Judd Gregg: Hillary’s choice

With Hillary Clinton’s formal declaration that she is running for president, there has been a great deal of chatter from within her party that she is not liberal enough. 

She needs to move left, some Democratic voices say. 

{mosads}Clinton, of course, lost the nomination to then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in 2008 because he got to her left and dominated the caucus states, where the base of the party has disproportionate influence.  

By the time Clinton’s team seemed to realize what was happening, Obama had an insurmountable lead.

Could this occur again?

It seems unlikely. But even that is not the real story.

The real story is just how far left the Democratic Party has moved. Does Hillary move with it?

Just consider these facts and positions.

The Obama presidency has been built on the theme of class warfare. 

In a throwback to the dogma of the left of the 1960s, he has propagated the message that America is an unjust country.   

His policies, and the people he empowers, have as their purpose the mitigation of this injustice. This involves, at its core, a commitment to redistribution and a belief that a few should work to carry the many because the many have not been given a fair opportunity to prosper.

The leadership of the Congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), are calling for an abandonment of any form of fiscal restraint. They instead advocate a massive expansion of entitlement spending.   

The template for these proposals are written by the “progressive” think tanks that now dominate the battle of ideas within the Democratic caucus.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has become the go-to voice for the “progressive” movement. 

The new ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee — the most senior Democratically-aligned member on the committee, chosen by his colleagues, is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).    

Sanders ran as, and was elected as, a socialist. He is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. It is a dramatic and definite statement by the Democratic senators that they would chose a socialist to be the person responsible for leading them on spending and taxes.  

This is one of those rare times when, if honestly viewed, the statement being made is unequivocal—socialism (or “progressivism,” which is the term of preference for the left) is now the engine that drives the policies of the Democratic agenda.

The question is, where does this leave Hillary?

On social issues, she has always been at the center of party with an unyielding commitment to women’s rights as defined by the left.

But on spending and fiscal policy her record in the Senate was not “progressive.”  It instead showed a rational and practical acknowledgement of the need to have a sustainable fiscal policy that did not drive productivity out of the system through excess taxation, or deficits and debt.   

This practical, real-world acknowledgement of the forces of the market in a market economy cannot possibly sit well with the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren party of today.  

Has Hillary been left in the 1990s,  at the starting gate of the new left of American politics (which is actually a throwback to the old left of the 1940s, 50s and 60s)? Or will she jump in the wagon with the rest of the “progressive” team?

This is the real issue on which to focus, independent of all the debate over her emails, her regime at the State Department, her attempt to create HillaryCare or the fundraising of the Clinton Foundation.

Will she sign onto the progressive movement that has so captured the thought process of the Democratic Party or will she, like her husband, bring the party back into the mainstream of American market economics, defending the prosperity it has generated for generations?

This is something of a Churchillian moment for her.  

She has the chance to redirect her party away from the cliffs of fiscal and economic chaos where it is headed.   

There are many Democrats in the Congress and on Main Street who have been driven into hiding in the face of the witch-hunt against capitalism initiated by Warren and her acolytes.   

They sorely need a voice of reason within their party — in Hillary’s case, it would actually be the leader of their party —  so that their belief in pursuing the American dream the old fashioned way, through hard work and social commitment, can be endorsed.

It will be interesting to see if Hillary Clinton has it in her to start using her huge amount of political capital now, even before she has the nomination,  to reposition her party.

She ought to do so before it is locked into a course that will inevitably alienate the folks who elected her husband — and alienate the nation that has given her family such consistent deference.

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.