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WSJ: Liberal Democrats Want More 'Populist,' Left-Leaning Hillary
Friday, April 10, 2015 12:01 PM
By: Joel Himelfarb
When her husband Bill was president, Hillary Clinton was regarded by many as a progressive voice pulling him leftward.
Today, however, as the former secretary of state prepares to make her presidential candidacy official, she is increasingly viewed with suspicion by the left wing of her party.
Many of them are still seething over her 2002 vote for the war in Iraq and see her as too willing to compromise instead of attacking banks and other big businesses, The Wall Street Journal reported.
"A lot of people would prefer to have someone who is a real populist crusader, who is clear about what she would do," said Roger Hickey, co-chairman of Campaign for America's Future, a progressive advocacy group.
The discomfort of the political left poses a problem for Clinton, who is expected to announce her candidacy this weekend. She's almost 48 points ahead of her closest prospective primary challenger, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in the polls. If she veers to the left in an effort to satisfy the party base, she could well alienate middle-of-the-road voters whose support she needs in a general election.
If she ignores their pressure, however, it could depress turnout from core Democratic voters in key states in the general election.
Yet, as Mrs. Clinton remembers all too well, supposedly inevitable candidates sometimes don't make it to November. Eight years ago, she was the overwhelming favorite to win her party's nomination until Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's campaign caught fire. In the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the former New York senator came in third behind Obama and the second-place finisher, 2004 vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.
One of her prospective challengers from the left this time is former two-term Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who has been has blasting away at Wall Street as he considers a run for president.
During his initial trip to Iowa last month, O'Malley called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking whose repeal was signed by President Clinton.
He also denounced economic inequality. "Until we solve this problem, we cannot rest," O'Malley said. "Not as a party and not as a people."
Yet according to the most recent poll data compiled by Real Clear Politics, O'Malley has garnered just 1.2 percent of the Democratic primary vote — leaving him 58.6 percentage points behind Mrs. Clinton.
In recent months, the Democratic frontrunner has held meetings with economists and policy specialists to come up with a formula for addressing the nation's sluggish wage growth. Her supporters say she wants to do that in a way that does not sound divisive or depict corporations as villains.
"I would like to bring people from right, left, red, blue, get them into a nice warm purple space where everybody is talking and where we're actually trying to solve problems," she said at a conference in February.
Liberal reservations about Mrs. Clinton also stem in part from her past association with the policies of her husband’s administration, particularly his support for free trade and a welfare overhaul negotiated with congressional Republicans that ended a federal guarantee of aid to the poor. Mrs. Clinton has said positive things about some free-trade deals and expressed support for the welfare changes.
At the same time, as a senator and a Democratic presidential candidate, she called for higher taxes that would have targeted investment-fund managers, inveighed against economic inequality, called for universal prekindergarten and paid family leave, and advocated increases in the minimum wage.
But many who lean to the left are upset over a variety of other things suggesting in their eyes that she may be too friendly with rich elites. These include the $200,000 honoraria she has received from corporate entities for speeches, and the large corporate donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
As a one wary county Democratic Party chairman in Iowa told the Journal: "She's been in a position where she's wooed every day by the big money, and it's hard not to be swayed by that."
