn’t excuse political malpractice in defending it. This is the Democrats’ most significant piece of domestic legislation in decades. And yet they cannot manage to make the case for it. That tells you so much about why that party remains such a shit-show, rescued temporarily by this president, but still wallowing in its own dysfunction, inability to communicate and pusillanimity.

While it seems like a futile effort, the memory of Barack Obama defeating Clinton in 2008 gives hope. While they get little mention in the media, there are other potential candidates. Elizabeth Warren was the one bright spot of the 2014 campaign, showing a real ability to communicate, and she  has toned down her earlier statements that she will not run. It is doubtful she would actually challenge Hillary Clinton, and someone more experienced in government might make a better candidate. Bernie Sanders is toying with the idea of running, but a self-proclaimed Socialist has no chance, and  his primary role would be to force Clinton to discuss liberal positions.

Other more conventional candidates are actually looking into running.  Jim Webb has become the first to announce an exploratory campaign. Martin O’Malley is also making moves towards a possible campaign.

In addition to these names which have been mentioned frequently, Michael Kazin has another suggestion in an article at The New Republic, Sherwood Brown:

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, I think Sherrod Brown should run for president. I know that, barring a debilitating health problem or a horrible scandal, Hillary Clinton is likely to capture the Democratic nomination. I realize too that Brown, the senior senator from Ohio, has never hinted that he may be tempted to challenge her. “I’m really happy where I am,” he told Chris Matthews last winter, when the MSNBC’s paragon of impatience urged him to run.

Yet, for progressive Democrats, Brown would be a nearly perfect nominee. During his two decades in the House and Senate, he has taken strong and articulate stands on every issue which matters to the party’s broad, if currently dispirited, liberal base. When George W. Bush was in office and riding high, Brown opposed both his invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act. He has long been a staunch supporter of abortion rights and gay marriage, and is married to Connie Schultz, a feminist author who writes a nationally syndicated column.

Brown’s true mission, however, is economic: He wants to boost the well-being of working Americans by any means necessary. Brown has been talking and legislating about how to accomplish it for years before Elizabeth Warren left Harvard for the Capitol. During Obama’s first term, he advocated a larger stimulus package, called for re-enacting the Glass-Steagall Act to rein in big banks, and stumped for comprehensive immigration reform. He champions the rights of unions and the power of the National Labor Relations Board and criticizes unregulated “free trade” for destroying manufacturing jobs at home. He also led the charge among Senate Democrats that pressured Obama to drop his plan to appoint Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve and appoint Janet Yellen instead.

At the moment pushing Sherrod Brown to challenge Clinton might seem ridiculous, but certainly no more ridiculous than Barack Obama challenging her in 2008.

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