Dave Weigel, at Slate, with an interesting bit of historical trivia explaining “Why the ‘Liberals Can Mount Primary Challenge to Obama’ Talk Makes No Sense“:
Beware, liberals! Beware the specter of John Ashbrook. As you “murmur” and “bubble” about the bright idea of challenging Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic presidential primary, remember that there are worse fates than opposing a president and losing. You could always oppose a president and lose so badly that people wonder why they took you seriously in the first place…
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In July 1971, staffers from the American Conservative Union, Human Events, and National Review met at William F. Buckley’s town house to coordinate a conservative break with President Nixon. This was after the president cut defense spending and announced a trip to China. That meeting spun off into anti-Nixon essays, like one from Buckley in the New York Times magazine (“how long… before the American right comes to the conclusion that he is not one of us?”), and eventually it spun off into a movement to draft Ashbrook, an Ohio congressman, into a primary challenge against Nixon.
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“Perhaps this is what the American people want,” Ashbrook thundered as he announced his campaign. “Perhaps, even, he is reflecting the wishes and expressing the judgment of the Republican voters throughout the nation. But I for one do not believe it, and I propose to put the matter to the test in the good old-fashioned democratic way.”
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He did; he lost. He got 9.7 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary…
Click the link for more details, enjoyably presented.
Give the Republicans this much credit: they are unsurpassable at flushing their failures down the memory hole. Nobody will ever be allowed to forget the PR “failures” of hapless Democratic candidates like Dukakis or Kerry, but my first reaction to seeing John Ashbrook’s name was “What have FDL’s wounded sensibilities got to do with that old Let-the-Eagle-Fly statuary-defacer?”
NobodySpecial
Probably, almost certainly, primarying him is a dumb idea.
However, we’ve noticed over the years that politicians whose jobs get threatened move quite quickly in the direction of said threateners. Even sad old Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln became a fierce champion against the bankstas when faced with a primary challenger.
I’ve never been aware of a time in American politics where the non-squeaky wheel got any grease.
ChrisS
Yea, Buckley lost the battle, but won the ideological war.
Fuck, the GOoPers now are to the right of Ol’ Buck himself.
Dennis G.
Of course the Progressive Republican did mush better against Nixon in 1972.
Pete McCloskey got one vote at the convention.
Tuffy
You are confusing Ashbrook with Ashcroft.
Zifnab
Dukakis and Kerry were coulda-beens. Hell, Dukakis was a shoulda-been. He started off leading Bush by 10 points. All he had to do was not fuck up.
But you can’t point to the right’s Dennis Kuccinich and proclaim “If we run Dennis Kuccinich, no one will ever respect us again!” We do run Kuccinich. Regularly. He’s a six term Congressman and he’s run for President twice. He generally drags the conversation to the left. That’s a good thing.
Ashbrook might have lost the primary against a vastly more powerful and well-positioned Nixon, but his hard-right policies have been more than embraced by the modern GOP.
I’ve got no problem with seeing Obama pick up a primary challenger. Giving activist Dems someone to rally around that isn’t Obama will get them in the game. Putting Obama on a podium and forcing him to debate a harder left liberal will force Obama to answer his base, rather than just drifting farther and farther to the right as he prepares for the general election.
The progressive left doesn’t need a winner, it just needs a champion. The far right flank has a gaggle of libertarian billionaires to lead them. The DFHs need leaders they can rally around too.
TR
The Ashbrook example is actually one of the more promising cases for a primary challenger — he lost like all the other ones, but at least he didn’t destroy his party’s chances in the general.
Every other time in modern American history in which there has been a real challenge to a sitting president from his party’s base — McCarthy against LBJ in 1968, Reagan against Ford in 1976, Ted Kennedy against Carter in 1980, Buchanan against George HW Bush in 1992 — the incumbent president emerged from the primary struggle badly bruised and went on to get beat in the general election.
A liberal challenge to Obama in the primaries will not only be doomed to failure, it’ll doom the party as well. Anyone who wages such a campaign is practically guaranteeing a Republican win.
moron
You mean “Ashcroft”, not “Ashbrook”, and “Soar”, not “Fly”… but it’s a point well taken.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Dennis G.: Yea, Buckley lost the battle, but won the ideological war.
He did, sort of. The country did lurch far to the right but I imagine the old bastard would be horrified at the quality of conservative intellectuals and activists you find these days.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Tuffy: Pretty sure that was the joke.
debbie
Long game, people, long game.
Suck It Up!
@NobodySpecial:
yet in that same primary she had no problem publicly trashing the very people who set that primary in motion or at least gave it steam.
Suck It Up!
this.
Also, I noticed the deafening silence from the left over the loss of the PA Senate race.
some other guy
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I dunno. He didn’t seem to mind hiring the morons to write for his magazine.
