Culture

The Democratic Primary’s Moving Margins


Watching the two Democratic debates last week, it was difficult to judge which of the twenty candidates was a truly marginal figure. Marianne Williamson, a writer specializing in soulfulness, might qualify, with her scorn for “superficial” plans, her promise to “harness love,” and her declaration that her first call as President would be to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. (“I would tell her, ‘Girlfriend, you are so on.’ ”) And yet, at the second debate, she stood out more than John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado. Perhaps the marginal one was the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who hardly had a chance to explain his offer of a thousand dollars a month to every adult American, or Representative Eric Swalwell, of California, who mainly seemed to be yelling about how former Vice-President Joe Biden was really old. (Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, who is a year older than Biden, seemed almost offended to be left out of that exchange.) In a memorable moment on the first night, Representative Tim Ryan, of Ohio, withered in a confrontation with Representative Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii, about the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan. Both, though, had been averaging less than one per cent in the polls.

But, then, a majority of the candidates fell into that sub-one-per-cent category, including Julián Castro, the former Housing Secretary, who was widely viewed as one of the winners of the first debate. What confounds the effort to determine a candidate’s marginality is that, if the Democratic nominee is not Biden, Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, then it will be someone who, last week, was polling in the single digits, if that. (At this stage in 2015, Donald Trump was just clawing his way up above ten per cent.) Biden looked weaker after the second night, largely because Senator Kamala Harris, of California, challenged him on his record on racial issues—his opposition to busing, in the seventies; his comments on the practical benefits of working with segregationist senators, last month—in a way that complicated his long commitment to civil rights. She told him she had been “that little girl” who was bused to integrate a public school in Berkeley. Harris came out of the debate looking like a top-tier candidate.

There is another question about marginality that emerged in the debates: where the Democrats’ ideological limits lie. For example, Castro’s humbling of Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from Texas, came as O’Rourke was outlining a fairly wide-ranging plan to aid asylum seekers and secure citizenship for Dreamers. Castro attacked him for, in effect, focussing on those migrants seen as most sympathetic, and pledged to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws so that crossing the border without authorization would be reduced from a criminal offense to a civil one. “I’m not talking about the ones seeking asylum,” Castro said, about the migrants who would be affected. “I’m talking about everyone else.”

He cited the Trump Administration’s use of the criminal classification as a rationale for its child-separation policies, but his proposal would have broad implications, possibly placing limits on the government’s detention of many border-crossers. Castro noted that three of the candidates who appeared with him the first night—Warren; Senator Cory Booker, of New Jersey; and Governor Jay Inslee, of Washington—had signed on to the proposal. Ryan joined in on the spot, while Senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, said she’d “look at” the idea, but worried about traffickers. The next night, when a moderator asked candidates to raise their hands if they supported decriminalization, eight and a half of them did so. (Biden’s hand was semi-aloft.) Senator Michael Bennet, of Colorado, was the only firm no; suddenly, he was at the margin.

Castro’s intervention helped clarify some of the options for the Party. Some Democrats consider borders that are porous and not dangerous to cross to be the most just and properly American outcome of the humanitarian crisis on the southern border. (A number of candidates mentioned a widely distributed photograph of the corpses of a father and his toddler daughter, who had drowned in an attempt to cross the Rio Grande.) Other Democrats seek to provide humane treatment and legal representation for migrant families, while emphasizing their commitment to “border security.” Such fault lines were on display last week in Washington, as Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, struggled to unite her caucus around an emergency-aid bill; in the end, ninety-five Democrats voted against it, on the ground that it allowed too many resources to be directed toward enforcement. Many of the Presidential contenders have been vague about where they fall in that divide, concentrating instead on the cruelty of the Administration’s approach. In a general election, Trump would make such ambiguity hard to maintain. Democrats need to be ready for that fight, too.

In crowded fields, debates can be a forum for escalation; no matter what you say, someone might reply—as Booker did, after Gabbard spoke of how she and the L.G.B.T.Q. soldiers she’d served with in Iraq would die for one another—“But it’s not enough, it’s not enough.” Still, something interesting is going on here. For example, all the Democratic candidates want to build on the promise of Obamacare—part of the Party’s valuable focus on inequality. Only four raised their hands when asked if they would abolish private health insurance, and yet three of those are among the top four contenders in the polls: Sanders, Warren, and Harris. (Harris, the next day, clarified that the plan she supported allowed some exceptions to the prohibition on private insurance.) Radical ideas are as much at the center of the action, in other words, as at the fringes. That can be a productive phenomenon, although, again, in a general election it is not without risks.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Indiana, is now somewhere around fifth place, and is one of the candidates who will likely remain in the race after the Democratic National Committee tightens the criteria for participation in the debates in September. He came across, on the second night, as a sensible progressive—he advocated “Medicare for all who want it,” rather than banning private coverage. In a discussion about college affordability, he mentioned that “Chasten and I have six-figure student debt.” This was a reference to his husband. Candidates who once would have been marginalized in this country were on the stage both nights. Is that harnessing love? The margins are always moving. ♦



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