Hillary Clinton’s remarks on the events in Ferguson show that she’s running for president. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she will do a lot to tackle the issue of racial justice.
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Hillary Clinton broke her 19-day long silence about the events in Ferguson, Missouri, yesterday while giving a talk to, of all groups, the software company Nexenta. Over at National Journal Emma Roller has the text of her speech, but the most relevant part seemed to me to be this:
Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers, instead of the other way around. If white offenders received prison sentences 10 percent longer than black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men—just look at this room and take one-third—went to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans and so many of the communities in which they live.
The first thing that struck me when reading this, aside from the fact that it sums up the issues raised in Ferguson pretty well, is that by any reasonable standard Hillary Clinton is running for President. Yes she hasn’t made a formal announcement yet, but her remarks are pretty clearly not the remarks of a private citizen who is no longer interested in public service.
Moreover she is clearly the front runner in the Democratic field. She’s dominated the so called “invisible primary” stage of the 2016 nominations process up to now more than any other modern nominee on the Democratic side, save former vice presidents or incumbents.
So does this mean that if Hillary Clinton does become the 45th president she will make addressing the issue a race a priority? That’s a pretty tricky question. As a Democratic president she will have strong incentives to address racial issues to some degree. African-Americans are an important constituency group inside the Democratic party and presidents ignore the wishes of important constituencies at their own peril.
But at the same time Clinton’s speech didn’t lay out any concrete policies for how to actually address the multitude of racial disparities in American life. It’s one thing to point out systemic injustice in our criminal justice system; it’s another to expend your political capital trying and pass a major overhaul on federal drug laws.
The reality is this: if liberals want to see concrete action from the next Democratic president on racial issues, they need to get candidates to promise to tackle these issues when they are still candidates. Believe it or not, presidents do tend to at least try to follow up on their campaign promises. So if you want the events in Ferguson to result in real political change, now is really the time to try to influence future presidents. Once the next president is sworn in, influencing him or her for ordinary people becomes extremely difficult.
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