Pulling for some pragmatism
To judge by the opinion polls, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is a longshot to win the Iowa caucuses next month. But she did us all a favor by trying to inject a note of political realism into the Democratic presidential contest at Tuesday’s CNN/ Des Moines Register debate.
“This debate isn’t real,” she said to Sen. Bernie Sanders during an exchange among the candidates about how, and whether, to lurch the country into a so-called Medicare for All solution that would replace our current health insurance system with a fully governmentpaid system.
“I was in Vegas the other day and someone said ‘Don’t put your chips on a number on the wheel that isn’t even on the wheel,’ ” she told Sanders. “Over two-thirds of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate are not on the bill that you and Sen. Warren are on. You have numerous governors that are Democratic that don’t support this. You have numerous House members that put Nancy Pelosi in as speaker.”
And she added this zinger: “If you want to be practical and progressive at the same time — and have a plan and not a pipedream — you have to show how you’re going to pay for it.”
On paper, the plans advanced by Sanders and Warren would tax corporations and wealthy Americans to collect the trillions of dollars that Medicare for All would cost. But in the real world, there’s no reason to believe such a plan would have a prayer of passage in Congress.
Nor, for that matter, should Democrats expect a candidate promising so much economic disruption to carry the states needed to defeat President Trump in November.
At some point in every campaign season, voters must judge future leaders by what they can realistically accomplish. For Democrats, right now would be a good time to adopt a left-leaning version of the so-called Buckley Rule.
Years, ago, conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley was asked which candidate right-leaning Americans should support in the 1968 Republican presidential primaries. He famously replied: “The wisest choice would be the one who would win. No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest. I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.”
Conservatives who followed Buckley’s advice decided Richard Nixon hit the sweet spot: he was further to the right than Govs. George Romney of Michigan and Nelson Rockefeller of New York, but arguably more electable (at that moment, anyway) than the more conservative Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.
The strategy worked: Nixon won the nomination and the White House in 1968. Fourteen years later, Reagan was judged to be more conservative and more electable than George H.W. Bush, and swept to victory.
Klobuchar, polling in fifth place in Iowa, is in effect asking her fellow Dems to adopt the Buckley Rule of party discipline that brought conservatives a generation of success at the polls.
“I have won every race, every place, every time,” she said in the debate. “I have won in the reddest of districts. I have won in the suburban areas, in the rural areas. I have brought people with me. That is why I have the most endorsements of current Iowa legislators and former Iowa legislators in this race.”
Klobuchar’s case — not to mention Joe Biden’s, who makes similar arguments about remembering what’s electorally intelligent and politically achievable — is complicated by the natural, human desire among voters to vote for the candidate promising the biggest, most sweeping change.
Politicians, psychologists and Madison Ave. admen have known for generations that the word “hope” has an almost magical power. It is why Bill Clinton successfully ran as “The Man from Hope” in 1992 (he was born in Hope, Ark., but moved at age 6 to Hot Springs, where he was actually raised).
Barack Obama famously made “Hope and Change” his slogan, and posted the magic word on an iconic poster from his successful 2008 run.
We’ll soon learn whether Democratic voters intend to vote for hope, or for the most left, viable candidate who can win.
Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.