Nov 13, 2016
Pundit Accountability Initiative: What I Said About Jim Webb
As I carry forth my post-election Pundit Accountability Initiative, some of my anonymous online critics have begun to regularly point out that I made a series of misjudgments about Jim Webb in 2014. They are correct in the sense that I overestimated Webb’s prospective efficacy as a presidential candidate, but they’re wrong and cynical about some other things. So in the interest of full transparency, let me review the record regarding what I said publicly about Jim Webb in 2014, six months before the campaign began.
Here’s the one item I wrote on Jim Webb, for The Week, in November 2014.
I invite anyone interested to go back and read it in its entirety. First off, I didn’t write the headline. Writers almost never select the headline that accompanies their pieces, unless they’re writing for Medium or something. I would’ve picked a headline that was a little less… assertive.
I wrote:
Foreign policy is Webb’s main strength. Remember that during the storied 2008 Democratic presidential primary, the defining issue seized on with great effect by Barack Obama was then-Sen. Clinton’s vote to authorize military force against Saddam Hussein. And wouldn’t you know it, here we are again, embarking on another military offensive of indeterminate length — one that very much includes “boots on the ground.”
By the time the 2016 Iowa caucus rolls around, the U.S. may well still be mired in Iraq and Syria (and who knows where else?). Clinton, as Obama’s secretary of State, is widely reputed to have been one of the administration’s foremost interventionist agitators, producing disillusionment among anti-war grassroots Democrats who will probably take an active role in the primaries. This contingent is unlikely to accept the coronation of Hillary the Hawk without a fight.
I think that’s all still correct. Even though I ultimately supported him, one of my main grievances about Bernie’s campaign was always that he under-emphasized foreign policy. In a country with the most powerful military in world history, I think that’s bad. Our military causes mass suffering worldwide and has for decades. We constantly screw up other nations’ affairs, to cataclysmic effect. So that’s why I wanted a candidate well-versed on foreign policy, who could call out Hillary’s horrendous failings in that area.
I further wrote in that 2014 piece,
Crucially, [Webb] appears willing to adopt an overtly antagonistic posture toward Wall Street. “The most important — and unfortunately the least debated — issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system,” Webb tweeted last month. In that respect, he represents an antidote to the “boardroom liberalism” that has hobbled the Obama administration. And with all her “closed press” corporate appearances, $225,000 speaking gigs at public universities, and “listening tours” in the Hamptons, Clinton is not just a continuation of this mindset, but an unseemly entrenchment of it.
Beyond that, his primary area of interest as a senator was perhaps criminal justice reform, momentum for which has been building in the Democratic activist base for years now — just see last week’s string of successful marijuana legalization initiatives. Webb’s proposed commission to examine mass incarceration was ultimately blocked, but that he pursued it with vigor showed where his priorities lie.
Concerns about police violence and over-militarization also animate legions of young Democratic-leaning activists, among whom memories of the zealous nationwide crackdown on the Occupy movement are still fresh. Then there is Ferguson, which touched a raw nerve among blacks in particular. It will be difficult to balance respect for working class officers and their families with a condemnation of police corruption and overreach, but Webb is far better situated than Clinton to make that case.
I think that’s all still basically correct too. It’s true that society’s drift toward a stratified, “class-based” system became an animating theme of the 2016 campaign. What I didn’t anticipate is that Bernie would be an incredibly effective avatar for those grievances. That was a pleasant surprise to me (and reportedly even to Bernie himself). So in other words, I think I diagnosed the political climate correctly, but I misdiagnosed Bernie’s potential to seize on those themes.
As mentioned above, it was also accurate to predict that the newly-emboldened left-wing element of the Democratic Party coalition was especially attune to criminal justice issues. That became another big theme of the Democratic primary campaign. Hillary made superficial entreaties to black (and young “woke” white) voters by adopting some of the “Black Lives Matter” lexicon, notwithstanding the brutal mass incarceration policies she championed with her husband. She was not a credible opponent of the US penal state. Bernie was, and I give him credit for that. Bernie also ended up endorsing marijuana legalization due to the evolving incentives within the party coalition, which was wise. (It’s funny, if Hillary had just shown a modicum of amenability to changing political trends and also endorsed marijuana legalization, she might have mobilized enough youth support to defeat Trump. We’ll never know.)
