Professor of International Politics at City University London Inderjeet Parmar has shared his views on Clinton's possible entry in the 2020 presidential race.
SPUTNIK: What was your reaction to Hillary’s refusal to deny she could enter the race?
Parmar: Well, I have to say I was pretty surprised, given the defeat in 2016 and the very divisive character of Hillary Clinton, even among Democrats. So I wondered what on earth was going on and I guess one could think that given that Joe Biden is not particularly inspiring, that Michael Bloomberg has considered and is now appears to be entering the nomination process as well. But Clinton is just kind of floating a balloon to see what reaction she gets.
SPUTNIK: In the interview, she said that she was under "enormous pressure" to challenge Donald Trump. Do you think that's true? And do you think the Democratic Party establishment is worried about the current crop of candidates?
Parmar: Well, whether there's massive pressure from various quarters on Hillary to run I'm not entirely sure, but certainly, the Democratic leadership overall is increasingly concerned at the very lacklustre kind of performance and the gradual dip in Joe Biden's fortunes in the polls. And they're very worried about the fact that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are continuing to do particularly well. The messages that they are putting forward are very much against Wall Street and Wall Street kind of interests, whatever they may do with them in practice, they seem to be mobilising and crystallising a very large amount of dissenting voices, particularly among millennial voters, and those who are opposed very radically to Donald Trump.
SPUTNIK: In the past two weeks, we've seen a lot of billionaires taking their time to really go out against Elizabeth Warren's economic plans. What do you think about those attacks on Elizabeth Warren?
Parmar: Well, the key thing is that big money dominates American politics and the American government. And what they see is even the kind of threat, so-called threat that Elizabeth Warren represents; she's declared herself a supporter of capitalism, and so on, what she's talking about is really more of regulated capitalism. A capitalism, where Wall Street banks and so on are actually having to pay a little bit more tax, that they are more regulated in the kind of instruments that they can produce, the protection of financial consumer interests, and obviously, the extension of health care and so on. And I think even that level of additional state intervention is anathema to those billionaires and millionaires as well.
So they want to retain the kind of politics of a small state cuts in social spending and unregulated corporate power, and all the inequalities that brings about and they see that Elizabeth Warren is mobilising and is cashing in on a very large number of people, particularly millennials but others as well, whose standard of living, their levels of pay increases and their prospects are not very great. Millennials, we know constitute something like over 80 million people in the United States. They are the future electorate. And more and more surveys show that they are shifting more and more to the left and toward what they call socialism. And Elizabeth Warren is cashing in on that. The billionaires clearly fear a sort of ideological identity shift going on the United States electorate and they're seeking to try and thwart that as much as they possibly can.
SPUTNIK: How do you think these late entrants, Bloomberg and potentially Hillary, how do you think they would actually do when it comes to the public?
Parmar: Yeah, well, that's a really interesting question. There's a kind of schizophrenia, which is evident now within the electorate and within the opponents of Donald Trump. One is they are exhausted just by the sheer political style of Donald Trump and the kind of tweeting culture that he is promoting; the raucous, rancorous politics, the politics of the daily Twitter storm, which people then run around, partly being entertained by it partly being exhausted by it.
I think the other part of the electorate or one part of the psyche of the electorate as a whole want somebody calmer, somebody soberer, somebody more rational. Someone who's more coherent, and someone who's more presidential and in that regard, the middle-aged, white male represents that kind of figure of stability and sobriety, in contrast with Donald Trump.
On the other hand, most of the attitude surveys show that people are upset with the status quo. They don't want politics as usual. They don't want business as usual either. So hence Saunders was so popular in 2016, and so was Donald Trump who came from outside. People want change. So what we've got is a kind of tension between these two tendencies; a desire to get rid of Trump, have a bit of stability and normality back, but at the same time, not the normality of the old style but a new normal which says actually we want government which does a lot more for ordinary people.
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