From his Facebook page, Jim Webb just announced he is forming an exploratory committee for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2016. His new website is up and running, webb2016.com
I quoted some highlights below
The official announcement:
I have decided to launch an Exploratory Committee to examine whether I should run for President in 2016. I made this decision after reflecting on numerous political commentaries and listening to many knowledgeable people. I look forward to listening and talking with more people in the coming months as I decide whether or not to run
Themes similar to a certain female Senator from Massachusetts:
The Democratic Party used to be the place where people like these could come not for a handout but for an honest handshake, good full-time jobs, quality education, health care they can afford, and the vital, overriding belief that we’re all in this together and the system is not rigged.
We can get there again….
Everybody deserves that opportunity. In too many places it has been lost as our economy has changed its structural shape and whole communities have stagnated. But we can get it back again, for all of our people. And we must, for the greater good.
Themes drastically dissimilar to a certain female Senator and former Secretary of State from New York:
. We need to put our American house in order, to provide educational and working opportunities that meet the needs of the future, to rebuild our infrastructure and to reinforce our position as the economic engine and the greatest democracy on earth. We need to redefine and strengthen our national security obligations, while at the same time reducing ill-considered foreign ventures that have drained trillions from our economy and in some cases brought instability instead of deterrence.
We will see if Bernie, Brian, Martin, and maybe that certain female Senator from Massachusetts join Jim on the campaign trail. But the first shot of 2016 has just been fired across the bow of the SS Inevitability. Whether it does any damage remains an open question.
Christopher says
…to all Hillary-bashing, all the time from you in 2016 like we were subjected to in 2008?:(
JimC says
If “SS Inevitability” is bashing, we’re in for a LONG campaign.
kirth says
Whether it’s bashing or not, it’s safe to say we’re in for a long campaign.
Christopher says
…is that she hasn’t even announced yet.
There was also the suggestion that she somehow isn’t progressive, a premise I have always rejected.
jconway says
Obama was my first choice in 2008, but boy am I glad his opponents, especially Hillary, decided to contest his nomination. His race with Hillary made him a far better candidate.
I hope as many people get in the primary as possible so that we can have a real debate about the future of our party and the direction it’s going on. Populist candidates like Webb, socialists like Sanders, and progressive technocrats like O’Malley will make a case that this party deserves a choice and introduce ideas the front runner is not considering. In the least, a strong primary will make her a more tested and more progressive nominee in the general.
jconway says
I engaged in some occasionally sexist, highly personal bashing of Hillary in 2008. I questioned the motives and liberalism of those supporting her. I won’t be engaging in that-it was immature and I apologized for it and will hopefully be canvassing with folks in NH for Hillary if she wins the nomination. So I won’t be engaging in bashing or vitriol, personal attacks, or impugning the motives of those backing her. And unlike last time, I have become more and more convinced she is the most electable candidate and might even make a great president. Our relationship is complicated.
Remember dated Dean, married Kerry? I want to date around a little bit before settling on Hillary. I do question her inevitability, her commitment to liberalism, and whether a coronation is healthy for our party or not. Dan Balz and Nate Silver have pointed out that this is likely to be the first election where the GOP nominates the younger candidate in quite some time, and our back bench is not as strong or as diverse at present. All questions we can politely debate the next two years.
Jack Mitchell says
Besides, after the economy crashed, Obama morphed into Hillary.
#8moreyears
doubleman says
He has NO CHANCE.
He’s pretty conservative and has no personality, and he’s only run one race that he won 49.6-49.2.
This is the first video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV3RnBaXIlk
Looks like it was made 10 years ago. Absolutely zero charisma.
Maybe he’s really going for VP, but otherwise this seems like a joke.
jconway says
His voting record was decidedly liberal, as is his rhetoric now. If opposition to the Iraq War, intervention in Libya and Syria, pushing for single payer, defending unionization, pushing for fair trade, and wanting to expand affirmative action to cover class makes him a conservative I shudder to think what that makes Hillary.
petr says
It’s not been noted much but worth mentioning that both H Clinton and J Webb started life as Republicans — Indeed this is also true of the Hon Sen Warren– and that all of the above hit points (with the possible exception of ‘fair trade’) are Eisenhower era moderate Republicanism: strong unions, single payer (in the case of Eisenhower the narrowed version of it, medicare/medicaid), the economics of class and race and the appropriate use of military power are all retreads of the centrist debates had in the 50’s. Not liberal. Centrist. Going back to where we were before Barry Goldwater started chewing scenery might be heading in a Liberal direction but that doesn’t make it Liberal.