Of course, Webb flamed out. Actually, he barely ended up even campaigning at all; what events he did hold could hardly even be considered campaign stops. He clearly wasn’t interested in the endeavor. On top of that he adopted a really boneheaded take on the Iran Deal, which officially ceased any semblance of support from me. By 2015 I was perfectly fine with his lack of traction, because I supported Bernie, who was obviously the insurgent populist choice. Webb dropped out in October 2015 and I shed no tears.
When the race came down to Clinton versus Sanders, I certainly didn’t spend every waking moment chastising Sanders supporters as naive, insinuating that they were secretly racist or sexist, demanding that they check their privilege, cynically mocking them for not being sufficiently black or Hispanic, or other similar efforts that were undertaken at great length by pro-Clinton pundits such as Matthew Yglesias and Jamelle Bouie. Unfortunately, both gentlemen have since deleted their old tweets, so they can’t be scoured like mine have been. Too bad! Maybe someone should ask them why they saw fit to suddenly purge their internet commentary record?
I’d also note — I even argued that Lincoln Chafee, another low-profile candidate, should be given a fair hearing. (Chafee ran on an anti-surveillance, anti-war, pro-Snowden platform.) That’s because I knew the “inevitability” stuff around Hillary was going to stifle genuine competition and damage the party’s prospects for winning in November 2016.
You’ll notice that never did I ever predict that Jim Webb would actually win the Democratic Party nomination. What I “predicted” was that he could run a constructive, effective campaign, challenge Hillary adroitly on her disastrous foreign policy portfolio, and hence add something worthwhile to the overall debate. That was an incorrect surmise on my part. (See? It’s easy to admit error. Everyone makes mistakes.)
Webb won his race for the US Senate in 2006 by appealing strongly to “downscale” Appalachian whites in southwest Virginia, as well as the more traditional Democratic strongholds such as Richmond. Back then, “downscale whites” was seen as a constituency that Democrats needed to be competitive with in order to secure victory. Indeed, Trump ended up overperforming dramatically in these very areas, and Hillary’s support there cratered, contributing to her loss. I continue to think both Webb and Sanders would have performed sufficiently well among these demographics to defeat Trump.
In sum, I still think the reasons I laid out in 2014 for why Hillary was vulnerable and Webb had potential were accurate: there were shifts underway in the Democratic Party coalition that made her less “inevitable” than was popularly assumed. What I didn’t anticipate, but came as a pleasant surprise, was that Bernie ended up having a lot more potential than I had anticipated. Once he actually began running in April 2015 and gained considerable traction in Iowa and Hew Hampshire, I enthusiastically supported him.
So that’s what happened: I examined new evidence, reevaluated my past assumptions, and then arrived at a different conclusion.
What I will fess up to is that in a few stray 2014 tweets, I was more glib than I ought to have been about Sanders. Again, this was well before the campaign actually began. Bernie was seen as a gadfly. I liked him, but I didn’t think he had any viability as a presidential candidate. I was glad to be wrong about this!
As you can see, my main aim was finding someone who could beat Hillary. Ultimately I was correct to suppose that Bernie could not beat Hillary. I wish he had, but he did not. He got a lot more traction than I thought was possible in October 2014, but he didn’t beat her. Zaid Jilani was correct to foresee that Bernie would have significant appeal among the Democratic Party’s fluid electorate. When new evidence arose substantiating Zaid’s thesis, I came to agree with him. That’s how these things are supposed to work.
My support for Bernie was cemented when I visited the University of Vermont archives in July 2015 and studied his career history. I found him to be an adroit, principled, compassionate leader going back to his days as a novelty third party candidate in Vermont.
On the other hand, scores of professional, well-paid pundits were chronically wrong throughout the entirety of the 2016 election process, ignored data that contravened their assumptions, made ridiculously wrong predictions, woefully misinterpreted both Sanders and Trump, foolishly promoted Hillary, and disgraced themselves permanently. I think my fundamental premises were correct in promoting Webb for a brief period in late 2014, even if I misjudged his own personal capacities. So that’s it. Again, happy to compare my record with others.
