While Clinton still has work to do to woo Bernie voters, she has a huge opportunity created by the disruptive Trump, who has left many national security hawks, free marketers and pro-immigrant, pro-diversity conservatives feeling politically homeless. In turn, she and Obama have begun crafting arguments more associated with establishment politics than populism.
Make no mistake: this is nothing less than a political high-wire act being attempted by a meticulous but not always agile candidate. Many Sanders voters say they don’t trust her when she claims to be a “progressive,” and any new rightward lean will only confirm their suspicions. But she’ll have one heck of a wingman to carry the establishment banner through the populist headwinds: President Barack Obama, who, according to Gallup, boasts a near unanimous 84 percent job approval rating among liberals and a healthy 56 percent with moderates. He’s now testing the boundaries of those numbers, trying to leverage his reservoir of goodwill on the left to deliver a sharp rebuttal to Trump’s broadsides against his trade policies. Clearly, he is seeking to expand the political playing field, give Clinton more ideological room to maneuver and give the “Establishment” a good name.
It’s early yet, but if Clinton successfully walks the tightrope we could experience a dramatic ideological reorganization. A Clinton coalition that mixes populist with establishmentarian, capturing both disgusted center-right Republicans and wary independent Sandernistas, could be the biggest tent American politics has seen since Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency while he was bombing Cambodia.
[…]
And, if she pulls it off, with Obama’s help, we may just get the FDR-style partisan realignment many in the Democratic hoped an Obama presidency would augur.
Then, we’ll see the next battle immediately ensue, as the newly united populist left and the establishment—both left and right—fight over who gets the credit.
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Bill Scher, Can Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Save the Establishment?
If I quoted him saying ‘A Clinton coalition that mixes populist with establishmentarian could be the biggest tent American politics has seen’ I would be excising the snark, and shifting his meaning. But it could be true. Can disgust with Trump and the fall or Bernie lead to a grand Centrist/Populist coalition?
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/145657252197
