Marjorie Cohn: Do the Democrats Offer a Progressive Choice for President?

[portlander23]

Marjorie Cohn: Do the Democrats Offer a Progressive Choice for President?

Hillary Clinton leaves a lot to be desired. She does favor a woman's right to choose and has recently come out in support of marriage equality. Clinton supports comprehensive immigration reform but also backs stepped-up border enforcement. A former member of the board of Walmart, she is cozy with Wall Street and voted for the Patriot Act. Clinton has been called a "focus group Democrat," often accused of believing what polls and focus groups tell her she should believe.

On foreign policy issues, Clinton is a first-class hawk. As Robert Scheer wrote on Truthdig:

"Clinton, in rhetoric and action, will never allow a Republican opponent to appear more hawkish than herself. In the general election, she will burnish her record of support for every bit of military folly from George W. [Bush]'s invasion of Iraq to her own engineering of the campaign to overthrow all secular dictators in the Middle East who have proved to be an inconvenience to the Saudi theocracy."

Meanwhile, Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders appears to be giving Clinton a run for her corporate money, so progressives may have a viable alternative to Clinton. But although Sanders' positions on economic inequality, jobs, education, climate change, immigration, marriage equality, women's right to choose, health care and surveillance (he voted against the Patriot Act) give us hope for serious change, Sanders' foreign policy strongly resembles that of the hawks in both major parties.

Sanders voted against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he voted for the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan. And he has spoken out strongly in favor of providing military aid to Ukraine and mounting airstrikes against ISIS.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's domestic policies are nearly indistinguishable from Sanders'. But Stein, who is also Jewish, opposes military assistance to Israel that is used to "fund a government which is basically committing war crimes against the Palestinian people, violating human rights, violating international law with the occupations," she told Tavis Smiley on PBS.

Related:

Robert Scheer: Amid the Crowing of the GOP and Clinton, Sanders Is on the Rise

[LWolf]

1. Bernie is the most progressive candidate

with an actual chance to win that has ever run in a presidential primary in my lifetime.

So while I like Jill Stein, Bernie's got my vote.

fwiw: If I was going to switch my vote from Bernie to Green, I couldn't say it here on DU without violating the TOS. So I wouldn't.

Happily, that's not an issue.

[PDittie]

2. As I understand the article

Stein's simple request (that she will pursue by legal means if necessary) is not to win or even "steal" votes, but to participate in the presidential debates.

Why would Democrats be opposed to that?

[Jim Lane]

3. To answer your question, I'd be opposed to that

What criteria should determine who's in the debates? Any cutoff is necessarily arbitrary, but someone who's polling below 15% isn't a very credible candidate. I'd rather the debates provide an opportunity for voters to assess the people who might actually be the next President.

Note that, in both major parties, the criteria for the primary-season debates are much looser. Anyone who realistically has no hope of winning the general election, but who is running for the purpose of getting ideas into the public discourse, does better to run for the nomination of the less disagreeable of the major parties.

[PDittie]

4. I would rather

see the League of Women Voters regain control of the presidential debates, and a more inclusive process for multiple voices. Seems more democratic than representatives of two parties establishing an arbitrary and mostly unreachable threshold for participation.

[Jim Lane]

5. Just putting the League in charge doesn't get around the issue of (very) minor candidates.`

The League of Women Voters ran the debates in 1984. The League restricted participation to Reagan and Mondale. I'm sure there were people upset about the League's exclusion of the Libertarian Party candidate, who finished third in the final popular vote.

That excluded Libertarian got 0.25% of the popular vote. That's in the ballpark of what the Greens have been getting in Presidential elections lately (0.10%, 0.12%, and 0.36%). I wouldn't assume that the League would include a Green Party candidate in its debates.

When there's a third candidate with some legitimately widespread appeal, however, the current structure includes all three. In 1992, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton were joined by Ross Perot, even though the debates were run by the commission created by the two major parties.

[PDittie]

6. We've come a long way snce 1984

And 1992, particularly in terms of citizen involvement in our elections. Two guys, left and right, in three debates (and one undercard) might have something to do with the steadily eroding electorate.

