I was born in 1984, during the rise of neoliberalism. It’s all I’ve really known all my life. For a long time, I thought it was normal. Expected. Always.
It isn’t, and wasn’t. It is an historical aberration that the powered elites want to turn into forever and always. And why wouldn’t they?
So that’s exactly what they’ve done, through what should be an American proverb: Why own one party, when you can own two?
Why pay workers a fair share of the pie, when they can make do with a little of the crust — and, perhaps, get some flour from the government?
Why factor in the costs of being environmentally sound and sustainable, when everyone else can worry about it, those born and unborn?
It’s destroying lives across America and the world.
And so long as Wall St has a firm grip on both parties, nothing can stop it.
I could write a whole list of reasons on why we should say an emphatic no to Hillary Clinton. She’s been on the wrong side of almost all the things that have destroyed the American Dream for so many, and there’s no way to look at her neoconservative foreign policy views other than to say she has blood on her hands.
But others have done that already.
I could write a list of amazing accomplishments on Bernie Sanders’s part, or why he has a much better shot at winning in the general (contrary to the flawed conventional wisdom around here, and among party elites, that gave us GW Bush in ’04, Scott Brown and Charlie Baker), but that’s all been written and said already, too.
So, the only thing I feel I have to add is this:
Don’t let Goldman Sachs win.
Don’t let Walmart win.
Don’t let Citibank, Bank of America, Big Pharma or Exxon Mobile win.
Don’t let the prison industrial complex win — private prisons are still Hillary’s second largest bundler, even after she promised not to take money from them.
The neoliberal elites — America’s oligarchs — want Hillary Clinton to win.
Or they want Marco Rubio to win.
It doesn’t matter, not really. They own them both, and many, many others, too.
A Hillary Clinton White House may slow the rate of decline for struggling families and the middle class compared to Republicans, a little bit, but decline will continue apace. Every year, more and more people will still slip out of the Middle Class. Every year, more and more people will fall into poverty, and extreme poverty, and die from lack of health care or nutrition, or take their own lives in desperation.
Every year, corporations will find more and creative new ways to extract money from us, or find ‘exciting’ new opportunities to make government pick up their costs.
Every year, elaborate new loopholes and regulations will continue to slip into omnibus legislation that enriches a few at the hands of the many, and the business tentacles will continue to grow into the roots of the government itself, with revolving-door appointments made to the FCC, FDA and EPA. Or with DoJ appointments who won’t prosecute bankers, or new board members of the Federal Reserve who will continue to obsess over inflation, instead of that other thing they’re charged with, but have historically ignored — full employment.
If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, there can be no winner of the general election for struggling families. We’ve had 36 years of neoliberalism to tell us that.
There’s only one way to win, really win — to elect a candidate who fundamentally rejects neoliberalism, and who will help elect a generation of new democrats who will treat neoliberalism for the malignant tumor in our party — and country — that it is.
Because that’s what it is, and it’s killing our party, killing our country and killing the world. It’s turning Earth into one giant dystopia. It’s making our planet inhospitable to people, be it figuratively… or literally.
We have a really big choice tomorrow, and this primary, but that choice isn’t Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
It’s deciding if we’re ready to turn the tide now, or if we’ll we allow millions more to suffer, in our present timidity, while we wait for later.
That was full-throtle conservatism. By the 1990s the Dems felt that after watching liberals like Mondale and Dukakis get absolutely routed they needed to find someone more acceptable to the middle, and yes, the moneyed elites who were living high on the hog in the greedy 1980s. I think Clinton’s election proved that was a good strategy AND he presided over the best years of my (a few years longer than yours) lifetime. Both Clintons have shown they can pivot both their policies and their politics to suit the times, which I see as a plus. We should not be looking at the 1990s through the lens of the 2010s and one of my biggest frustrations is how many Democrats are willing to throw under the bus such a successful and popular President.
used in American politics. It’s an economic term, harkening back to economic liberalism, that was the predominant economic theory before Keynesianism.
Both economic liberalism and neoliberalism mean basically the opposite of what Americans would think of, based on our understanding of the word “liberal.” Economic liberalism and neoliberalism are not “liberal” economic ideologies, they are very conservative economic ideologies — all about ‘getting the government out of business.’ It’s privatization, deregulation, low taxes and so on and so forth.
Neoliberalism, as an economic policy, would most closely resemble what most Americans would think of as “libertarianism” in political terms, as applied to the relationship between the government and corporations.
Neoliberalism’s rise across the West came about because of Ronald Reagan, in the US, and Margaret Thatcher abroad. They’re the two who put it into prominence and got the ball rolling on deregulation, privatization, cutting taxes and giving the keys of government to the big banks, among other corporate interests.
So, yes, Ronald Reagan was a neoliberal. That’s not really up to debate. It’s a fact. People need to understand these terms, and understand this history, including the role of the Clintons in it — having firmly planted the Democratic Party into the sphere of neoliberalism in a way that hasn’t changed since.
