Cambridge native and fellow CRLS alumn and Red Sox fan, Bill de Blasio was inaugurated as New York City’s Mayor today at 1pm. The new Mayor was sworn in by former President Bill Clinton. Not too far into his address he shouted these words:
We will not wait on income inequality
And with that, the defining issue of our time has become the top priority for our nation’s largest city. Congratulations to Bill and his family on this special day-and congratulations to New Yorkers who finally have a fearless liberal as Mayor once again.
As a fellow CRLS graduate I am proud, and as someone hoping to start a multicultural family myself-I am glad to see his serve as a national example. In just five days Boston will have its own fighting liberal inaugurated, and I can’t wait to congratulate Marty Walsh when that day comes.
As a proud second generation life-long liberal Italo-American, I wept with joy as I watched President Clinton swear in Mayor Bill de Blasio today. It struck me that he credited Mayor Fiorello ‘The Little Flower’ LaGuardia, the champion of New Deal economic and social justice, as his role model. I predict great advancement of our liberal agenda in 2014 both nationally and statewide.
The Mayor’s speech got me so fired up that I spent the afternoon knocking on doors in my hometown of Wakefield
with our next State Senator, Anthony Guardia, our candidate in the Middlesex Fifth. (Congresswoman Katherine Clark’s old seat.) I’m as honored to serve as Anthony’s Campaign Chair as I was for Katherine.
So far we have only heard about Jason Lewis. Also my family just moved to Wakefield so I’ll be happy to pass the word about candidates there.
I guess that means Anthony Guardia won’t be challenging Rep. Wong.
Excellent news for the Middlesex Fifth though, he will make a great State Senator.
I remember a fellow who ran for US President in 2008 on a platform of helping working Americans, implementing single-payer health care, etc. When he showed up at the White House, we got… well, much, much different.
de Blasio’s awfully close to the Clintons, which is extremely unnerving to me.
…Obama ever suggesting on the 2008 campaign trail that he would work to implement single-payer. On that particular issue I remember liking HRC’s plan better, and quite frankly I’m getting awfully tired of the Clintons-are-bad-Democrats attitude. On the continuum they are firmly left of center.
Because of the Democratic Party’s decades-long effort to co-opt the Republicans’ fiscal and foreign policies, the continuum has slid far to the right. That effort has been led by the Clintons, the DLC and the like. By pre-1980s standards, the Clintons are firmly in conservative ranks. By the standards of most of the rest of the Western world, they’re practically reactionaries.
They are part of the problem. The solution has to come from a much more progressive place.
…but then I’m closer to the center than many here myself. I suspect if either Clinton were take any of the various political philosophy quizzes available online each would be scored as on the left, but not off the deep end.
of getting to the point where we’re choosing between Clinton policies and something more liberal.
So long as the House is controlled by some cabal of Koch Brothers, tea partiers, religious nutjobs, union bashers, pro-polluters and the like, I’d be very happy if our policies moved in the direction of the Clintons.
Obama ran on health insurance reform centered on a public option – then promptly traded it away in a backroom deal with Pharma and hospitals, while disingenuously claiming in public that the public option was not dead.
As to the Clintons… Glass-Steagall, NAFTA, almost-free-trade with China… I believe that these are the lasting structural changes from Clinton’s administration. and they’ve been an utter disaster for the 99%. He made a deal with Newt Gingrich to cut Social Security benefits (mediated by Erskine Bowles, of course!), but Congress wouldn’t touch it. He did raise taxes a bit on the wealthiest, but also reduced the capital gains and estate taxes.
I’m not aware of Hillary championing any important causes that directly affect income inequality in a meaningful way, but perhaps I’m forgetting things.
covered for health insurance by S-CHIP, garnering the support of the rightwing Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, despite opposition by most of the Republican Party in a time when Republicans controlled both House and Senate.
In any case, SCHIP was prescient – we now have a record number of homeless children, and children who are otherwise living in poverty, a number that continues to grow daily thanks to Republican/DLC/Third Way policies.
…that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties isn’t helpful. DLCers are still worlds better than Republicans.
The DLC/Third Wayers have run our party for the last 20 years. The results speak for themselves, I think. And here we are.
Fortunately a few FDR Dems have established a beachhead in DC. Epic battles to follow. The good guys will win – Americans are ready.
Political victories – check
Economic growth – check
Relatively peaceful – check
Assuming you take Clinton as a model DLCer I would say they do indeed, though your comment title is stating the obvious.
Really?
(I mean, for the 99%, of course.)
…and GOPers in Congress bent on blocking every Obama initiative and taking down his presidency, no. In the year 2000 after eight years of Bill Clinton including his first budget that no Republican voted for and his stimulus, absolutely. It would have been even better if they had gotten health reform through then.
So tell me: why did Lincoln fire his losing generals? After all, it was really the Confederacy that was at fault, yes?
1992-2000 – things got better
2000-2008 – things got much worse (to the point of worse than 1992)
2008-present – things are more slowly than we would like getting slightly better, the best efforts of the GOP notwithstanding.