Responsibility for Jonah “Eating Your Vegetables Leads to Murdering Six Million Jews” Goldberg’s rise to infamy can be placed firmly on Buckley and his “respectable” conservative ilk at National Review, for example.
Tom Q
@TR: TR, is there some way you and I can get this message hammered into the heads of every so-called progressive who thinks a primary challenge would be a wonderful idea? You didn’t even give the full list — 1912 (your namesake against Taft) and 1952 (Kefauver taking on Truman) are other examples of intra-party challenges that led to incumbent-pary losses. In the entire post-Civil War history of the two-party system, every intra-party challenge has led to defeat (unless, as in the ’72 case, it was so pathetically ineffective it barely registered).
Alan Lichtman’s Keys to the Presidency says only two of his Keys have (if turned negative) proven 100% fatal to incumbents — a recession during the campaign period, or an intra-party fight. The GOP will move heaven and earth to make the first happen. God love ’em, our True Progressives are hell-bent on the other.
Zifnab
@debbie: One we’ve been losing for the last 30 years. At least in the economic sphere.
TR
@debbie:
A primary challenge from the base is one of the last steps in the long game, not the first.
We’re essentially at the same stage conservatives were in the mid-1960s — the start of some Goldwater-like grassroots activism and the founding of some AEI-ish thinktanks.
We have a lot more work to do electing true liberals throughout the party, first in local elections, then congressional races, then the Senate and gubernatorial races, and only then do you wade into the presidential primary with any real effectiveness.
Liberals who want to play the long game shouldn’t have their sights set on a quixotic challenge to the president. They should be running themselves for local school boards, city council seats, and the like. That is how the long game is played — step by step, slowly but surely.
But too few liberals are willing to do that. Rather than having the patience and determination to remake the Democratic Party from the ground up, they just want the quick fix of a change at the top. That’s just not how it works.
some other guy
@Suck It Up!:
Probably because even if Specter had run unopposed in the Dem primary and won then gone on to win the general election against Toomey (which was hardly a guaranteed outcome), “the left” would’ve been considered it a loss for them anyway, and rightly so, IMO. Neither Specter nor Toomey were reliable Democrats, let alone liberals. So “the left” had nothing to lose and everything to gain by putting Sestak up.
Not to say I support a primary challenge against Obama– indeed, I think it’s a pretty stupid idea– but the Sestak thing seemed pretty sensible to me.
TR
@Tom Q:
We just have to repeat it, over and over again. (That said, I think you’re mistaken on Truman and Stevenson in 1952. Truman had been actively looking to step aside, I recall, looking for an heir first in Dwight Eisenhower, and once he decided he was a Republican, then turning to Adlai.)
But I think, coming off my last post, we might also ask every single liberal who thinks primarying Obama will accomplish anything good why they’re not running for office themselves locally, or at least working on a campaign for someone they can support. Put up or shut up, people.
AnotherBruce
@Suck It Up!:
What’s your point? That a former Vice-Admiral was some kind of raving leftist? Remember that Pennsylvania had Santorum as a senator not too long ago. “Alabama in the middle” turned out to vote this time.
Suck It Up!
@some other guy:
Arlen Specter had switched parties more than a year before the primaries and never gave Dems any real problems. Even after he lost the primaries he didn’t pull a Lieberman.
the left should have been thinking about PA first.
I’m just saying if Specter had won the primary and lost the general, they would never ever let the WH forget it. Well, their preferred candidate lost and________________________
fasteddie9318
@AnotherBruce:
It seems like Suck’s point is that somehow Specter would have won that general election, which I can’t imagine would have happened. Specter was done either way. I’ve got long-time D relatives in PA who voted for Sestak but probably would have gone third party because they despise Specter that much, and I don’t think they were alone in that.
AnotherBruce
@Suck It Up!:
Well Blanche Lincoln lost too, so if only the Left’s preferred candidate would have been allowed to run…
No, it’s all mental masturbation, there’s no way to know that either Halter or Specter would have done any better. I haven’t heard any uproar from the left over Lincoln’s defeat.
NobodySpecial
@TR: Erm, hate to point this out, but Goldwater and the think tank stuff really began with Goldwater running for President and losing badly.
Tom Q
@TR: Since we mostly agree, I hate to nitpick, but…my reading of history is that Truman was ready to step aside for Ike in ’48, but that by ’52 Eisenhower was clearly a Republcan.
That said, the ’52 case is murkier, because, of course, Truman had already served basically two terms, and was only eligible to run again because the No More FDRs Amendment specifically didn’t apply to the current incumbent. Truman was massively unpopular by ’52 (the record-holder for lows in Gallup, until Bush II), but still technically in the race when Kefauver started killing him in primaries.
