By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, July 03, 2019
The consensus view on the right is that Hillary Clinton
was a primary reason for Donald Trump’s success in 2016. But not all
conservatives agree about why that was.
For devotees of the Trump-as-savior narrative, Clinton —
and all the allegedly nefarious forces at her beck and call — was a uniquely
formidable opponent. Defeating her required a different kind of Republican, one
who’d be willing to fight as dirty and as tough as the Democrats. This was a
“Flight 93 election,” and Trump was the hero we needed to storm the cockpit.
Others on the right see it differently. It wasn’t so much
that Trump was the one person who could beat Clinton, but that she was the one
candidate he could beat. In other words, it was only thanks to the fact that
she was so unpopular that Trump had a chance. Trump-reluctant Republicans and
independents could be persuaded that he was better than Clinton — when
presented with a binary choice.
The latter seems vastly more plausible for the simple
reason that Trump didn’t have to convince those voters that Clinton was
unlikable and a little scary; he simply had to exploit their pre-existing
opinion of her. Indeed, Trump’s continued obsession with bashing Clinton points
to how central she is to his identity.
This has consequences for 2020 because the White House’s
entire strategy boils down to making Trump’s opponent more unlikable than he
is. If Trump wasn’t responsible for Hillary’s unfavorable numbers in the first
place, it remains to be seen whether he can Hillaryize another Democrat.
It may not be all that hard, though, because the
Democrats are doing everything they can to keep the Flight 93 panic alive on
the right. They’re doing this by running so far to the left that many
Trump-skeptical Republicans feel as if they have no choice but to vote for him
again. (I hear this from my fellow conservatives every day.) Democratic
candidates have openly praised socialism, the Green New Deal, the abolition of
private insurance, voting rights for incarcerated felons, federal funding of
abortion late into pregnancy, confiscatory “wealth taxes,” and even the right
to sex-change operations paid for by taxpayers.
And here is where I think Clinton’s true historical
significance isn’t being recognized. Again, conservatives (including yours
truly) invested a lot of time and energy in shaping public perceptions of
Clinton. But the blame — or credit — doesn’t just go to the right. Clinton
herself did much to help the effort. She was never the natural politician her
husband was. She lacked his gift for reading the electorate and speaking to
voters’ concerns. She collected all of her husband’s baggage without any of her
husband’s skill at deflecting criticism. She wasn’t very likable.
This was a huge advantage for Bernie Sanders in 2016. He
came way closer to beating Clinton in the primaries than most people thought he
would by tapping into the passion of the base and the frustrations of other
Democrats who didn’t relish a Clinton dynasty and disliked both Hillary
personally and the corrupt practices of the establishment she represented. She
ran on the implied claim that it was simply her “turn” to be president — a
poisonous framing in a populist moment (just ask Jeb Bush). In retrospect, not
being Hillary was almost as big a boon for Sanders as it was for Trump.
If the Clinton machine had not scared away more talented
and resourceful politicians from running in 2016, it’s possible that someone
other than Sanders would have captured the passion of the party, just as Obama
did when he toppled Hillary as the inevitable nominee in 2008.
But that didn’t happen, and as a result, the Democratic
party got the message that Sanders-style socialist populism was the key to
success, just as the GOP has concluded that Trump-style nationalist populism is
the future of the right.
Sanders’ frustration at no longer being the undisputed
voice of the base is palpable. “They said our ideas are crazy and wild and
extreme,” he recently complained. “And now it turns out all of the other
candidates are saying what we said four years ago.”
He’s right.
Of course, there are larger historical forces at work
here, but it sure looks like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy was an inflection
point, because it galvanized not only the GOP’s turn toward nationalism but the
Democrats’ turn toward socialism. She’ll never be president, but she’s made
history nonetheless.
No comments:
Post a Comment