The Clintons used the success of the times (that brings with it a complacency and trust among the people) to help their big donor friends get the policies they wanted that have directly led to the Great Recession and the increasing stratification in society between the rich and everyone else. It’s all a matter of record and fact.
Maybe they didn’t realize just how much these policies would blow up in America’s faces — in fact, I bet they thought things would continue to go just swimmingly with their policies, because they bought into the madness (a lot of people did! Bernie Sanders was one of the few who didn’t) — but the facts are indisputable, and the facts are that the policies that most directly impacted the Great Recession (banking deregulation), and that have had the most devastating consequences for the American people (cuts to social safety nets, mass incarceration laws, etc.), all happened not under Ronald Reagan, not either President Bush, but Bill Clinton, and in almost all cases on these matters with the enthusiastic and very public backing of Hillary, who took on a far more active policy and public advocacy role in the WH than almost any first lady in history.
And a good description of the terms.
I don’t particularly agree with your view of the political climate in the 80s and 90s. From 1968-1992, Dems won exactly one presidential election, and that one only because Nixon had resigned in disgrace.
The Republicans themselves were more liberal then.
Nixon, IMO, was to the left of most of today’s elected Democrats on domestic issues.
For example, he almost passed bills that would have created a truly universal (and nearly single payer) health care system and a bill that would have provided a $1000 minimum, guaranteed income for everyone, just for being Americans — about $6800 a year in today’s money.
Both of those lost because of liberals in the Senate, who wanted more. Those are way more leftward than anything that could have passed in 2008, when the Democrats had full control of government. (Unfortunately.)
It’s easy to Democrats as cray cray and vote them out of power when they reject obviously good (and liberal) bills that would have helped millions of people because they weren’t left enough.
Minus the whole corruption thing, and foreign policy issues (especially, but not limited to, Vietnam), it’s easy to see why almost every state voted Nixon. Who needs Mondale when Nixon wanted universal health care and to send out checks for $1000 to every American, for being American?
My initial reaction was going to be that it sounded like you were describing “Classical Liberalism” a la Adam Smith, but after checking a couple of things it does appear you are closer to correct. I thought neoliberals were also supportive or at least open to social/cultural liberalism that was not in fashion in the 80s.
Airlines, trucking, energy.
with the oligarchy link. I understand that Sanders is a candidate that appealed to you, but you need to get off Reddit or whatever boards you are reading. Sanders has already surpassed any kind of expectations he had going into this race, if he wanted to move the Democratic field left, he did that. It looks like Sanders will be a voice going forward.
But this conspiracy stuff is not right, I’m waiting for the Vince Foster and the grassy knoll post. Support your candidate, best of luck. We all need to get together and support our party at the end.
Because they’re the ones who did the study, and came up with the determination.
I put the first link that I found on it up when googling, because I knew the study, and thought I was linking to the Washington Post instead of DC’s other paper… so whoops.
But it’s very silly to attack the link when the study is sound, and was widely reported.
Here’s 5 other links so you can have your choice in where you can read the very same thing.
BBC
Talking Points Memo
New Yorker
UK Telegraph
Business Insider
So, take your pick. Any of those five ways you want to slice it — whichever one of those sources is up to your standards — America is an oligarchy, already.
Over the course of this election, we have the chance to change that, but only by voting for one candidate: Bernie Sanders.
The rest are on the oligarchy’s side.
your author, the one who pieced together the story was clearly defined in my comment under your oligarchy link.
That said, Clinton as everything bad that has ever happened is just bizarre. The entire post is fringe. Not worthy of you. Don’t know how you got there but don’t go fringe on us for a 25 year Washington DC “outsider”.
1.
What author, and what story? I’ve linked six on the topic. If you’re talking about the original link from my diary (as I think you are), as I said, that was just the first article about the study I stumbled on trying to dig it up on Google… and I read it no further than to make sure it was about the Princeton study, and has “Washington” in the post, thinking it came from the Washington Post.
I wouldn’t have intentionally linked to the Washington times, which is why I subsequently provided 5 other links that covered the same study to show the study was reputable and not taken out of context.
Do you have an issue with the Princeton study? If so, what is it? I’m happy to engage in conversation about that, and I think that’s the only relevant question on that issue.
2.
TANF, trade agreements, banking deregulation, mass incarceration, Iraq — if you look at the core things that have gone wrong with our country, or with our foreign policy, Hillary’s been on the wrong side of most of them. Not all of them, but too many.
She’s reversed course on some of these issues during the election, but she ran as opposed to NAFTA in the Senate and then supported more trade deals just like it. She helped write TPP, and is now ‘against’ TPP (but says she’ll support it with reforms, and hasn’t been willing to describe what those reforms are).
I wish I was being hyperbolic. Truly, I do. But what I’m saying is accurate. If I’m being in anyway misleading, how?
I should point out that I don’t have a ‘thing’ against Hillary. I supported Hillary in ’08. I argued passionately for her on BMG and elsewhere. But I was just out of college and really, really didn’t know any better. The 90s felt wonderful to me, but I didn’t understand how so many seeds were sown in the 90s that led to the Great Recession and other things that have so radically hurt millions of Americans and people abroad. I do now.