Lincoln fired his losing generals because he knew how to make a course correction. Likewise, when the economy was showing warning signs in 2000 I am confident that if Clinton had another term he would be both smart enough and compassionate enough to propose necessary economic course corrections. After all, I’m more of a New Dealer now than I was in the 1990s so others’ attitudes can evolve as well. Bush, OTOH, wasn’t interested.
The Clinton years were awesome. They brought peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity. Peace and prosperity.
The stagnant incomes for 2/3 of the people, massive-scale white-collar layoffs, growing wealth inequality, marginalization of labor, and financial deregulation that helped bring, before a decade passed, the largest economic crash in 80 years were all just part of the awesomeness.
Got it!
Political victories – Yay, team. You managed to keep the Greedies from winning a bunch of elections, but didn’t make people’s lives any better.
Economic growth – The stock market looked great, and employment was up, but wages were flat.
Relatively peaceful – Relative to what – Vietnam? During Clinton’s term there were US military shooting operations in Somalia, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Sudan, Macedonia, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia, and Serbia. These were all expressions of The Clinton Doctrine, which advocated armed intervention anywhere “our interests” were at stake.
There’s more, though:
Welfare cuts – Check. Oh, sorry, it was called ‘welfare reform.’
Exporting jobs – Check. Let’s not ignore NAFTA just because our pet troll likes to needle us with it. Employment was up during his term, but he left a time-bomb for the next decades.
Too-big-to-fail banks – Check. Another time-bomb, in the form of deregulating derivatives.
Clinton had the good fortune to serve between two Bushes, one was a bad President, and the other was a very bad President. It makes him look a lot better on the surface than he actually was.
A) Nobody is implying that “there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.” We need a lot more difference than that, though.
B) By enabling the Right-wing agenda by continually compromising toward their disastrous positions, the DLC and kin have demonstrated that they are not “worlds better.”
If I say “Working people should lose all their benefits,” it’s not effective opposition to say “We’ll cut their benefits by 10%.” Especially when I keep coming back, and you keep cutting 10% of what they have left. Before long, you’ve given me what I asked for in the first place.
Like it or not, politics is a lagging indicator.
I’m confident that if Bill Clinton had campaigned in a population that better resembled America of 1932 then he would have been a president that better resembled FDR. Similarly, if the first FDR campaign had been in 1992, the FDR presidency would have looked a lot like the Clinton administration.
I’d like to ask those who still chafe about Bill Clinton’s successful welfare reform to remember Mike Dukakis and Willie Horton. I *love* Mike Dukakis. I love his integrity. Nevertheless, it is LOSING political strategy in a population that believes that “welfare” means “black people with too many kids driving Cadillacs”.
Those of us who, like me, want our government to aggressively pursue a liberal or progressive agenda MUST work to change our culture so that it wants that agenda. I get that our agenda is supported by polls. That is a good thing. Our task now is to convert those poll numbers into legislative success. Bill Clinton is a MASTER of that, arguably more skilled than anybody since FDR (specifically including LBJ, the only figure who comes close in the 20th century).
For all of their respective flaws, both Pope Francis and Barack Obama have correctly identified wealth disparity as the key political issue facing our immediate future. Bill de Blasio just won big by embracing this theme.
I’d like to see us celebrate such victories. I’m thrilled to have Bill Clinton working on behalf of this agenda.
Presidents have much more power to set the agenda than we sometimes acknowledge. If Clinton was President in 1932, he would have compromised just as much, and not been remembered like we remember FDR.
Had I been old enough to make an educated decision my heart would’ve been with Harkin and my head with Clinton. We needed a win, we can argue we needed that in 2008 too. I think it’s unhelpful to relitigate the last and Monday morning legislate. I’m guilty of that with Obama in the present, but it’s really unhelpful to debate “what ifs?” from 20 years ago.
A better question to ask is “will Clintonian politics continue to serve a role on our party and country?” And “what kind of role and how big?”.
We were once a party deeply divided on race, sexuality, abortion, and gay rights. While Obama could’ve done better on the economy a party that dared not call itself pro-marriage equality or even pro-choice as recently as 2004 can now proudly proclaim this unity. Where we must and can do better is birding the divide between the technocratic centrists, the old school labor Democrats, and the new school progressives. We need strong old schoolers like Sherrod Brown and Mike Honda focused on the working man and US industries , we need strong new school social and economic populists like Warren and de Blasio, and we need centrists both to keep the party focused on tactical short term victories and also to ensure the business community becomes a part of the solution.
This is more possible than we imagine. The question for 2016 is what leader can bring these factions together and best beat the Relublicans? The question for the present is what leaders need to be cultivated by the grassroots at the local level, the state level, and the national level. Let’s start right here at home. There is a good chance we may get stuck with a Republican as Governor in our own backyard. Let’s nominate a strong progressive to take him down. Let’s get a strong progressive in Revere, in Clarks old district, and all over the state. Let’s turn Beacon Hill bright blue!
I agree with everything you’ve written.
A growing majority of Americans agree that the growing wealth disparity in America is our single most pressing political and economic issue. An administration that turns around that issue will be an administration that is is good for the middle class, good for the working class, good for jobs, good for housing, good for transportation, good for education, and good for just about everything else.
