Hillary's private get-together with Black Lives Matter activists, captured and released on video and analyzed in this thoughtful piece on Vox made me think a lot while I drank my coffee this morning about my rabid support of Barack Obama and antipathy towards all things Clinton in the 2008 Dem primary.
When I get into debates with more liberal friends, especially in defending the achievements of Obama's presidency, I find myself playing the role of the fairly ruthless pragmatist. I focus exclusively on what's politically feasible, and I get quickly exasperated by whining about how much better things "should" be, you know, in the perfect world where Obama yells more loudly, causing Joe Lieberman to stop being a stick in the mud and support a public health insurance option. And now we have a whole movement on the left dedicated less towards making achievable improvements and more to emotional expressions of being down with the cause. So in this context, when I see Hillary's comments, I'm like, "fuck yeah! Pragmatic politics!"
But in 2008, pragmatism was a big part of her response to Obama's "change" message and I totally dismissed it as something that somebody with no energy or vision would say -- someone who, like husband Bill, would be content to have eight years in the Oval Office and no really transformational achievements, all the while looking to preserve their popularity. Meanwhile, Obama was the idealist in the race.
Reflecting on this, I think I can justify my current pragmatism because I think in 2008 Obama was an idealist when it comes to how politics is practiced, but was always a pragmatist, with an appreciation for nuance, when it came to policy. I think many on the left mistook his campaign’s political idealism for policy idealism, thus their disappointment and support for a socialist candidate today.
But when it comes to Hillary, I'm not sure what to think given what I thought in 2008. Is she TOO pragmatic? After Scott Brown won in 2010 and Obamacare was in jeopardy, would she have listened to Rahm and abandoned the comprehensive plan and fallen back on some piecemeal bill for catastrophic care only? I kind of think she would have.
Maybe that is the core difference between Obama and Hillary. Both have no patience for policies of fantasy. But Obama is willing to sacrifice his popularity in order to get what achievements he CAN get, even if they piss off a majority of Americans. I don't know if Hillary is self-assured enough to do that.
I sent this to my friend before posting it, and he wrote that "maybe she's lacked self-assurance as she reaches for the brass ring and once she's grasped it - once she's actually president - she'll be ballsy policy-wise; we know she's tough, and you know I think the rest of the country has basically caught up to the values Hillary's quietly held all along.” She is indeed smart and tough. We just can’t know whether she’d stand strong when half her advisors are telling her to fold.