pinion Could Webb be a Serious Hillary Alternative?

Former Senator Jim Webb is testing the waters for a run at the Democratic nomination in 2016. Considering Hillary Clinton's name recognition, popularity with female Democrats and utter lock on the party's biggest sugar daddies, that seems like a fool's errand of sorts ... until Webb opens his mouth and you start to realize that he's got a well-honed message, likely to affect a broad swath of voters.

In 2014, it seemed elementary that Hillary was running, and any opposition would be little more than a small field of harmless straw men. Her nomination was to be more of a coronation than a competition. The only candidate with anywhere near the popularity needed to even consider a serious run – populist Senator Elizabeth Warren – made it known she wasn't going to jump into the race.

It became clear that Clinton would face a field of candidates most voters would have to Google, like former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (who finally made the national news cycle but only to note that his tenure as the former Mayor of Baltimore would likely be a negative in an already doomed campaign).

In January, however, former moderate Senator Jim Webb – who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan – began quietly kicking the tires on the presidential bandwagon. I didn't think too much of it, until I heard him in a radio interview while driving to the office one morning (click here to listen). Webb, who served one term in the Senate (2006-12) and did not seek reelection, made a case for a forgotten class of blue-collar, working class Democrats – primarily white ones – who have felt left behind by the party’s platform in recent years.

“I think they (Democrats) could do a better job with white, working people, and I think the last election (2014) clearly showed that,” said Webb, noting that a lot of incumbents who’d lost managed less than 40 percent of the vote. Webb says the disenfranchisement of whites pre-dates President Obama, but asserts that the focus on a pathway to 270 electoral votes in a race where African Americans turned out at 96 percent impacted the party's platform. He also says that it's difficult for such voters to describe their frustration without it being confused as racism.

Webb’s populist notion that there are an awful lot of struggling whites who feel ignored in our current economy – which seems to help the wealthiest Americans while leaving the working class (of all races) behind and focusing on safety net programs only for those at the very bottom – is sure to reach a wide range of frustrated voters.

The last two decades have seen a lot of Americans relegated to jobs at Walmarts, dreaming of the sort of middle class opportunities their parents and grandparents enjoyed at industrial plants or automobile factories. They have been left behind in the transition to a service economy, the main byproduct of which seems to be more working poor. No one to the right of Bernie Sanders or Warren have been able to speak effectively to the notion that in today's America, you can very easily have a job, work hard and still find it impossible to get ahead. No one until Webb, that is.

Webb, who is also a best-selling author, has compiled a large body of text on the subject. When you read his work, it is clear that he’s an informed intellectual with a gift for critical thinking. He’s also refreshingly candid in his conclusions and doesn’t seem to tip-toe around them just because they might make others uncomfortable. You sometimes get the latter in politics, but it so rarely comes with the former.

This is undoubtedly a double-edged sword, however. Over the years, Webb has shared some opinions that will surely come back to haunt him if he runs for President, including positions on controversial subjects like women in the military, affirmative action, the Vietnam War (where he served as a Marine) and even the validity of the secession of the Confederacy.

It might not matter that Webb can articulately defend such positions in a way that, even if you disagree, you tend to wind up respecting his opinion, which is usually bolstered by a great deal of personal experience and/or educational research on the subject. This is the age of the 24-hour news cycle and as sad as it is, few people who vote will take the time to listen to such discourse. In a war of five-word bullet points, the candidate with the most money wins: advantage Hillary.

Also, while running for the Senate in 2006, Webb was described as a terrible and disinterested campaigner, as well as a reluctant fundraiser. Again, those are things that don’t bode well for a run at the White House. Nonetheless, he’s clearly exposed a raw nerve in the Democratic Party's voting base, and it will be interesting to see how Clinton and other candidates react to it.

Dennis Maley's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The Bradenton Times. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. Click here to visit his column archive. Click here to go to his bio page. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook.