Game Change 2016: Whichever Candidate Polls Best

May I just admit that I loved the new Mark Halperin and John Heilemann 2012 election gossip book? It’s embarrassing, I know! I made fun of the title, Double Down: Game Change 2012, as much as anyone when it was announced. And the title remains funny — as does each time (and there are many) a sentence appears in the book along the lines of, This was a game changer or He chose instead to double down or even that most prized goose, Instead of trying to change the game, Boston decided to double down.

Ha ha, what a dumb book, I thought as I was turning over the full price of thirty dollars to the cashier in exchange for my copy, and then continued to think as I was reading the whole thing in a weekend, riveted. Weirdly enough, it’s written almost entirely in the gossipy tone of Page Six, but with a very transparent use of a thesaurus at all times. It’s not worth writing a whole review just to make fun of the strange word choices, as Michael Kinsley did, tediously. Just understand that Halperin-Heilemann appear to be strange people and give them credit for at least attempting a clever writing style.

And beneath all the gossip about whether Mitt Romney’s hair looked bad after getting off a plane, Herman Cain having actually trademarked the term “the Hermanator Experience,” and whatever else—all terrible stuff that will keep you reading, whether you like it or not—there is, for better or worse, a legitimate theory of the presidency embedded here: it doesn’t matter who your party’s nominee is. You should root for whoever has the best shot of winning the White House and expect them to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

That sounds cynical, but it needn’t be. It just means that achieving actual policies one cares about requires more work. The Democratic coalition, for example, is a mixture of young people, minorities, single women, labor unions, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and other aligned interests. The goal of having a Democratic president is not to watch that president, as if in a vacuum, enact whatever these interests want simultaneously. It’s to have someone who wants to do those things and will do them if activists and supporters on the ground can gin up enough broad public support for them. The Obama presidency has been disappointing in many ways. But if you’re going to try to find something useful to take away from his tenure, his hesitant, over-polled, calculating style can be refreshing: if outside actors—activists, media voices, etc.—can make the terrain politically beneficial for a desired change, he will notice that and act on it. That’s not as romantic as hoping the president will act on something because he cares about it deep in his heart. Or as easy. But at least there’s a clear roadmap to follow.

I say this because there’s already a bit of overthinking going on with regards to the 2016 presidential process. No one should have to accept Hillary Clinton as inevitable already, but it would be silly to overlook her main advantage: she represents a historically rare chance for a party that’s already been in power for eight years to win another four in the White House. That’s an exciting thing, if you care about — or simply would prefer for — Democrats to have the presidency. And while she may not be the most progressive human in history, she is, more or less, like Obama, broadly sympathetic to the goals of various Democratic interest groups. Well, maybe that’s good enough.

Ever since the release of Noam Scheiber’s piece in The New Republic, there’s been a lot of “Internet chatter” about the possibility of Elizabeth Warren taking on Hillary for the nomination in 2016. The idea is that she is now the party’s leading voice on prosecuting Wall Street criminals, a clear gap in Obama’s record and, presumably, any plans Hillary Clinton might have. If she were elected president, she would finally bring Wall Street to justice, the thinking goes, and her credibility on this issue should terrify the Clinton machine.

But, one might ask, what if she’s more likely to take on Wall Street? Isn’t that worth it? This brings us back, again, to how the presidency works. The reason Wall Street hasn’t been prosecuted harder under the Obama administration is mostly because it’s not that high a political priority for voters. Sure, in the abstract, people like the idea of big banks being broken up. They’re more interested, however, in the president spending time giving them jobs and money immediately. And if breaking the big banks up would be a pain in the ass that distracts Washington from achieving those other goals in the short term—which it would—voters won’t really care about it. That’s not to say the desire to undergo a major effort at the expense of other priorities to break up the big banks is a silly political goal. I’m all for it! But not enough other people are, is the thing, and that’s why it hasn’t happened.

If big banks are going to be broken up, it’s not going to matter whether it’s Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Elizabeth Warren who’s in office. They’re all animals who will do whatever is good for them politically. So if it is ever going to happen, it’s going to be because the public demands that it happen, with a political price to be paid if it doesn’t. There’s not much point in fussing over personalities.