Author: Paul Deaton

Beginning with the first debate on Oct. 13, it has been a fast and wild ride for Democrats.

Hillary Clinton held her lead in the polls, and Bernie Sanders appears to have reached a ceiling of support. Vice president Joe Biden won’t enter the race for president. Webb and Chafee bowed out. The Benghazi hearing turned to Clinton’s advantage due mostly to the Republican bubble combined with the fact that most viewers understand the political nature of the investigation. As I write, 6,000 ticket holders are ready to grace the HyVee Hall in Des Moines on Saturday to hear speeches and have some fun before the real work of organizing the caucuses begins with the end of year holidays.

What about Hillary Clinton?

I re-read my reasons for supporting Hillary, and find no need to switch. At the same time, some intertwined questions give progressives pause. Is she too close to Wall Street? How will she handle international trade and its relationship with the environment, labor and working Americans?

As the Democratic choice is reduced to one between Clinton and Sanders, the contrasts between them are what matters most.

Bernie Sanders has called for breaking up the big banks like he is beating a drum. In May he introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate “to break up the nation’s biggest banks in order to safeguard the economy and prevent another costly taxpayer bailout,” according to his campaign web site.

“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis,” Sanders said. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

Clinton doesn’t go that far. Instead she supports reforms that would close loopholes in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill and strengthen enforcement against financial wrongdoing. Read the details of the plan here.

The difference is this. In order for Sanders to break up the big banks, he needs the cooperation of the Congress. For that to happen, the “political revolution” mentioned in his every speech must happen first, along with correction of Republican gerrymandering after the 2010 census. That’s a tall order for the Sanders agenda and if he has truly hit the ceiling of support, less likely to happen.

When we consider Clinton’s plan for reform, it has its challenges as well. Both President Obama and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon lobbied the Congress to reinstate banned federal subsidies for derivatives trading in Dodd-Frank. The plan Clinton announced would repeal these perquisites, returning to the original intent of Dodd-Frank. She too will need the support of the Congress to make that happen.

Skeptics point to Clinton’s treasure trove of campaign donations from Wall Street and question whether she will actually execute the reforms she proposed. Clinton pointed out that as a U.S. Senator she represented Wall Street in the Congress, literally, so the point is well taken. This question is less about her relationship with Wall Street and more about whether or not the electorate will engage in the general election and bring needed change to our government regarding Wall Street and across the board.

Both Sanders and Clinton oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership, based on what is known about the recent agreement (which has not been finalized). Progressives fear TPP will be another step toward globalization with consequences for the environment, labor and the way of life for many Americans.

The impact of globalization has been devastating in the U.S. as large businesses got larger and manufacturing moved to countries with lower labor costs and less stringent environmental regulation. Because of wage stagnation, middle class people have been compelled to purchase low cost goods produced in other countries, thus encouraging a cycle that isn’t in our best interests. Patterns set during the post-World War Two era were broken up with harsh consequences for workers and their families.

Bernie Sanders has voted against trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA and the TPP. He has also voted yes on withdrawing from the World Trade Organization. Hillary Clinton shares her husband’s legacy which includes NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. These entities epitomize the hopes for increased trade with globalization. They also brought along environmental degradation and substantial changes in the U.S. workforce experience.

Between Sanders and Clinton, who has the better policy?

The answer seems less than clear. There is little agreement and less understanding among members of the electorate about the relationship between trade, globalization, environmental degradation and labor. There are no simple answers when people want simplicity in a complex world.

What we know is the interests of Wall Street align, for the most part, with interests in globalization. We are back to the basic difference between Sanders and Clinton in implementing change during a potential administration. Sanders calls for a revolution, and Clinton does not. Sanders assumes down ticket wins to support his positions will happen as a corollary to his “revolution.” Clinton takes the world as it is and intends to improve it.

Given Hillary Clinton’s long involvement in globalization as a path to economic prosperity, one asks whether her views have changed since her husband’s administration and how. She repeatedly said she is not planning for Bill Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s third term, but rather her own first term.

Answers have not been forthcoming. Globalization has been indirectly referred to in this campaign. There is no trade section on Clinton’s campaign website and the issue is much deeper than her skepticism about the TPP.

These issues matter, and remain at the core of the differences between Sanders and Clinton. Globalization is also at the core of concern about jobs, the environment, and a U.S. middle class lifestyle that has been under assault beginning with the Reagan administration.

Going into the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson dinner, Clinton looks to be the nominee more than she did when she entered the race. It is up to progressives to look past the horse race and press her on these issues.

