THE STRUGGLE FOR POSITION in the Democratic Party

SO LAST WEEK

 I TALKED ABOUT THE STRUGGLE FOR POSITION in the Democratic Party, between it’s urban-black wing and its gentry liberal wing. Now we see another blow struck: Deval Patrick warns Hillary Clinton: Inevitability is “off-putting.”

“I don’t mean that as a criticism of her; I just think people read inevitably as entitlement,” he added. “And the American people want, and ought to want, their candidates to sweat for the job, you know, to actually make the case for why they’re the right person for the right time.”

Translation: If you want me on board, you have to make it worth my while. . . .

Meanwhile, the Gentry Liberals are fighting back: Democrats assail Wall Street ties in Obama administration.

President Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss to serve as the Treasury Department’s top domestic finance official is drawing fire from an unusual sector: his fellow Democrats.

Liberal lawmakers like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have been quick to oppose Weiss, a major investment banker with Lazard.

Among their grievances is the fact that Lazard’s work is primarily in international finance and he is nominated for a domestic position. They’re also critical of his role in structuring several tax inversion deals, which have drawn criticism from the president himself.

But an underlying thread to the Democratic opposition is a fatigue with filling top-ranking administration spots with officials that have spent significant time working for or on behalf of Wall Street titans. Warren penned an op-ed in The Huffington Post criticizing the administration’s approach under the headline “Enough is Enough.”

It’s amusing to watch this infighting, but it’s not serious — it’s just positioning for a piece of the 2016 pie.
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Posted at 6:43 pm by Glenn Reynolds 





LAST WEEK


SO WHY ALL THE FERGUSON HOOPLA? Last time the Dems and Sharpton made a big deal of a shooting, it was the Trayvon Martin case, hyped to keep up black turnout for 2012. But now there’s not an election. So why Ferguson, and why now? Polling indicates that most people aren’t all that sympathetic, and protests that tie up Interstates, etc. aren’t going to attract swing voters.

But it’s not about swing voters. It’s about the base. And it’s not about the Democratic Party’s base, but about certain leaders’ base within the Democratic Party. This may be best understood as an intra-party struggle. Obama is the champion of the urban-black wing of the party, and because of him that wing has been on top. But his star is fading, black voters are beginning to realize that they haven’t benefited economically, and the next Dem nominee — whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb, or Elizabeth Warren — will be from the white gentry-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The riots, the marches, the traffic-blocking are a way of telling them that the Sharpton wing is still a force to be reckoned with, and to improve its bargaining power between now and 2016. At least, that’s the only way this — not at all spontaneous — street theater makes sense.