Three lefty bloggers speculated Friday about one or the other of two potential 2016 presidential candidates, one from each major party. The White House prospects of the Republican have been much-discussed for a few years; those of the Democrat, not so much.
Esquire’s Charles Pierce lauded Al Franken’s recent “populist campaign for re-election” to the Senate and wondered, given Elizabeth Warren’s reluctance to run for president, why Franken shouldn’t give it a go instead, since he’s “showed…how you embrace the themes on which Warren has based her career in the context of a political campaign.” (Also, it would “cause Bill O'Reilly's head to detonate in a gorgeous orange fireball.”)
From Pierce’s post:
Franken ran a populist campaign for re-election -- straight, no chaser. His ads were direct, and their message was impressively disciplined…If you're looking for a way to do this, Franken and his people have written the primer. So here's what I'm thinking -- why don't we hear Franken's name bandied more about as a Democratic presidential possibility in 2016?...[Elizabeth] Warren doesn't want to run, even though the most compelling conclusion to be drawn from the blasted landscape of the Democratic campaign is that running away from her particular economic message is disastrous, no matter where you happen to be running. Franken showed through his campaign how you embrace the themes on which Warren has based her career in the context of a political campaign.
Since arriving in the Senate, Franken clearly has made the decision to be a workhorse, and not a show pony, which was something that his friend and mentor, the late Paul Wellstone, once told me was the first decision any new senator has to make. You can't run for president without showing a little show pony. Maybe he doesn't want to do that. But given the choice between the coronation of Hillary Clinton, and the suddenly desiccated range of options, it's hard not to see a space for Franken to run. Hell, back in the day, he even wrote a novel about a Franken Presidency. Was he kidding on the square? Good enough? Check. Smart enough? Check. The fact that this would cause Bill O'Reilly's head to detonate in a gorgeous orange fireball is merely a bonus.
Meanwhile, the Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore asserted that some pundits “can be expected inevitably to focus on Scott Walker as the potential candidate with something for everybody,” and opined that “in many respects…Walker is exactly what you get if you take southern Republicanism in all its sordid glory and apply it in a frosty and unfamiliar environment” (emphasis added below):
He’s won three times…in a state carried twice by Obama. He’s taken on and beaten the labor movement, an especially important qualifier for people like Karl Rove obsessed with undermining the Democratic Party’s donor base. He loves the Kochs, the Kochs love him. He’s a conservative evangelical without being all that noisy about it…
…[He] is not notable for exhibiting the quality known as charisma; that ultimately doomed a 2012 candidate who like Walker looked good on paper, Tim Pawlenty. And a lot of smart people, including Charles Pierce and Joan Walsh, are convinced the aroma of corruption around his administration and political organization comes from a dumpster-full of bad practices that will eventually catch on fire.
But it’s hard to think of any of the domestic government priorities of today’s conservative movement—from election suppression to rolling back abortion rights to undermining entitlements to erosion of collective bargaining rights to an entire economic strategy based on making life easy for “job-creators”—on which Walker hasn’t distinguished himself, against enormous resistance. In many respects…Walker is exactly what you get if you take southern Republicanism in all its sordid glory and apply it in a frosty and unfamiliar environment. So the man is going to have an instinctive appeal to conservative activists everywhere.
And the American Prospect’s Paul Waldman piggybacked on Kilgore’s post to comment, “Of all the potential GOP 2016 candidates, Walker may be the most terrifying. Yes, it would be a calamity of apocalyptic proportions if Ted Cruz were to become president, but we all know that's never going to happen. Walker, however, is a much more credible candidate.”
