Democrats’ Biggest Vulnerability In 2016: National Security

Demo­crats are at risk of polit­ic­ally mar­gin­al­iz­ing them­selves on na­tion­al se­cur­ity in the run-up to the 2016 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, ca­ter­ing to a base that seems dis­con­nec­ted from the grow­ing anxi­ety that the pub­lic feels over the threat from Is­lam­ic ter­ror­ism. Dur­ing a month when a hor­rif­ic ter­ror­ist at­tack killed 130 in Par­is and a homegrown, IS­IS-in­spired at­tack killed 14 in San Bern­ardino, Cali­for­nia, the Demo­crat­ic Party’s ma­jor fo­cus has been on cli­mate change and gun con­trol.

The signs of a pres­id­ent in deni­al over the threat of ter­ror­ism keep pil­ing up. Obama be­latedly ad­dressed the pub­lic’s fears in his Oval Of­fice ad­dress on Sunday even­ing, but he offered no new policies to deal with crisis. That it took four days for the pres­id­ent to un­equi­voc­ally call the San Bern­ardino at­tacks “ter­ror­ism” un­der­scored how his own in­stincts are at odds with the Amer­ic­an pub­lic’s. The de­cision to give a na­tion­ally tele­vised speech without out­lining a change of course sug­ges­ted that ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials were wor­ried about de­clin­ing poll num­bers and that he was try­ing to lim­it the polit­ic­al dam­age. And for an ad­min­is­tra­tion that likes to nar­rowly tail­or Obama’s mes­sage to his most en­thu­si­ast­ic sup­port­ers, schedul­ing a prime-time speech for many mil­lions to see (it was his first Oval Of­fice ad­dress since 2010) was a con­ces­sion that he’s not per­suad­ing the lar­ger pub­lic.

Put simply, the pres­id­ent’s cred­ib­il­ity was on the line. Last month in Tur­key, Obama testily brushed back re­peated ques­tion­ing from re­port­ers that he un­der­es­tim­ated the threat that IS­IS posed. Only a day be­fore the IS­IS at­tacks in Par­is, Obama con­fid­ently pro­claimed that the ter­ror­ist group was “con­tained.” In the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the San Bern­ardino shoot­ing, Obama told CBS News that “our home­land has nev­er been more pro­tec­ted by more ef­fect­ive in­tel­li­gence and law-en­force­ment pro­fes­sion­als at every level than they are now.”   

When the pres­id­ent’s as­sur­ances are be­ing con­tra­dicted by events around him, even his own party’s rank-and-file be­come rest­ive. Demo­crat­ic voters, mostly sup­port­ive of the pres­id­ent, are ex­press­ing real con­cerns about the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s hand­ling of ter­ror­ism. A 43-per­cent plur­al­ity of Demo­crat­ic voters be­lieve the U.S. and its al­lies are “los­ing” the war against IS­IS, ac­cord­ing to a Quin­nipi­ac poll con­duc­ted just be­fore the San Bern­ardino at­tack. A whop­ping 75 per­cent of Demo­crats said it’s likely there will be an­oth­er ma­jor ter­ror­ist at­tack on Amer­ic­an soil, and 23 per­cent dis­ap­prove of Pres­id­ent Obama’s hand­ling of ter­ror­ism.

This is un­usu­al. In the wake of trau­mat­ic events, even un­pop­u­lar pres­id­ents tend to find suc­cess by call­ing for na­tion­al unity. After the Ok­lahoma City bomb­ings in April 1995, Pres­id­ent Clin­ton’s job ap­prov­al rat­ings rose above 50 per­cent for the first time in nearly a year, ac­cord­ing to Gal­lup’s track­ing poll. George W. Bush’s ap­prov­al reached 90 per­cent right after the Sept. 11 at­tacks. These mo­ments were both short-lived, but proved that the pub­lic ral­lies be­hind a pres­id­ent after fright­en­ing tra­gedies.  