Virtually every one of the classic “wedge” issues is made moot by a strong and strengthening consumer economy where the increases in prosperity are most pronounced in the bottom-most segment of the population.
But I think Sherrod Brown or Brian Schweitzer are excellent messengers for a populist message. Whether as presidential candidates, party leaders, or just talking heads-we need to see more of those two. Elizabeth Warren is well suited to be a MA Senator and I love her for that. I think she is well suited to be a great Senator for a long time to come. I don’t see her having a lot of crossover appeal though. Similarly, de Blasio will be a great New York Mayor for many years to come, but he won’t necessarily play in Peoria.
Demographics are not destiny in the long run. It will require a message that can appeal to working class whites, people that have checked out of the system entirely, McCain Dems and independents, and those that are soft green or soft libertarian. And I think those two individuals know how to talk to working people and get them to vote not just for Democrats, but for liberal Democrats. These are definitely guys you could have a beer with, in the case of Schweitzer even go hunting with, and at the end of the day they are Warren Democrats on economics without her cultural baggage.
She grew up in a relatively modest family in Oklahoma. She knows how to talk to people outside of Harvard. John Kerry she’s not. I’ve always thought of her as a down-to-earth straight shooter. She speaks in terms of values and aspirations, not wonk talk.
But agree completely on Brown and Schweitzer.
Schweitzer is the reincarnation of Bubba when it comes to good ol boy politicking and the reincarnation of FDR and Truman when it comes to policy positions and rhetoric. He is the only candidate who could beat Hillary in the primary and the only one capable of being stronger than her in the general, particularly against a phony blue collar guy like Christie. He would put so many more states in play we haven’t been competitive in without forcing us to move to the right on any major economic issues*.
Brown preceded Obama in attacking Romney and the right on China. He made going after China look easy, he outpolled Obama in a purple state, and he votes to the left of every other Senator in the Senate. Key ally on filibuster reform, and has struck an odd but workable bipartisan alliance with David Vitter. I don’t see him as Presidential material, like Warren he is totally disinterested in foreign policy. But he is a great campaigner and I’d love for him to be Majority Leader someday.
*Schweitzer is awful on coal and guns, but I could actually see him winning WV, MT, MO, AR, and maybe even GA and TN. He is a reincarnation of the prairie populism I long to revive.
Obama had a lot projected onto him, but as christopher said, he didn’t promise half of what others expected. It was more like “he, he opposed the war, he must also agree with me on ___”. And through much of the campaign, his team worked hard to make sure that feeling stayed.
de Blasio has been pretty up-front. Heck, in what counts for a bold move in the Bushbama age of education, he’s appointing somebody who has worked in an actual classroom to lead NYC’s schools!
He and his former communications director, the one dating Spitzer, are parting ways. Probably not a coincidence. He initially said it’s her business, now she’s leaving.
Maybe.
But it’s a smart move on de Blasio’s part. You never want your communications head to be making news of her own. Besides, Jonathan Rosen of BerlinRosen was the real communications brains behind the de Blasio campaign. (Not that Lis Smith isn’t extremely competent.)
Bill will be just fine. As will Lis.
It’s unfortunate that there are people who would make hay of her private life. But such people, mostly driven by ulterior motives, are out there. I’d rather see her move on than see the incoming administration weakened in any way by this nonsense.
If he had fired her immediately for creating a distraction, that would be one thing. But he explicitly said that it’s her business, then fired her (granted, she MAY have left on her own).
The notion that he’s weakened at all is illusory, and something he (and only he) could easily toss aside. Another disloyal politician; I’m disappointed.
Not a deal breaker, I still wish him well, but a disappointment.
…if super-wealthy Manhattanites look at relocating at the prospect of a Mayor who is not merely progressive like Bloomberg, but is an active income redistributionist.
Florida – no estate tax, no income tax, etc. – is about to pass New York in population according to the Associated Press.
It will be interesting to see this reflected in the 2020 redistricting, and the flight from New England blue states overall.
I guess if the seven “super-wealthy Manhattanites” indeed flee, then Manhattan will survive đŸ™‚
Mr. de Blasio just won a landslide victory. At least some of those “super-wealthy Manhattanites” are perhaps enough in touch with reality to acknowledge the plain fact that the extreme wealth concentration in today’s NYC (and America) is hurting the city.
…you can’t just pick up and move Wall Street. Even if they do decide to establish their permanent residence in Florida, where I suspect many already have second homes anyway, they will still be earning money in NYC, which should be taxable. (BTW, do I want to know how Florida DOES fund its government?)
Florida may be growing in population, but it is a bastion of public incompetence (see Kathryn Harris, butterfly ballots, etc.).
There’s a reason why Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, and there’s a reason why his killer was found innocent. The subsequent behavior of Mr. Zimmerman helps illuminate the “truth” of the process.
Florida offers government that only a Republican could love. Those who choose Florida over Manhattan based on the public policy positions of Mr. de Blasio will probably be happier in Florida anyway — and Manhattan will be better for their absence.