I have mixed feelings about Eisenhower and of that era: I think the conventional wisdom, seen through the lens of history, is of a risk-averse technocratic stewardship… and I don’t think that’s entirely wrong. I also don’t think it all that different from Obama. The difference is that it might have been appropriate in the 50’s after WWII and all… but not at all appropriate now.
I certainly think that H Clinton is equally a technocrat with a marked aversion to risk, even more so than Obama. I don’t know enough about Webb to speak to it. Sen Warren has show some dash and flair in the face of risk, but it’s been wholly contained within her wheelhouse, banking and finances. That’s fine for a Senator but POTUS isn’t just the President of the banking sector… All this is just to say that one semi-declared and two highly touted potential candidates for the 2016 Democratic Nomination –all born prior to 1950– probably had, as their first exposure of any kind to politics an awareness of, and perhaps as nascent Republicans an identification with, Dwight Eisenhower as POTUS… and I think this is reflected in their political makeup.
On the other hand, the least technocratic damn-near risk embracing POTUS we’ve ever had was George Dubya and look how that turned out…
Christopher says
Even if she starts less progressive I have often wondered if we would have ultimately gotten more progressive results with her as President.
jconway says
I’m in a weird place. On domestic politics I strongly feel she would’ve been a better President during these past right years. Where I do have doubts, is in foreign policy and whether she is the best fit for the post-Obama administration. If we could have a do over, assuming she picked him as VP (and honestly-she had less choice there), I think a President Clinton would’ve enacted a better health care reform, immigration reform, gun control and a host of domestic achievements that eluded the neophyte handing him a sturdy foundation to build real liberalism on top of.
Instead, liberals are left with the legacy of an ideologically Clintonian presidency without the competence, which the media and conventional wisdom blames on Obama being too liberal. I see it very hard for Hillary to govern to his left on any issue, and her heart is in all the wrong places on national security.
doubleman says
Jim Webb ranked #42 in terms of a liberal voting record, just behind Mark Begich and Bob Casey.
He does not support Single Payer. He barely supported the ACA.
He is terrible on guns.
His positions on women in the military will crush him, especially if running against women.
He thinks equal marriage should be left to the states (he thinks the evolution on the issue has been good for the country but does not say “I support it”).
I don’t think his affirmative action stance is as simple as you put it, and the language he uses to describe is troubling to me about who would rally behind his plan.
He has a good but not stellar record on labor issues.
As far as populism on some economic issues, I don’t think he has any ability to sell them. Especially not compared to Warren. I recommend watching the video rather than just reading the speech. He has zero presence.
His positions and background make him pretty good for a general election, not a Dem primary.
jcohn88 says
When has Webb pushed for single payer? Webb complained that the Affordable Care Act wasn’t ‘bipartisan’ enough. That hardly sounds like a single-payer advocate to me.
Webb was one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus when he was in it. He turned his back on labor by withdrawing support from the EFCA. He voted for the Keystone pipeline and for delaying emissions regulations. He has said that women should not be serving in the military. He has said that Vietnam was a just war and red-baited the anti-war left. He is a strong opponent of affirmative action (which he alludes to in his announcement). He also voted against ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. You can find links to some of these various points here.
He’s not dovish on foreign policy at all. He’s more of a “realist” in the George H. W. Bush sense. He’s very much about maintaining American hegemony.
I commend him for his outspokenness on criminal justice reform issues, but he’s not a liberal. I’d like to see a broad and competitive primary. I think a party needs debates to stay healthy. I just know that Webb won’t be getting my vote (and I don’t think he’ll be getting many others’ votes either).
jconway says
To be clear, I am ideologically closer to Bernie Sanders, but I definitely have an affinity for Webb and the kind of broad based-populist class consciousness his candidacy could represent. Obviously, it’s in it’s embryonic stages, and I would argue it is hypocritical to hold him to a double standard that we are not applying to the front runner for the nomination.
