The Inevitability of Hillary

The 2016 US presidential campaign has begun -- we just don't realize it yet.  The candidacy announcements, campaign stops, and debates are still a ways in the future, but the campaign is nonetheless in a crucial phase as we speak because candidates are involved in the relatively invisible process of deciding whether or not they stand a reasonable chance of winning the highest office in the land.  For Democratic contenders, this decision is going to be a particularly difficult one to make due to the looming presence of Hillary Clinton.  The former first lady, senator, and secretary of state is not an announced candidate.  Not unlike many other former presidential candidates, Mrs. Clinton has sought to discourage speculation as to any possible candidacy and dampen expectations.  Nonetheless, she is widely expected to seek the Democratic nomination.  Given her early poll numbers, name recognition, and distinguished resume, she has all the markings of a front-runner. This puts other potential Democratic candidates in a difficult position.  Is it worth challenging such a strong candidate?  Is it counterproductive to the party to expose internal divisions when a juggernaut like Hillary could just romp to an easy election win?

Would-be candidates face a similar quandary whenever an incumbent president is seeking reelection.  It is widely considered to be bad form to primary an incumbent and, judging purely from past electoral results, there is good reason for partisans to frown on such challenges.  After all, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush all proceeded to lose in general elections after they'd been forced to fight for the nominations of their party against determined opposition.  However, in my view, these candidates didn't really lose because they were challenged -- they were challenged (and ended up losing in the general election) due to their perceived vulnerabilities.  That's really what the primary season does: it exposes weaknesses as well as strengths.  While we're talking about history, I'd like to mention Al Gore and his candidacy in 2000.  He was also an anointed candidate; he had the name recognition and the resume, and his position of vice president offered him the ideal launching pad for the presidency.  He was challenged, weakly, for the Democratic nomination by Bill Bradley as other prominent Democrats refrained from throwing their hats in the ring.  Gore made short work of his challenger but proceeded to lose the general election (even if the end result is still disputed by many, there is no question that the election was extremely close).  Would the Democratic Party really have been hurt if other candidates had emerged to challenge for the nomination?  Even if the end result for the nomination did not change, might Gore have emerged stronger if he'd had to fight harder?  I certainly think it's possible.  Denying Mrs. Clinton her "baptism by fire" in the primaries may not prepare her very well for the rigors of the general election.  

When it comes to Hillary Clinton's possible nomination, I think the Democratic Party should also be wary of an ideology I like to call "Yourturnism."  Hillary is the favorite of Yourturnists for a few reasons.  First, she's the most prominent Democrat likely to run in 2016 -- thus, it's seemingly "her turn" to win.  She's next in the batting order.  Secondly, Secretary of State Clinton was the losing Democrat in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.  Given that there is a degree of disappointment with President Obama's performance as president in some quarters, some think Clinton should have won that nomination back in 2008 and think it's her turn now to run again and fix an error of history by winning.  Thirdly, Hillary Clinton would be the first female American president were she to win the election, a momentous event in the history of the United States, and an impressive follow-up to the election of the first African American president.  The trouble with Yourturnism is that it ignores the fickleness of politics.  The zeitgeist candidate is not the candidate who looks the best on paper -- it's the candidate who will connect with the public and gets the result at that moment in time.  Barack Obama's willingness to challenge the more established Hillary Clinton in 2008 set off a chain of events that led to Obama winning two presidential elections as a Democrat.  Assuming that Senator Clinton would have achieved the same end result is an unreasonable leap of faith.  Martha Coakley, though a prominent Democratic politician in a Democratic state, still could not convince the voters to give her her turn as Massachusetts senator rather than elect the unlikely Republican Scott Brown.  Mitt Romney's second chance at the presidency was, ultimately, no more successful than his first.  Hillary Clinton's prominence and resume won't win her an election on their own.  Perhaps even more insidiously, a successful unchallenged Clinton nomination could lead to more Yourturnist candidates in the future.  Imagine a string of uninspired candidates, convinced that it is their time to be handed the presidency because of their position in their party, their resumes, or their demographic, dominating spiritless nomination contests and proceeding to sink like a bag of rocks in the general election.  That doesn't sound so bad...for Republicans!  Ultimately, I think Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic party, and the electorate as a whole would be best-served by a true primary season with multiple top-tier contenders, especially considering we're almost certain to have an interesting contest on the Republican side of things.