If you’re jonesing to learn who “won” or “lost” the latest Democratic presidential debate, you won’t get any help from me. All horse race queries are easily answered elsewhere. Far more interesting last night, at least to me, was the candidates’ usual dearth of insight about how they intend to govern effectively in the unprecedentedly polarized climate that a departing Donald Trump would surely bequeath us.
Granted, primary season is the time for candidates to float big dreams, to spin tall tales about what they’d magically shepherd through a compliant Congress, to boast about all the great things they’d purportedly do on Day One. But political analyst Norm Ornstein, who has parsed congressional behavior for the past four decades, offers this smart reality check:
“However coherent, complete, fiscally sustainable, or popular the positions the candidates are taking on health reform – and on other issues such as immigration, education, taxes, and more – presidents do not get to wave magic wands and make their policies happen. They are thrown into a governing process in which a president’s plan is almost never enacted into law fully, if it is enacted at all…Whoever is elected president in 2020 will face similar challenges, but also will have to deal with a tribalized and weaponized political process, regardless of whether the new chief executive enjoys majorities in both houses of Congress…”
So the big question – posited only a few times last night – is how a Democratic winner plans to get anything done even with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate that, at best, would be 51-49 and thus 9 votes short of hurdling a Republican-led filibuster. What’s the foreseeable governing scenario for wooing even a small number of Republicans, whose party (as lately evidenced by the impeachment hearings) has embraced cultism and seems terminally allergic to factual reality?
In the early minutes of the debate, Joe Biden was hit with precisely that kind of question:
“You’ve suggested in your campaign that if you defeat President Trump, Republicans will start working with Democrats again. But right now, Republicans in Congress, including some of whom you’ve worked with for decades, are demanding investigations not only of you but also of your son. How would you get those same Republicans to work with you?”
Stay with me for Biden’s long response:
“Well, look, the next president of the United States is going to have to do two things. Defeat Donald Trump, that’s number one. And, number two, going to have to be able make be – be able to go into states like Georgia and North Carolina and other places and get a Senate majority. That’s what I’ll do. You have to ask yourself up here, who is most likely to be able to win the nomination in the first place, to win the presidency in the first place? And, secondly, who is most likely to increase the number of people who are Democrats in the House and in the Senate? And by the way, I learned something about these impeachment trials. I learned, number one, that Donald Trump doesn’t want me to be the nominee. That’s pretty clear. He held up aid to make sure that – while at the same time innocent people in the (Ukraine) are getting killed by Russian soldiers. Secondly, I found out that Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president. So I – I’ve learned a lot about these things early on from these hearings that – that are being held. But the bottom line is, I think we have to ask ourselves the honest question: Who is most likely to do what needs to be done, produce a Democratic majority in the United States Senate, maintain the House, and beat Trump?”
You probably noticed that Biden never answered the question.
He started off OK (“the next president of the United States is going to have to…”), but quickly latched onto his campaign talking points. And he’s supposedly one of the pragmatic candidates, the guy who eschews big dreams in order to actually get things done.
Kamala Harris was invited to offer her thoughts on how she’d govern effectively in such a toxic climate. Her response:
“Well, first of all, we have a criminal living in the White House. And there is no question that in 2020 the biggest issue before us is justice is on the ballot. And what we saw today (in the impeachment hearing) is Ambassador (Gordon) Sondland by his own words told us that everyone was in the loop. That means it is a criminal enterprise engaged in by the president, from what we heard today, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the chief of staff…And part of the reason I’m running for president is to say that we have to bring justice back to America…”
Harris – clearly intent on rebooting her campaign with a new theme – never answered the governing question, either.
Elizabeth Warren was soon confronted with a similar question: “You have cast yourself as a fighter. If you were elected, though, you would be walking into an existing fight, a country that is already very divided over the Trump presidency, among other things. Do you see that divide as permanent? Or do you need to bring the country together if you become president to achieve your goals?”
Warren barely referenced the governing issue, quickly swaddling it in populist rhetoric:
“So I think the way we achieve our goals and bring our country together is we talk about the things that unite us, and that is that we want to build an America that works for the people, not one that just works for rich folks. You know, I have proposed a two-cent wealth tax (which she then explained at length). And here’s the thing. That’s something that Democrats care about, independents care about, and Republicans care about, because regardless of party affiliation, people understand across this country, our government is working better and better for the billionaires, for the rich, for the well-connected, and worse and worse for everyone else. We come together when we acknowledge that and say we’re going to make real change.”
Yeah, we’ve heard all that before. Noble goals indeed. But how would she pass a wealth tax through a tribal, polarized Congress? She never came close to addressing that. Surely she remembers that the congressional Republicans, long before the rise of Trump, made it their mission in life to block everything on Barack Obama’s agenda – and he was a president who twice won national elections with voting majorities, the only Democrat to do so since FDR. Does she think that her wealth tax and phased-in Medicare for All would be an easier legislative lift? After five debates, we still hear nothing about that.
As for Bernie Sanders…please spare me his incessant delusions. He said last night that he’d introduce a Medicare for All bill during his first week because “now is the time.” No phase-in plan for throwing people off their private health coverage; he wants the whole nine yards now. But how would he get it passed – especially given the fact, long reported, that during his long Senate career he has “rarely forged actual legislation or left a significant imprint on it”? Not a word on that from Bernie, who invests in purity. He doesn’t do practical.
And in response, Joe Biden – finally! – roused himself to smack down Bernie’s MFA pipe dream: “It couldn’t pass the United States Senate right now with Democrats. It couldn’t pass the House. Nancy Pelosi is one of those people who doesn’t think it makes sense.” He’s right about that.
Pete Buttegieg, who’s crowding Biden in the so-called moderate lane, said something similar early in the debate, offering optional government health care “as a governing strategy” that could actually pass Congress – “without the divisive step of ordering people onto it whether they want to or not.” He also tried to frame the big picture. He said that Trump’s future departure, by whatever means, “will be a tender moment in the life of this country. And we are going to have to unify a nation that will be as divided as ever and, while doing it, address big issues that didn’t take a vacation for the impeachment process or for the Trump presidency as a whole.”
But how would the mayor of a small college city – who, in two mayoral elections, has notched a grand total of 19,506 votes – presume to run a behemoth government in Washington, and successfully address those big issues in the face of toxic Republican opposition?
After five Democratic debates, the big question remains unanswered.