Anyway, the general point holds: Intra-party fights never lead to presidential victory (Senate races are dfferent, as Carol Moseley-Braun can attest), and Progressives delude themselves if they think a challenge to Obama would do anything to advance their cause. Making change at the lower echelons, as you say, is how progressives change the country’s gestalt.
In the end, I think this whole primary-ing discussion is internet wanking. Obama remains relatively popular, given the economic situation — especially among Dems, but even in the public at large. If the economy rebounds even quietly, I don’t see him as in any danger beyond the rhetorical.
chopper
@TR:
sounds a lot like the tea party.
TR
@NobodySpecial:
Not really. Goldwater was important to the grassroots mobilization of conservatives, but he had no influence at all on thinktank development. The bulk of conservative thinktank growth didn’t happen after Goldwater’s failure in the mid-1960s; it happened during (and because of) Nixon’s success in the early-1970s.
At the same time that conservatives were encouraging the Ashbrook primary challenge, they were also pushing for the creation of the conservative counterestablishment. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell circulated an incredibly influential memo through the Chamber of Commerce in 1971 calling on business to mobilize itself and defend its interests. This led to a massive expansion of AEI and to the creation of new thinktanks like the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the Cato Institute (1977).
Anyway, this is beside the point — we’ve already planted the seeds for our own version of this with CAP, Media Matters, Think Progress and the like. But we still need grassroots political engagement.
TR
@Tom Q:
Agreed. And while I think primarying the president is pointless, I’m a firm believe in primarying senators and congresspeople from the left. That works, and works well.
JWL
Eugene McCarthy was quoted as saying that he first realized how politically vulnerable LBJ was when he could curse him in any bar in the country, and not get punched in the mouth. (Granted, he might very well have lost his teeth in the Hill Country of Texas even during ’67-’68).
Obama would do well to ponder McCarthy’s insight, especially in light of having just gratuitously insulted a healthy percentage of those that voted for him in ’08.
Turgidson
@ChrisS:
Waaaayyyyy to the right of him.
amk
Why? Because, the “progressives” are not about to let the base forget it, dammit.
danimal
While the leftier-than-thous talk about primarying Obama due to the massive mishandling of the tax cut issue, I’ll make a prediction.
President Obama, who has been about minus 4 to minus 8 on the national approval/disapproval scales for the past 6 months or more, will be in positive territory by the end of next week. TPM has a running tabulation of presidential approval ratings, check that in a week or two and prepare to be surprised at how popular this massively unpopular president actually is.
ETA: FYWP
Oscar Leroy
@ChrisS:
That’s for sure.
What’s your point, Anne Laurie? We shouldn’t challenge Obama because someone else challenged their president and lost?
Oscar Leroy
@TR:
“A liberal challenge to Obama in the primaries will not only be doomed to failure, it’ll doom the party as well. ”
How, exactly? I mean, what specific events would take place that would make it more likely Obama loses re-election?
You can put out a list of presidents who were challenged then lost and say “See what a primary challenge does?” But in 1968 white voters were spooked by racial turmoil and a horribly unpopular war was raging; in 1976 Gerald Ford–who absolutely no one voted for in the first place–was still living down Watergate; in 1980 the country was stuck in stagflation and unemployment; and 1992 saw a deepening recession and a freak third-party appearance to split the vote.
Oscar Leroy
@danimal:
Will do.
Tom Q
@Oscar Leroy: And this is how historical mistakes are repeated. Each time, people tell themselves, no, those times were different. Today, we can make it work.
Cue Santayana.
agrippa
Debbie and TR are correct.
It is the long game, people. The party has to be rebuilt from the grass roots up the ladder to the top. It is not top down. It does not work that way here.
If you actually want progressive legislation passed, progressives have to elect a progressive majority.
One can, of course, make a statement by ‘primarying’ Obama. But, you will not be making a law.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TR:
I agree with the examples you cite but I don’t think we can draw cause and effect arrows leading from primary challenger to general election defeat. It strikes me as just as likely that a strong primary challenge is a symptom of an incumbent in trouble who is likely to lose in the general election regardless, unless the other party blunders badly with their nominee. Does anybody here seriously think that McGovern would have won in 72 if Ashbrook had gotten more votes against Nixon in the GOP primaries than he actually did?
After all, anybody can try to primary an incumbent president, but it is the voters who decide whether that person turns into a real challenger or you just end up as the person on the debate stage saying something stupid while the POTUS takes a break to have sip of water. Does a primary challenger change the way the voters are thinking about the curent POTUS, or merely articulate how they are already thinking?
Dave Weigel picks a terrible example anyway. Nixon and LBJ were two of the most ruthless politicians we’ve ever had. If anybody was going to not only beat a challenger, but make every effort to destroy them both personally and professionally, out of all proportion to the threat involved, it was Nixon.
debbie
@TR:
I agree. It has to be bottom up from the local level. Plus, everyone taking an intensive course in messaging.