Webb, along with Barney Frank, seemed to critique Obama’s healthcare law from the left. His remarks at the National Press Club complained it was too complicated and written by the insurance lobby, critiques I would agree with. Obviously, he hasn’t outlined what he would do differently, but I would be interested to hear it.
Obama and Feinstein caved on EFCA as well, I didn’t realize Webb had done so and that definitely seems out of character for a guy who brags about being the only Senator with a union card, three tattoos, and two purple hearts. He will need to face up to that.
In 1978, in an article that he has repeatedly apologized for and repudiated. One Hillary Clinton and other Democratic surrogates dismissed in 2006. If it didn’t work for George Allen, it shouldn’t be a line of attack Democrats can use against a fellow Dem.
He is married to a Vietnamese woman, helped normalize relations in Vietnam with fellow vets Kerry, Hagel, and McCain. He attacked elements of the anti-war left for waving NVA flags at rallies, spitting on soldiers, making fun of the POW-MIA movement, and otherwise attacking the soldiers themselves and not the policymakers for that war. To that extent, I agree with him. He attacked Ivy league educated kids like Dick Cheney for getting deferments while white neighborhoods like South Boston and black neighborhoods like Watts sent the largest contingent of marines to die in Vietnam, and I largely agree with that. Where I personally disagree are his assertions that they fought for a cause worth dying for, against a particularly heinous regime, and that the Pentagon and Johnson administration were unwilling to go all out to win the war. But he served there and I didn’t, so I cut him some slack on the emotions that may lead to those opinions, even if my own understanding of history leads me to different conclusions.
His Wall Street Journal Op Ed from 2010 came to the wrong conclusions, as he holds the opinion that it should be expanded to consider class, or modified to just consider class, an opinion also shared by Howard Dean during his campaign and other scholars.
Evidence is increasingly showing that lower income whites are increasingly adopting many of the “cultural pathologies” that were once derided as exclusive to the enclaves of the black ghetto. High out of wedlock birth rates, teen pregnancy rates, family dysfunction, substance abuse, high unemployment, and poor graduation rates at the high school and college level.
Webbs point was-the kid in inner city Baltimore and the kid in rural Appalachia view one another as enemies, when they actually are victims of the same status quo, the same economic challenges, the same economic uncertainties, that require the same remedies. One that Obama and the Clintons have mitigated and tinkered with, but one that has not been substantially altered. Where I strongly disagree with Webb are his arguments that poor whites are just as disadvantaged as poor blacks, and class should matter more than race in college admissions. They are both a factor, but to deny white privilege is to deny reality and he should have to reckon with that.
As for leaving gay marriage to the states, I don’t see how that is distinctly different from what President Obama said when he came out for gay marriage, or the view Hillary Clinton holds. They all held a position on gay marriage from 2004-2012 that would be disqualifying in a primary today.
JimC says
“Expanding affirmative action,” if that’s really what he means, is something I could get behind.
His record does raise some concerns, but I would hear the guy out. I hope we get a wide variety of candidates.
jconway says
I think he deserves a fair hearing-my primary vote, volunteer time, and money is definitely still up for grabs. That said, I like a lot of what he has to say, and feel that he could win over a lot of demographics our party has written off and vice a versa.
This blogger has an interesting perspective on Webb and another Southern Dem, and where they come from. Having read a lot of Tom Frank lately, I honestly think an economic populist with a strong military background and ‘small c’ cultural conservative rhetoric (even while being largely socially moderate on the issues) could go a long way.
ryepower12 says
Who’s anti war.
There are a lot of those around.
Not criticizing him, but I’d be more excited about Bernie Sanders at this point.
jconway says
In terms of the ideas he can bring to the table, but let’s be honest, he won’t be the one to beat Hillary and carry those ideas into the general. I honestly think Webb might have a shot. It’s an inelegant analogy-but Webb is the Grossman to Sander’s Berwick. That is not to say Hillary is Coakley, she is the most rather than the least competent candidate in this field, but like our old AG she can be tepidly centrist on a variety of issues important to the base.
\
ryepower12 says
Bernie is actually much more likely to be able to mount something vaguely close to being a competitive campaign because a) unlike Webb, he could actually win a state or two and b) he at least has something of a constituency.
