California Gov. Jerry Brown has no intention of taking on Hillary Clinton in a primary for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 — and thinks other Democrats ought to back off, too.
"I can’t think of anything I’d rather have less if I were running for president than to have a competitor in the primary," Brown said Friday after meetings about climate change at the White House,
Politico reports.
According to Brown, the fight ought to be with the GOP.
"There’s some big differences, and they’re more with the Republicans. So let’s have the debate and let’s see where America wants to be," Brown said. "I don’t think running some couple of Democrats would illuminate the process."
Primaries, he said, "get into all the little nuances and small differences of candidates of the same party." What Clinton needs is "a good debate drawing the distinctions between where she stands and where all these Republicans, these wannabes running around," Brown said.
Brown, who's record as governor on the budget, immigration, and climate change would make him in theory, at least, a formidable primary candidate against Clinton, told The Washington Post it would make no sense for him or any other Democrat to run against the frontrunning Clinton.
"Running against Hillary is like running against Jerry Brown in California," the 76-year-old
Brown told The Post.
"In the Democratic Party, it's not going to happen. You reach a certain point of party loyalty and it's very powerful."
For his own part, he told The Post, a primary challenge "doesn't look like a fruitful use of my time."
"I would say she’s extremely formidable and it doesn't appear that there’s anything that would block her path," he said.
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Brown scoffed at the notion primary oppositions strengthen the process and helps the final candidate go through their paces.
"The truth is it’s not helpful," he told the Post. "The real competition has to start right away with a Republican-Democratic difference. There’s plenty there to create conflict and debate and do whatever you have to do to get ready for the November election. You can do that facing off against the Republican opponents, of which there’re so many, and there’s so many stupid things they’re saying. That’s a far better place than cutting nuanced differences with some Democratic insurgent."
But he hasn't always felt that way, The Post points out.
In 1992, Brown was Bill Clinton's most persistent and pesky Democratic primary opponent and for months refused to endorse him.
He warned, however, that Hillary Clinton's email controversy may not quickly disappear.
"With these things, what makes a difference, you often don’t know until it unfolds because nothing is just what it is," he told The Post. "It’s always in part of a larger context. Things unfold and things happen."
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