NO SPACE TO FILL. Whatever the realities of family life that contributed to Mark Warner�s decision this morning to bow out of the 2008 presidential race, there had to be some pretty compelling political realities that contributed to his decision as well. Chiefly, the fact that there really isn�t all that much political space to run to Hillary Clinton�s right in that year�s Democratic primaries and caucuses. Indeed, Hillary�s decision to position herself in the center-right of the party set the stage for Warner�s fall and John Edwards�s rise in this year�s sorting of Democratic presidential hopefuls. Her positions on the largest economic questions, particularly her advocacy of education, broadly defined, as the solution to the dislocations of globalization, anchor her firmly in the Robert Rubin wing of the party. Her don�t-rock-the-boat-too-much-capsizing-though-it-be position on Iraq, while by no means close to Joe Lieberman�s embrace of administration policy, still puts her slightly right of the mushy center of Democratic opinion in the Senate. So what were the issues and where were the votes that Warner could have picked up to Hillary�s right? He could not have plausibly run as Gary Hart to Hillary�s Fritz Mondale, first because Hillary isn�t Fritz Mondale, second because slot Hart occupied -- the champion of the entrepreneurial and somewhat more deregulated new economy -- is no longer a slot, what with the economy now deregulated up the wazoo. John Edwards, by contrast, has seen the opportunities presented by Hillary�s centrism, and in 2005, he took �em. He repudiated his vote authorizing the war, as Hillary has not. He has focused on the casualities of the new economy -- not just the poor, but the wage-stagnated middle class -- and proposed a range of policy directions that go well beyond applied Rubinism. He has also been a mega-beneficiary of the new Democratic primary calendar, which inserts Nevada caucuses (in which Local 226, the Vegas hotel union of UNITE HERE, is sure to be the most dominant player) in between Iowa (where he�s actually ahead of Hillary in one poll of state Democrats) and New Hampshire, and puts a South Carolina primary immediately after New Hampshire (Edwards won that primary in 2004). He�s staked a clear claim to the support of the Democratic left, and his main worry has to be the entry (as Tom mentions) of Al Gore into the race, since Gore could contest that claim and bring national security bona fides to the table as well. In any event, these are no longer Mark Warner�s worries. They�re Evan Bayh�s. The Indiana senator now succeeds Warner as the neo entry in the 2008 field. The question is how much of an inheritance that really is.
--Harold Meyerson
