Ready For Hillary? Or Bernie?

Recovered from losing race after race around the country, all the Ready for Hillary operatives came together at Le Souk in New York last week to celebrate their own and their candidate's fabulousness. There was Stephanie Shriock of EMILY's List, who chalked up spectacular losses all cycle, starting with two for Alex Sink (FL), two for Wendy Greuel (CA), another mindblower for Martha Coakley (MA), losses for all kinds of conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party that EMILY's List is drawn to these days, from Colleen Hanabusa and Donna Mercado Kim in Hawaii to political hacks like Mary Rose Wilcox (AZ), Ann Callis (IL), Emily Cain (ME)...

And, yes, Schriock and EMILY's List were big backers of spectacular loser Amanda Renteria, but the pilot of Renteria's doomed campaign, sleazy L.A. political hatchet man, Michael Trujillo, who jumped into her race immediately after dooming Wendy Greuel again, was also in attendance (of course). Renteria enjoyed a 17 point registration advantage over conservative Republican David Valadao in a district that gave Obama a solid 55-44% win over Romney but Trujillo, eager to develop and sell a lame, unworkable proprietary field system he could profit from, hobbled Renteria's campaign with it so badly that she lost a race she should have won-- and she lost big... Trujillo big: 41,167 (58.5%) to 29,244 (41.5%)... no turn out, thanks almost entirely to Trujillo's new proprietary field program he now expects to peddle to Hillary's campaign.

The Hill covered the Friday gathering by listing the 5 fears of the Clintonites. Although Bernie Sanders wasn't one of them, Elizabeth Warren was. "If I have one big fear, that’s it," said one Clinton supporter. "She needs to present a strong message on the economy and tell people why she not only supports Wall Street but every day economic issues. She needs to unite the party." With enough coaching, she probably can-- although progressives will come along only grudgingly and sullenly. Personally, I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would get me to vote for her. Sunday, Doyle McManus posited the idea that a Bernie Sanders candidacy would actually help Hillary. He wrote about Bernie's appearance on Colbert's show last week.

“A self-described socialist!” Colbert faux-sneered. “Do you frighten people when you walk around the Capitol? Are they afraid you're going to take their tractor and give it to the whole village?”

“Hopefully we frighten the billionaire class,” Sanders replied as a youthful studio audience cheered.

Get ready to hear Sanders repeat that phrase, “the billionaire class,” a lot. It's the core of his message, the theme that makes him passionate: his conviction that the wealthy have hijacked not only the economy, but also the political system.

There may not have been a major-party presidential candidate with so blunt a populist message on the economy since Franklin D. Roosevelt ran against “economic royalists” in 1936.

“The biggest issue in the country is that we don't discuss the biggest issue in the country,” Sanders told me in his Senate office last week.

“How does it happen that today the economists tell us that 95% of all new income created in America goes to the top 1%? How does it happen that we have by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth, where one family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people? How does that happen, and what do we do about it?”

Sanders' answers on what to do come from a crisp checklist: Higher taxes on the wealthy, a much higher minimum wage, $1 trillion of new spending on roads and public transportation and European-style national health insurance (which he tries to make less foreign by calling it “Medicare for all”).

He's asking the right questions. The stagnation of middle class incomes in the midst of an economic recovery has become the central challenge for both political parties. Exit polls in this month's midterm elections found that 63% of all voters believe the U.S. economic system isn't fair to most Americans, but “favors the wealthy.”

...Challenges like these would be a good thing for Clinton.

For one thing, they would give voters a reason to tune in to Democratic primary debates; otherwise, the brawling Republican field would get hours of television time all to itself.

For another, if she has challengers on both the left and right, Clinton could conveniently cast herself as the woman in the middle, the champion of her party's broad center.

And finally, it would be good for Clinton to work through her campaign style in more friendly waters. The last thing she wants is to sail through the primaries untested and have to develop her battle skills in actual combat with her Republican opponent. “She needs to get out of the cocoon of inevitability,” former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said last week.

If Clinton wins the nomination, she's unlikely to thank her Democratic opponents for trying to stop her from breaking the glass ceiling-- but she should.

Yeah, we're hearing whispers of a place in her Administration for corrupt conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- like lobbyist Evan Bayh (who was busy last week trashing Obama's move on immigration reform)-- but never a hint Hillary would ask a reformer with a progressive vision for the country-- someone like Sanders or Warren, for example-- to be her running mate, a position likely to be reserved for someone as bland as pablum. These are the substantial, not-bland candidates Hillary-- and more importantly, the American people-- should be looking at. You can encourage them to run at that link.