Going into what is arguably the biggest political event of the year for Iowa Democrats — the Jefferson Jackson dinner on Saturday — the Feb 2 caucus is coming into focus.

Despite a field of six plus Joe Biden, the contest has never been about more than two candidates, front runner Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. That is not expected to change.

If Biden enters the race for president, he will suck the oxygen from candidates Martin O’Malley and Larry Lessig. Lincoln Chafee isn’t running an Iowa campaign and Jim Webb bowed out earlier today.

In any case, if Biden runs, O’Malley gets very few or no delegates. If not, O’Malley has a chance to hoover up those dissatisfied with Clinton and Sanders as the alternative and maybe get viable. In 2008, the Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd groups attempted viability this way to no avail, at least in my precinct where the caucus was 95 Obama, 75 Edwards and 75 Clinton.

There are two tickets out of Iowa and Clinton and Sanders have them booked. Not much can happen to alter that outcome.

It is not certain, but Hillary Clinton will likely be the party’s nominee for president and win the 2016 election, at least according to Las Vegas odds makers today. There may be some local variations. Sanders may take Johnson County, and other Iowa liberal centers, but lose the state to Clinton. I wrote my expectation Sanders will win back yard New Hampshire some time ago. Having been through a 50-state campaign before, Clinton is the odds-on favorite beyond Super Tuesday.

There is work to get out the caucus for our candidates. There are some Democratic issues remaining to be addressed, not the least of which is activating voters who care less and less about belonging to a political party. It’s hard to see how the Jefferson Jackson dinner will be a breakout event for any candidate as we slog toward the caucus and the 2016 general election.

It’s hard to disagree with Bernie Sanders (I-VT): a political revolution is needed to make sustained, progressive change in the U.S. political system.

It takes more than a president.

“No president, not the best intentioned in the world can implement the changes we need in this country without a political revolution,” Sanders said at the University of Chicago on Sept. 28. “I am talking about the need to transform the political system.”

Unless Sanders can inspire more Americans to participate in the political process, any top-down plan for revolution is set to fail. He knows this.

“There is nothing that I am telling you today that is pie in the sky, that is Utopian. Nothing,” Sanders said. “We can accomplish all of that and more, but we will not accomplish that if 80 percent of young people do not vote. We will not accomplish that if 63 percent of the American people do not vote.”

Let’s say Sanders overtakes Hillary Clinton’s double-digit lead for the Democratic nomination for president. There is time for him to do that, and key Clinton endorsers acknowledge privately it is possible.

Much of the Democratic establishment in Iowa, including former senator Tom Harkin, has endorsed Clinton. Journeyman blogger Pat Rynard details some of them here. If Clinton secures the endorsement of Democratic politicos and Sanders wins the Iowa caucuses, what then?

What we know, or should, is once the nomination is finalized the party needs a kumbaya moment to elect the nominee. Mine is a history of picking losers when I have caucused in Iowa. Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, John Kerry (won caucus, lost presidential election), and John Edwards. I’m well familiar with having to settle for someone who was not my first choice.

Some, like aficionado of the sport of kings Jerry Crawford, will pivot or lose what credibility they have left. The rest will go along with mixed levels of enthusiasm. That’s not the core issue.

Without legislative support any president’s agenda is reduced to a small number of victories combined with executive actions. The power of the presidency is not insignificant, however, implementing the proposals evident in almost every Sanders speech will prove impossible if the Congress continues to be dominated by money, corruption and the influence of corporations. To be effective, the new president will need congressional support in the form of an Iowa congressional delegation consisting of more than Dave Loebsack (IA-02).

We each have some take-away from Pope Francis’ visit to the United States last week. Mine was his pointing to the bas-relief portrait of Moses by Jean de Marco hanging in the House chamber. It may take a Moses figure to lead us out of the political quagmire where we find ourselves in exile from the democracy created by the founders.

“You are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face,” Pope Francis said on role of Congress. We are a long way from that, and both Sanders and Clinton know it.

My bet is on Clinton winning the nomination, but a focus solely on the presidential horse race misses Sanders’ point. Winning the general election is by no means a slam dunk for Democrats. Key to Democratic success in 2016 is organizing now to bring more people into the process. This is where the use of corporate money, control of the media, and emphasis on religion is serving Republicans.

While voter registration matters to the party, it’s importance is eroded by the clear expression of more than a third of the electorate that “No Party” is better than any party. The focus on the Iowa caucuses and the presidential pick is a distraction from what we need to do to accomplish Sanders’ revolution.

There are no easy answers to Sanders’ call for a revolution. As long as Democrats focus on the horse race, revolutions will remain a part of history — something to distract us from today’s problems, the ones many avoid confronting.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa