An unelectable zealot is one option. One of the most polarizing figures in American public life is the other. And those are the Democrats' choices. Their third candidate is on no one's radar.
The longed-for relief of the Iowa Caucuses being over arrives Monday. The GOP contest gets more attention because it's more entertaining. Donald Trump may dominate, but at least there are 11 candidates still in it. There's still plausible doubt that either of the leading candidates will win the nomination, too. It's messy, but it's competitive. The Democratic contest isn't. That's bad.
Blank out the personalities involved and look at the system. The Democratic primary base is so shielded from all political reality that it will take the empress of a dynasty to defeat Don Quixote. Even the empress may lose Iowa. She will almost certainly lose New Hampshire.
A healthy, competitive primary would have more candidates. A healthy primary would have more than one candidate who could conceivably be elected in November. Instead, this primary wouldn't give even one more candidate, Martin O'Malley, a passing glance. There's something very seriously wrong here.
Wherefore art thou, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.? Why didn't she or anybody else who is liberal but more electable get in this race? The stock answer is to blame Hillary Clinton. She scared the good candidates off. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist from Vermont, was the only one willing to charge her windmill. Perhaps, but that doesn't explain the utter neglect of O'Malley. His candidacy died alone and ignored while the base swooned over Bernie.
Perhaps the reason no one electable ran against Clinton in her primary wasn't just because she scared them off. Perhaps the base is at least equally to blame because they believe -- despite the results of every election since 2008 -- that the country is poised on the brink of a great liberal rising. Only true believers need apply.
Perhaps this fantasy is even stronger because everybody but the faithful has left the Democratic Party. I've given these figures many times before: 69 U.S. House seats, 13 U.S. Senate seats, 12 governorships, and more than 900 state legislative seats added to the Republican roster since 2009. This is a nation about as far from the cusp of a progressive wave as it has ever been.
Trump and Sanders voters believe the same thing. Both believe this country is gone so far down the drain, we're finally desperate enough to elect their guy. They just believe in different drains.
Sorry, but "Change" and "Hope" didn't win the 2008 election. Republican hubris after a too-long spell of one-party rule did. The moment passed, hastened by the liberal assumption they now had a mandate.
Yes, 2008 saw an exciting new coalition of voters appear. One of the left's constant criticisms of Clinton is that she cannot rekindle that fire. I agree -- because no one can rekindle that blaze since the hopes of that coalition were utterly crushed.
Performance matters. Failure matters. A new day in politics did not dawn. The partisan divide became worse than ever. The backlash was terrible. Worst of all, the younger voters are exactly the ones who suffered most from economic doldrums. For all the economic progress, all the ground recovered so far was ground lost. We're still not back where we used to be -- especially for young people starting out.
Changes like marriage equality and economic recovery since 2010 happened in spite of the Democrats and Republicans, not because of them. We now live in a country where -- to the befuddlement of both parties -- three out of five people support gay marriage and we elect Republicans in droves.
There was another factor powerfully at work in 2008 that is long gone. The young had a real chance to make history then. They took it. They took the "Whites Only" sign off the White House. That was then. This is now, and the only thing that would be more passe and more in line with the nation's history than electing an old white guy from New England to the U.S. presidency would be electing an old white guy from Virginia.
There's no more chance of a great progressive wave in 2016 than there was to get Obamacare repealed in 2014. All these advocacy groups do when they make promises they can't deliver is frustrate their believers. That's where candidates like Trump come from. The lied-to want what they were promised.
Commentary on 01/30/2016