Webb has no real constituency in the democratic party and it’s extremely doubtful he could win his own state in the primary, never mind a general.
Webb is a nonstarter. There is nothing particularly compelling about him as a candidate — not his policies and certainly not his campaign abilities.
doubleman says
I just watched the whole video. I’m not entirely sure this isn’t some weird infomercial from Adult Swim (like Too Many Cooks).
This can’t be real.
hesterprynne says
from a New Yorker article on “SS Inevitability”
dasox1 says
It would not be good for the party or the country to hand the nomination to Sec. Clinton. She needs to earn it. I hope there’s a wide open field with various Democratic views represented. She has the intellectual, operational, and financial capacity to be a great candidate. But, she should only win if she is the best candidate. A huge part of being a great candidate is your message–how it resonates and motivates, how it’s delivered and whether the message and messenger align. If she can do it, great. If she cannot, then the Democratic party electorate should consider alternatives. My inclination is to support her but I will not if she cannot deliver on the promise of her candidacy.
Christopher says
I tend to forgive missteps of a candidate if I think the person will still be better handling the office itself. I don’t have a better idea since I do believe in elections, but let’s not forget that campaigning and governing are two different skill sets often not seen in the same person.
jconway says
I think she is our best candidate. I am less convinced she is the best President for the party to adopt as it’s standard bearer, particularly the consequences of what 8 more years of triangulation would do to the long term ‘brand’ of the party. By 2024, the face of the Democratic party will be 77, white, and relatively conservative compared to the base of the party she leads.
24 years after Gore ‘lost’ on a platform of Clintonian centrism, that will largely remain our party’s platform. The GOP by contrast, will have moved to the center on social issues, embraced minorities and Latinos, and remain, as it has always been, the party of Big Business. With the cultural issues off the table, the time for the Democratic party to return to an economically populist stance is now.
ryepower12 says
To think that is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of who’s really in charge of the party.
GWB is outside the mainstream of today’s GOP. Think about that. If he ran today, it wouldn’t be on a pro immigration reform platform.
centralmassdad says
I don’t see any evidence of that, at all.
I think the next few weeks or months will show the GOP making lifetime enemies of minorities and Latinos, to the extent that they hadn’t finished that up already.
I guess Webb would be perceived as a challenge from the right. Which is fine, I guess. Any challenge is better than no challenge. I guess the question will be whether HRC responds to a challenge from the right by moving right, or by moving left.
jconway says
It will forever be country club Republicans. They kept out the far more electable TR from their nomination in 1912 since he threatened their bottom line, they picked Ike over Taft even though Ike was a New Dealer-because losing four elections in a row sucks for the party that depends on selling access to power to big business.
By 2024, assuming they lost four in a row like they did against FDR, they will finally wheel what’s left of the religious right off a cliff. The GOP will have to start appealing to Gen Xers and Millenials, the two least religious generations in America who won’t be suddenly aging into social conservatism. But they will be aging into the suburbs, gripes about taxes, and resentment towards the less fortunate-fertile ground for a more libertarian GOP.
hoyapaul says
I’m in the camp that likes Hillary but thinks that it would be bad for the general election if she did not have to respond to an at least somewhat legitimate primary challenge.
However, it seems pretty clear that Webb is not it. The room for the primary challenge is on the left, and Webb is to the right of HRC. Plus, he has no organization and has been a political non-entity for what seems like quite some time.
His only legitimate reason for running is to get into the conversation as a possible VP pick, but even that is quite a long-shot given his record. I predict that he’ll be like Tom Vilsack in ’08: one of the first notable Democrats to announce a presidential race, and one of the first to get right back out of it.
jconway says
I think this will be an uphill battle for him, precisely because of this impression. I add though that while she was voting with Joe Lieberman and no other Senate Democrats on resolutions escalating the war, sending in more troops, and against timetables-Webb actively opposed the Iraq War from day 1, he has since come out against failed interventions in Libya, Syria, and Iraq that Hillary has supported. On foreign affairs-he is definitively to her left and she is to his right.
He seems to be sounding a lot more like the senior Senator from Massachusetts than the former junior Senator of New York on economics-and he seems to be consistent in these views going back some years.