This article from NYT in the run-up to the 2004 election was an examination and analysis of grassroots organizing in Ohio. It proved to be very effective. It would also be instructive if every Democrat read it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/magazine/25GROUNDWAR.html?scp=5&sq=2004%20election%20ohio%20joann%20davidson&st=cse
angler
you’re only encouraging us
Tom Q
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: In general I’d agree that the correlation of challenges to poor outcomes can be as well attributed to poor incumbent performance as to the challenge itself (though I think 1912 might be a pure case of the challenge itself causing the defeat). This is why all this blather doesn’t truly worry me, because I think the Dissatisfied Progressives way underestimate how popular Obama is, given the economy, and I think he’d make any declared opposition look silly.
But, turn it around: shouldn’t all these people so enthusiastically calling for a challenge be asked to describe some positive result they expect from it? The evidence for the challenge being kryptonite may be ambiguous, but the evidence for it helping in any way is simply non-existent.
hildebrand
@Zifnab:
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with those who constantly scream about wanting a ‘fighter’. You don’t want to get anything done, you simply want to feel good about fighting for the noble cause. Can’t be a martyr without a cause, eh?
Arclite
@Zifnab:
Okay, I was going to argue the other way, but WTF you convinced me. Well said Zif.
Mike Kay (Team America)
I’ve been saying this for awhile now.
The blogosphere thinks they’re important (insisting that THEY’RE the base), even though every candidate they’ve made into a cause, every candidate they poured millions into has lost (Lamont, Edwards, Dean, Halter).
They could always paper over the impotence of these failures one way or another.
But running against Obama they would be squashed like a bug, which would expose them for marginal faction that they are.
And that’s why they won’t primary obama. They don’t want to be exposed on a national stage.
Personally, little would make me happier than seeing the hippies, once and for all, slit their bearded throats on live on tee vee.
Mike Kay (Team America)
@hildebrand: it’s the new hippie Orwell: winning is for losers/losing is for winners
lawguy
I’d have to agree. It is just not possible to beat a sitting president in the primaries. On the other hand Obama should not be either the condidate nor the president.
But what ya gonna do?
News Reference
I’ll say it again, I’ll vote for Obama in the 2012 General Election.
But Dear God I’d prefer to vote for an actual Democratic President.
Obama’s right-wing ideology is apparent to anyone who wasn’t asleep until January of 2008. Obama’s authoritarian followers might not care about Obama’s long list of far-right-wing moves. (And closet Republicans are certainly cheering him on.)
But those that actually believe that left-wing policies are better for Americans and America are sincerely and legitimately disgusted with Obama.
Left-wing policies that are better for America and Americans: A vastly larger initial stimulus, sensible America-First Trade Policies that protect American workers, single-payer health-care, respect for civil rights and civil liberties, avoiding reckless wars, and living by the rule of law that holds criminal torturers and bankster frauds accountable.
And for anyone wanting to piss on that list, start with explaining this:
When did the RULE OF LAW become a “pony” of “sanctimonious” ‘purists’?
Torturers free, censorship of war crimes, criminal spying given amnesty, use of secret evidence in prosecutions, assassination of American citizens without Judicial review, unwarranted groping and naked pictures taken of American citizens, whistleblowers hunted, theft of people’s homes by Bankster frauds…
Obama lost his moral authority.
At least to those that still operate within a moral framework.
(And yeah, again, I’ll vote for the lesser evil. But don’t tell me it’s not evil.)
Jamie
Just think of President Palin…..
Jamie
And with the moderate course chosen by Obama, Fox says he’s a Marxist/Nazi/Islamofascist. Can you imagine what would happen if he actually was left of center? I think you guys here should make a left wing version of Fox.
News Reference
Obama’s supporters new chorus: “No You Can’t!”
No You Can’t have torturers prosecuted.
No You Can’t have war crimes revealed.
No You Can’t end reckless wars.
No You Can’t close torture prisons.
No You Can’t primary the guy responsible for those policies.
bah humbug.
pickledjazz
You lot reeeeeally like to pass the day torturing yourselves with illusion.I say primary all you want, need, desire…but the bottom line is a) there ain’t anybody like Obama and b) there ain’t anybody that liberal who will fight the fight and basically
c) whomever you choose will get in there and have to go centrist,because that is where the 300 million lie. Therein lies the reality.
SlyFox
@News Reference:
Well, you can’t primary him……..seeing how George W. Bush is no longer in office and ineligible to run again.
News Reference
Obama supporter “Mike Kay”: “Personally, little would make me happier than seeing the hippies, once and for all, slit their bearded throats on live on tee vee.”
Are “hippies” your proxy for the liberal 20% of the population that represents 40% of Democratic voters?
Or do you just have a death wish for “bearded” “hippies”?