A President Warren or a President Clinton would have power, but not as much as you think.
In his piece
You Can't Make The Congress Do Anything, which reviewed the book "The Fierce Urgency of Now", Scott Lemieux writes:
We don’t have to speculate how effective LBJ’s leadership would be without a rare functioning liberal majority in Congress. After suffering major losses in the 1966 midterms, Johnson’s legendary leadership capabilities were of little value. In his final two years in office, he was forced to accept huge cuts to domestic spending, and could only pass a watered-down version of the Fair Housing Act [. . .]
Lemieux's argument points to trying to win at the Congressional level as the key to enacting policies you want to see. Too often we all forget this through our obsession with the Presidency. And not just activists,
even the rich suffer from this:
In the words of one veteran GOP fundraiser, traditional bundlers have been sent down to the “minor leagues,” while mega-donors are “the major league players.” [. . .] [B]undlers, on the left and the right, are turning their attention to congressional races, where they can get more personal attention.
They get more than "personal attention." They get real influence over those lawmakers. And that matters a ton, as Lemieux describes. The reality is there can be no progressive project without a progressive Congress, no matter who is president.
But there are certain powers a president has that transcend Congressional leanings: (1) the power to make war and formulate foreign policy, and (2) the power to nominate Supreme Court justices. More on this on the flip.
Many progressives are rightly focused on the issues of income inequality, fairness and Wall Street abuse. Indeed, the Warren Wing is in many ways, in the ascendant in the Democratic Party. The problem so far is that the Democratic Party just doesn't look like a very good Congressional political party right now.
There are a lot of reasons for this, and in this diary I'm not attempting to discuss those issues. But it is worth pointing out that whether a president favors, say, reinstating Glass—Steagall (which was repealed in 1999 in a near unanimous and veto proof Congressional vote) is not going to be determinative of whether it can be reinstated now. Not even President Warren could get that done now.
But what can presidents, of any stripe, do with relatively unfettered power? Make war (and yes, I know the Constitution doesn't permit that) and foreign policy, and nominate Supreme Court justices.
Too often for my taste folks here will ridicule the argument "it's the Supreme Court, stupid," but the reality is that there is one sure difference between presidential candidates of the different political parties: the type of Supreme Court justices they will name. In arguing for the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012, I wrote:
Chief Justice Roberts is their [GOP] man for our age. He is the man for those with "axes to grind" against progressive values. How can he be defeated? By denying him the votes necessary on the Supreme Court to enact his pernicious project. This is done by reelecting President Barack Obama and electing future Democratic presidents. There are no other options. This is the most important progressive project of this election and future presidential elections.
I firmly believe this to be true. I provide you one historic example: Until 1937 FDR and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress were repeatedly stymied by a reactionary right-wing Court. And here is a current example: In 2012, the Court could have destroyed ACA. And it can do so again this summer in the tax credits case.
And the Court can and did destroy voting rights, election finance reform, diversity in schools and do many, many other damaging acts.
Now the one thing I would say about this is there is not a single potential Dem presidential candidate (Webb excepted) who I worry about regarding the Supreme Court. This is not a decider, in my opinion, when it comes to the Dem primary (unless you buy "electability" arguments, which may or may not have validity.)
Foreign policy and war making, however, can be quite variable in the Dem primary race. It is on this score that I personally am most worried about the presumed frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. To date, not much attention has been paid to this issue.
I hope that changes.
And I also hope everyone realizes no matter who the Dem nominee is: Yes, the Supreme Court is a sufficient basis for voting Democratic in 2016.