She is definitely to his left on affirmative action and possibly on immigration reform. I think his past statements on race, gender, and immigration are definitely liabilities in a primary, and entirely fair game for scrutiny. That said, he deserves consideration rather than dismissal, I honestly feel he is closer to Warren or Sanders on economics than to Clinton, and unlike Sanders or Warren, Webb could carry a state like West Virginia. If we are truly serious about reviving the New Deal coalition, we have to start laying down economic litmus tests that are stronger than our cultural ones.
He definitely has the greatest potential to be the Vilsack of this cycle, he just hates fundraising and retail politics and I don’t see that helping him win in Iowa, let alone anywhere else.
ryepower12 says
I’m not even sure he could win Virginia.
hoyapaul says
The problem with this logic is the idea that we can, or should, “revive the New Deal coalition.” I’m certainly a big FDR fan and even consider myself somewhat of a “New Deal Democrat.” But that doesn’t mean that the Democratic coalition of the 1930s makes sense for today.
The fact is that chasing dreams of capturing the white working class that constituted the center of the 1930s’ Democratic coalition won’t work in an era driven more by cleavages on cultural issues. As much as liberals want it to be so, an appeal to “economic populism” will not win back voters upset that the America they think they know is losing its way for reasons quite beyond economics. Those voters have not been part of the Democratic coalition for quite some time, and will not be again anytime soon.
It’s more important to strengthen the coalition we have than to try and reconstruct a coalition that doesn’t work with contemporary realities.
jconway says
The three most powerful forces helping Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton were the fact that he was a fresher and more electable face free of the Clinton Wars (how naive I was for thinking that), the historic aspect of an electable black candidate, and the fact that he opposed the war which she so strongly supported. All three carried equal weight in my view, to attracting people to his cause. A lot of anti-war liberals were his first supported, former Deanics as it were. I encountered a few independent McCain 2000 types backing Obama as the moderate/post-partisan alternative to Hillary, and obviously black support solidified after the Iowa win.
None of these will be a factor this year. Foreign policy, to my chagrin, is off of people’s radar, and to the extent that ISIL is a factor-it makes voters more hawkish than dovish. Obama is now the tarred and feathered partisan victim of the right’s backlash, while the Clinton’s bask in post-partisan glow and high approval ratings, even among Republicans and independents. And she is now the sole candidate with the potential to shatter a barrier. It will be uphill for any challenger, and while I like Sanders on policy and Webb on persona-it is hard for me to see any viable challenger for Clinton emerge, even Warren would face an uphill battle.
hoyapaul says
I agree, though I would put even more emphasis on Obama being in the right place at the right time after the 2006 midterms, given that it was a rare moment in which foreign policy was the central issue. As you note, that isn’t the case now — which is why Webb is problematic (since Webb’s appeal was in large part because of the Democrats’ emphasis at the time on foreign policy issues, and Webb has a strong military background).
Besides Warren, who I doubt wants to challenge Clinton in a presidential primary, the only legitimate candidate I see right now is Martin O’Malley. He can stake out a legitimate claim to the left of Clinton, since he had notable liberal successes in office involving immigration, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and the minimum wage. The whole claim that it reflects poorly on him that his LG lost the governor’s race is overblown and in any case could be framed as a point in his favor (since he’s proven his electability in a state still willing to vote for GOP governors).
I’m a little surprised that all the liberal attention is on Warren rather than O’Malley, given that the latter has more concrete liberal policy successes (nothing against Warren, since it’s harder to have policy successes as just one Senator of 100) and is far more likely to actually run against Clinton. It really is puzzling to me why he’s not getting more support from liberals (yet).
jconway says
O’Malley is really yesterdays liberal and today’s centrist.
With the exception of the minimum wage, those are all socially liberal successes. Those want a nominee refusing to crucify us on a cross of gold, will be disappointed by O’Malley. He is a compstat, datastat, Booker style technocrat from his mayoral period, and just comes across as an affable problem solver-too affable and too middle of the road to inspire partisan passion. Then again-Dean had a very similar personality, record, and political profile prior to running for President.
ryepower12 says
cream Clinton if she ever got in. The public is deeply populist right now, Warren is far more charismatic and dynamic, the national press is fascinated by Warren… and Warren would have the grassroots like no other.
