Look, I’m sorry about this, but Jim Webb is no more going to be the Democratic nominee next year than Rick Santorum is going to be the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States. Indeed Santorum, who has no chance, has a better chance than Webb of succeeding Barack Obama.
Which is annoying, I know, because it means the search for a pundit-worthy alternative to Hillary Clinton goes on. Webb, the Marine Corps veteran, novelist, historian and one-term Virginia Senator, is neither the first nor the last candidate to inspire could-he-really journalistic prayers for a competitive contest for the Democratic nomination.
It is true that Webb’s biography is the kind of thing you find in the movies and it is also true that he speaks to – or at least represents – a tradition and a constituency that’s not a large part of the modern Democratic party. Nevertheless, if he runs, he loses.
As it happens I spent some time observing Webb in the only election he has fought. He won Virginia in 2006 largely despite his evident aversion to asking for support. I am not sure I have ever seen a politician less at ease on the campaign trail. Webb is a proud man – a man who values his honour highly – and the demands and constant contortions and daily humiliations of a political campaign plainly pained him. He looked like a man who had swallowed a wasp and his pleas for support came through gritted teeth.
In short, he is not a natural politician. And all the authenticity in the world cannot quite make up for an almost total inability to fake it with the people. (It also helped that his opponent, George Allen, imploded in spectacular fashion.)
Despite all that, I argued in 2008 that, never mind his lack of ease on the stump and relative lack of political experience, there was a decent, if largely symbolic, case for Barack Obama to choose Webb as his Vice-President. Webb, after all, could conceivably help compensate for Obama’s relative weakness amongst working-class white men. His military record stood for itself and, as a conservative Democrat, he would help balance the ticket in an ideological sense too.
Of course Obama chose Joe Biden instead and he was probably right. Not because Biden likes to reckon himself a blue-collar Democrat too but because, in the end, long experience in Washington was more important – and correctly so – to a fresh-faced, new-in-town, would-be President.
Webb is drawn to lost causes, too. In the Senate one of his more notable interventions was a campaign for prison reform. This was as honourable as it was doomed. Which is to say, very honourable and very, very, doomed. That spoke well of Webb and poorly of his colleagues in the Senate but it’s not the sort of thing that people want to hear about on the campaign trail.
Moreover, while it is true that Democrats have had a problem with working-class white males in recent elections it is also the case that this is a problem that becomes smaller with the passing of each electoral cycle. (The Republicans’ problem with African-American and Hispanic voters, however, becomes larger and larger every four years.)
In any case, Hillary Clinton, like her husband before her, has always done well in greater Appalachia. She trounced Barack Obama in those mountains and there’s no reason to think even someone as dedicatedly and proudly Scots-Irish as Jim Webb could defeat her in those primaries even if the contest lasted long enough to reach them.
As for the general election, sure, Hillary has her weaknesses but I doubt the ability to carry Virginia or Pennsylvania is one of them. Obama may have won only 35 percent of the white male vote in 2012 (down from 41 percent in 2008) but I fancy Clinton will take more than the 42 percent of white women Obama won last time out.
So while it is true that Democrats do need to reconnect with blue-collar white voters it’s not necessary for them to choose Jim Webb to do so. Not when, whether one likes her or not, Hillary Clinton brings rather higher-calibre ammunition to this bunfight.
Yes, plenty of people thought in 2007 that Hillary was unassailable. And she was until the moment an attractive and plausible alternative candidate emerged. For various reasons that had little to do with his record or even his personality the moment was right for Barack Obama. The stars aligned for him but he also worked hard to earn the right to pierce Clinton’s inevitability strategy.
There is, as yet, no sign that any of Clinton’s rivals possess the biography or the organisation that can beat her. Or the money. That’s another thing about Jim Webb: he hates grovelling to donors. Which, again, is fine but without money you cannot win. Without money, you lose. And where is Jim Webb going to find his money? Nowhereville, that’s where.
Which may be a shame but being a shame cannot contradict the fact that’s the way it is. Unless people can be convinced you have a chance of winning you cannot win. There is no sign Webb or, as yet, any of the pretenders to Hillary’s crown, have the ability to make voters think they can win. (Obama could – and did.)
The who-can-stop-Hillary game is a lovely game to play but, at the moment, that’s all it is. A game. Perhaps someone will emerge who really can hurt Clinton but I’ll wager that someone is not called Jim Webb.
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