Sunday, November 17, 2019

Obama As Kingmaker Is A Really, Really Bad Idea

Here is the estimable Jack Holmes on the announcement by former Massachusetts governor Patrick Duval for president: 

There are a number of good reasons why this is a bad idea. The field is too full. There are too many centrists already. It’s too late in the process. Patrick missed his window the last time around. Patrick has made a lot of money repping industries that are anathema to the Democratic primary base. He presently works at Bain Capital, and if there’s one thing guaranteed to alienate the rising progressive power in the party, it would be nominating a guy who works for Mitt Romney’s company.

"Asked about a number of policy issues that have divided the Democratic candidates, he outlined a set of positions that, taken together, place him closer to the ideological center than the left. He said he did not support “Medicare for all,” but did support a so-called public option; that he was in favor of eliminating or vastly reducing student debt but believed there were “other strategies than we’ve heard about” to do that; and that a wealth tax on the richest Americans “makes a lot of sense directionally” but that he would push for “a much, much simpler tax system for everyone.” “I don’t think that wealth is the problem. I think greed is the problem,” he said, noting that “taxes should go up on the most prosperous and the most fortunate,” but “not as a penalty.”

Well, that’s a pile of mush, isn’t it? Joe Biden could say that stuff, and has. Pete Buttigieg could say that stuff, and has. Cory Booker could say that stuff, and has. Hell, John Delaney could say that stuff, and has. What sense does it make to have another candidate trading in liberal-lite policies and don’t-run-in-the-hallways politics? There is one significant reason: the Obamas want him to. 

You can read the rest of Holmes' piece laying out why he believes the Obamas are behind this daffy idea that is more likely to create new problems than diminish them for getting the goddamned Republican-fascists out of office.  

Several times I asked how much of a price having Barack Obama as president Democrats and the country had to pay.   And anyone who denies that having him as president cost us is lying.   Obama was never a liberal in the classic American sense of the word, an egalitarian with tendencies to do for the least among us, is an elitist who never set foot in a public school as a student, who was reluctant to fight for the bill that will be considered his best legacy, the ACA "Obamacare" to those who wanted to harness the racist backlash to his color and name.   I could go down the entire history of Barack Obama in public office, in the Illinois Senate, in the United States Senate, as President and demonstrate that he was guaranteed to be what he turned out to be, a mediocre Democratic president who was capable of inspiring personal loyalty and adoration based on tropes of Jack Kennedy style lore but who was notably more interested in gaining the admiration of Republicans than of Democrats, far less interested in rallying the Democratic base on behalf of other Democratic candidates down the ticket.  I still hear grumbling about the refusal of his campaign to share information and resources from Democratic politicians and workers. 

Holmes notes that Obama has pushed Duval Patrick before and that he and his wife have held back on endorsing any of the other host of centrists in the race, including, notably, the man still riding on his coattails,  Joe Biden.  

So far in 2020, the Obamas have studiously avoided anything that vaguely looked like a public endorsement of any of the current candidates. If they are behind the sudden re-emergence of Deval Patrick on the national scene, it would surprise practically nobody. After all, the former president is no fan of the Sanders-Warren wing of the field, and his former vice president is wet tinder, and the idea of passing over a group of experienced woman and minority candidates in favor of a 38-year-old white mayor of a mid-sized city can’t be sitting well, either. If anyone can find another way the Patrick candidacy makes sense, I’d like to hear it.

I think Holmes is looking for the wrong kind of reason for it,  I think it's obvious that Obama is looking to relive his personal glory days vicariously through Patrick, a man who in many ways is like Obama - race certainly not an insignificant part of that.   But it is his biography which, as soon as he was sent through the A Better Chance program to Milton Academy mirrors Obama's prep-Ivy story.  I won't touch the fathers abandoning both of them, though it is another curious parallel.   

I think the parallels wouldn't stop there.  If the notably less attractive Patrick did become president I think we could look for the same self-made weaknesses with which Barack Obama pissed away the best hand a president had been given since Johnson's landslide of 1964, something which Johnson used to change the face of America, without which neither Obama nor Patrick would have had the careers they have had.  Obama didn't grow much in office in terms of political skill or savvy,  he was always reluctant to take on the Republicans in any hardball manner - considering how much of Obama's thinking is structured through competitive sports, it's odd that he showed none of that fighting spirit once inaugurated.  Hell, he started giving the store away during the transition in 2008.   I will guarantee you that in Duval Patrick, you would have the same kind of president.  Holmes' noting what Patrick has done after his governorship should tell you exactly why that would be. 

I think the best thing the Obamas could do would be to fade into the background and stay out of the role of king making.  He has nothing to offer the next Democratic President except as an example of how to not do it. 

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