Warren would even be able to keep up on the $$$ front early on, with every potential to outraise Hillary as soon as her polls inch north – and they would.
The only reason I can fathom why Liz isn’t running is because she doesn’t want to – and who could blame her? No sane person who knows and understands what it would be like to run for president would. You have to be a little bit crazy, with a heavy dose of narcissism to want that.
Meanwhile, Liz can stay in the Senate and stake out a position in which she becomes the real leader of the party – and be a huge force for pushing our party and country to the left long term.
hoyapaul says
If Warren ended up running against HRC in the primary, she would get crushed. I’m not saying that I would prefer this outcome; I’m just saying that it would happen. Clinton can and will adopt themes appropriate for the campaign (whether populist or otherwise), which will serve to box out potential rivals, and she will have no problem out fund-raising all comers. Most importantly, Clinton’s appeal crosses all demographic groups and factions within the party. Warren has not demonstrated appeal beyond the important yet clearly minority faction of liberal white professionals. I see no evidence that she can make inroads into the key groups needed to successfully lead the party coalition.
This is why Warren is smart to stay out. She can be a far more effective liberal leader from within Senate party leadership. By taking a position of amicable yet critical dialogue with Clinton, she can be an important force HRC must address on her way to the nomination. Warren can nudge Clinton to the left much more effectively that way than losing in a presidential campaign she likely doesn’t even want to wage.
jconway says
I love our senior Senator. But she is largely a single issue candidate focused on better regulating Wall Street and finance. Obviously, that dovetails into a broader revival of domestic liberalism. But she is a neophyte on foreign affairs who would be demolished by Clinton on those issues, which will be important in this primary as the fight against ISIS, the next round if Israel v. Hamas, and Russia and China continue to bully their neighbors. It will show.
And unlike Obama, she is limited to the white liberal activist class. I don’t see her winning over blacks or downscale whites, certainly not against the Clinton’s.
centralmassdad says
This is another way of saying that Sen. Warren has thus far been an excellent senator, and that the best place for an excellent senator is the Senate.
I still think it would be better if there were a legitimate contender for the nomination from the left, if only to actually pin the nominee down a bit on an agenda– a foreign policy agenda, since the House isn’t flipping in 2016 or 2018.
I am more forgiving of many here of “triangulation” because in my view, a lot of that was conceding ground that is going to be lost anyway, combined with a counterstrike. Say what you want about Clinton, the guy fought back to a degree that we haven’t really seen from Obama. Gingrich still has bruises on his gluteus maximus. A large dose of that, even if it involves pissing off this or that liberal interest group along the way (and it will), would be an awfully good thing.
Christopher says
She would shore up a skeptical base bring balance on the merits as well.
ryepower12 says
when a far lesser known candidate ran against her in 2008.
Just saying.
hoyapaul says
At the same point in the cycle back in late 2006, Barack Obama was FAR better known than Elizabeth Warren is now — and it wasn’t even close.
Not to mention that the gaps between Clinton and the rest of the field is far different now than it was two years before the ’08 elections. Check out these polls from 2006-2007 and the present. In late 2006, Clinton was leading the 2nd place candidate (typically Obama) by about 20 points. Now, Clinton leads the second-place candidate (typically Biden) by about 50 points.
This gets to the problem, of a sort. Clinton is so dominant this time that it will scare away potential rivals. But, in my opinion, she would benefit in a general election from a decent challenge from the left.
This is why I think that O’Malley is probably the best option — at this point, at least. He’s got a solid liberal record, he’s young (-ish), and, unlike Warren, he’ll soon be out of a job. My guess is that, like Obama, Hillary picks a standard white male as VP to make her historic candidacy more “safe”. Given that this is what O’Malley really will be running for, it makes sense that he’ll run as the more liberal candidate.
johnk says
If you want to run for POTUS, at a minimum don’t create your video announcement on local cable access. What did the guys from Wayne’s World produce this crap video?
For crissakes. The nuts are already starting to come out of the word work.
File Under: NO CHANCE
doubleman says
Might be a short-lister for VP or a very short-lister for Secretary of Defense.
sabutai says
The majority of comments about Webb’s run for president are about Hillary Clinton. What does that say about the next 14 months?