But in­stead of act­ing as a com­mand­er in chief, Obama has be­come a po­lar­izer in chief. Im­me­di­ately after the Par­is and San Bern­ardino at­tacks, both of which provided him an op­por­tun­ity to re­set his an­ti­ter­ror­ism policies, he in­stead chose to find “wedge” is­sues that he could use to at­tack Re­pub­lic­ans. After he was houn­ded by the press over down­play­ing the IS­IS threat, he nimbly switched the sub­ject to the GOP’s heart­less­ness on the ques­tion of tak­ing in Syr­i­an refugees, a coun­ter­punch that drew sub­stan­tial press cov­er­age. In the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the San Bern­ardino at­tacks, he down­played the ter­ror­ist con­nec­tions and amp­li­fied his call for ad­di­tion­al gun con­trol. Fol­low­ing the pres­id­ent’s lead, Sen­ate Demo­crats then tried to put Re­pub­lic­ans on the de­fens­ive over their fi­del­ity to gun rights by vot­ing to ban people on the no-fly list from pur­chas­ing guns. Agree or dis­agree with those policies, but both were a de­lib­er­ate dis­trac­tion from the ur­gent is­sue at hand—how to com­bat IS­IS, at home and abroad.   

These tac­tics are con­sist­ent with the White House’s view on how Demo­crats should cam­paign to win elec­tions: mo­bil­ize Obama’s lib­er­al co­ali­tion, and high­light the GOP’s most ex­treme voices to win over per­suad­able voters. Giv­en Don­ald Trump’s in­creas­ingly in­flam­mat­ory pro­nounce­ments, it’s easy to un­der­stand the savvy—and cyn­ic­al—strategy be­hind the Demo­crats’ ap­proach. (Trump’s latest scheme, which calls for the United States to bar Muslims from en­ter­ing the coun­try, is an ex­ample of how po­lar­iz­a­tion can fuel even-more-ex­treme po­lar­iz­a­tion.)

But in this in­stance, the prob­lem is that a ma­jor­ity of voters view Obama’s in­transigence on IS­IS as an ex­treme po­s­i­tion. If the pub­lic doesn’t trust the pres­id­ent to keep the coun­try safe, no amount of polit­ic­al jujitsu can hide that fun­da­ment­al vul­ner­ab­il­ity. Core Demo­crat­ic is­sues such as im­mig­ra­tion, gun con­trol, and cli­mate change will be sec­ond­ary to na­tion­al se­cur­ity if voters re­main in­sec­ure head­ing in­to 2016.

All this has put Hil­lary Clin­ton in a polit­ic­al pickle. She needs to en­er­gize the pres­id­ent’s dovish base, which gives her little lee­way to give voice to the pub­lic’s new­found hawk­ish­ness. Ideally, she’d be able to stand lock­step with the pres­id­ent’s policies, tout­ing his lead­er­ship in a time of crisis. In­stead, she is try­ing to care­fully bal­ance her sup­port for the pres­id­ent while subtly ex­press­ing areas of dis­agree­ment.  

On ABC’s This Week, she said she be­lieved there were “ad­di­tion­al” un­named steps to take against the ter­ror­ist group bey­ond what the ad­min­is­tra­tion is do­ing. AtSunday’s Saban For­um, she said the need for “ac­tion is ur­gent” against IS­IS, spe­cific­ally call­ing on Sil­ic­on Val­ley firms to do their part to dis­rupt the ter­ror­ist group’s on­line com­mu­nic­a­tions. At the same time, she ruled out de­ploy­ing Amer­ic­an troops to fight the ter­ror­ist group and, like Obama, ar­gued that la­beling the threat as “rad­ic­al Is­lam” would only in­flame the prob­lem.

The big ques­tion now is how long Clin­ton will be con­tent to ride Obama’s coat­tails. Most Demo­crats are fully com­mit­ted to the pres­id­ent’s base-first strategy and don’t see any be­ne­fit in Clin­ton dis­tan­cing her­self from a pres­id­ent whom she loy­ally served for four years. But on an is­sue that could define the elec­tion, she risks be­ing defined by the base—at a time when even some of the pres­id­ent’s former sup­port­ers are be­gin­ning to ques­tion his ap­proach.