And it's also a Catch 22 in a Citizens United era. If you're not independently wealthy, then you can't run thirty minute commercials with charts and crazy uncles in the basement and travel around the country like Ross Perot did. Not really the model of a modern major democracy, is it? Trump is Perot 2.0. That's what happens when you try to reduce competition down to either/or, lesser of two evil options.

The Commission needs to be relieved of its responsibility, and more voices and more debates need to happen for us to perpetuate the illusion that participating in our republican democracy matters.

[Jim Lane]

7. You're right that it's a Catch-22 but that was the case before televised debates.

Various minor-party candidates have little support, so they don't attract campaign contributions that would help them promote themselves. They also don't get much free media because editors with limited space don't think it's worthwhile to give them a lot of coverage. Thus they have little support.

In 2012 there were, by my count 28 different people who received votes, not counting write-ins. (See page 5 of the FEC report on the election.) I don't favor a televised debate with 28 candidates. Whether the selection is done by the current Commission, or by the League, or by a panel of DUers with no hides in the last 90 days, there must be some winnowing criteria. (I'm sure there are plenty of candidates among those 26 who would tell you that they would have gotten a lot more votes if they were on the stage with Obama and Romney -- and they'd be right.)

The way around the Catch-22 is for candidates to promote themselves in other ways, as they did before television. There's probably still a year or so before the first debate. Let Jill Stein get out there and campaign, as I assume she's doing, and if she resonates with enough voters, she'll ascend in the polls and be included in the debates. The advent of social media makes it easier for candidates to publicize their campaigns without having a lot of money.

[PDittie]

8. That's reasonable enough

if there were still a Fairness Doctrine in place, for starters.

John Anderson in 1980 was probably the last of his kind. Without systemic changes -- beginning with televised debates -- it's going to continue to be an either/or proposition. That's good for Democrats (and Republicans) but not good for democracy.

[Jim Lane]

9. I don't remember enough about the Fairness Doctrine to know how it would apply here.

Suppose the Democratic nominee releases a major position paper on climate change, and a TV news show runs a 30-second report on it. Would the Fairness Doctrine mean that the station must then run 27 more half-minute reports, one on each of the other candidates? I don't think it would or should work that way.

One difference between us is that I'm not bothered by the "either/or proposition" (a two-party system) as long as each of those parties chooses its nominees in primaries. Candidates that the party bosses dislike can overcome that dislike and win, as when Carol Moseley Braun defeated incumbent Alan Dixon for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.

For reasons that extend far beyond televised debates, our current system makes it hard for third parties to achieve lasting success. There would have to be, as you say, systemic changes (sweeping ones!) to change that fact. I'm not convinced that such a change would produce substantially different policy outcomes. Restoring reasonable regulation of campaign finance would be easier to achieve and would have more impact.

[PDittie]

10. Here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

Take some time when you have it. It might change your thinking. It's the reason we have Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and all the rest of the RW Wurllitzer (that's what Media Whores online called it. Remember the Horse?).

Not such sweeping changes. A few to begin with (returning things to balance and open-mindedness) and then more from there. That's why I support Sanders. Clinton is just another neoliberal, making incremental changes at the edge if any at all.

You may have the last word.

[Jim Lane]

11. I think the Fairness Doctrine and presidential debates are separate issues.

Although the Wikipedia article doesn't cover the interplay (and it should), this is coming back to me now. I think the deal was that a debate sponsored by a network would have to include all candidates. The work-around was that some other entity (such as the League of Women Voters) could sponsor a debate with only some candidates, and broadcasters could then cover that debate as a legitimate news event.

The article states that the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded in 1987. What I'm very confident of is that, even before then, televised debates included only the two major-party candidates, except in 1980 when Anderson mounted a significant challenge. (There was one Reagan versus Anderson debate and one Carter versus Reagan debate.)

For example, in 1976, Eugene McCarthy ran as an independent. He received 0.91% of the popular vote (exceeding the Green Party's percentage in the three most recent elections combined). Nevertheless, the debates were limited to the two major-party candidates (Carter and Ford), even with the Fairness Doctrine still in effect.