I really, really wish I could have supported Hillary. I thought I was going to, even just a couple years ago. On a personal level, I’m a huge fan. The Benghazi hearing is a great illustration of why. She is clearly an extraordinarily bright person, on the level of an Elizabeth Warren — the kind of person who is almost always the smartest person in the room.
But unlike our Massachusetts progressive hero, Hillary’s more willing to give in to the powers that be than to have tried to rally the people.
And that’s the key thing, isn’t it?
Hillary could have rallied the people around her, and chosen to strictly fight for struggling families and the middle class.
She could have told Goldman Sachs to take a hike, instead of taking millions money from them and other Wall St banks, and have run a small donor style campaign like Senator Warren did in 2012 and like Bernie is nationally now. Not only would that Hillary have received my vote in that case, but I think she’d have won in a landslide, both the primary and the general.
But that’s not what happened.
….and I’m glad you finally acknowledge that the 90s “felt wonderful” to you. That is exactly what I have argued all along – that we can only judge the 90s by how things looked in the 90s, rather than with 20/20 hindsight. It’s not fair expecting anyone to have had a crystal ball. Even if what you say is technically accurate it is your tone that makes it sound like you’ve gone off the deep end.
Chocolate cake tastes wonderful to me. If I eat too much of it, it’s bad for my health.
A new car, new furniture, etc. etc. etc. would all be wonderful to have — and oh so seemingly affordable if I charge it all, without realizing what it all cost — but, alas.
The 90s is like wracking up all that debt that we couldn’t really afford, or eating too much chocolate cake.
It all felt great at the time, but we weren’t prepared to pay for it, and all that chocolate cake we were eating at the kid’s table was used as a great way to keep us from realizing just what was going on at the adult table.
If the banks weren’t deregulated, if TANF never passed, if we didn’t pass mass incarceration… and so on and so forth… the 90s still would have felt wonderful to people like me, a white dude in the middle class, BUT either we never would have had the Great Recession, or the Great Recession wouldn’t have been as deep/broad/difficult to recover from.
And things would be a lot better today for just about everyone if all that crappy stuff at ‘the adult table’ – that most Americans had no idea were going on – didn’t happen.
1. Reading Nixonland, I’m surprised at how awfully chaotic the sixties were. There were riots. Crime began a steady increase that did not begin to reverse until the 1990s. Since the 1990s, crime has decreased steadily. It even decreased through the Great Recession. The earlier increase in crime had a very toxic influence on our politics that is difficult to remember or imagine today.
2. After the 1964 election, a remarkable liberal consensus emerged embraced by huge swaths of our politics. There were a lot of liberal Republicans, too. The period from 1965 to the Reagan Administration saw that consensus destroyed and replaced by a near majority conservative consensus. Just as liberalism claimed a large swath of Republicans in 1964, conservatism made large inroads into the Democrats by the mid 1990s. Getting anything done required some accommodating that.
3. We are in a different place from the 1990s. I think this is largely due to political failure of the George W. Bush Administration. It destroyed the conservative consensus that had held for so long.
Given all that, we are fortunate that there wasn’t more deregulation in the 1990s than there was.
the sad thing about the big uptick of violence — and you’re right, that caused a lot of bad laws to be passed — is that all along it looks like leaded gasoline was the real cause of the violence.
The science is very, very strong on this one… and yet this story has been largely ignored.
Toxicity, in this case, is more literal than you may have thought.
I meant to uprate this, as I was thinking the same thing. I hit the wrong side by mistake, and it won’t let me change my vote.
This truly is a case study in media propaganda.
I’m reminded of the hostile reaction in the medical/research community when Barry Marshall and J. Robert Warren demonstrated that peptic ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylon — and readily cured with a simple antibiotic regimen. This result undid a very long history of very profitable “treatment” for ulcers, complete with long and often sordid attacks on the lifestyle of those who suffered from this bacterial disorder. The reality turned out to be much simpler and — most importantly — much less profitable to the health care industry.
The evidence that the spike in youth violence is the direct result of leaded gasoline is compellingly strong. That result — that should have been welcome — is anathema to the political agenda of the extreme right, and more importantly is MUCH LESS PROFITABLE to the media industry.
The spike was NOT caused by bad parenting and was not cured by “tough love” (don’t get me started on THAT phrase). It was not caused by “bad” policing (or not enough police officers) and was not cured by “good” policing (or more police officers). It was not caused by slavery or Jim Crow, it had nothing to do with race, and it was not cured by ANY changes in government policy towards minorities.
It was, in fact, caused by lead in gasoline. It was cured by forcing the removal of lead from gasoline. It is, in fact, a SUCCESS STORY for government regulation motivated by science. It joins flouridation of water as a dramatic public health victory steadfastly opposed by rabidly anti-science “conservatives”.
I think it is no accident that the media prefers silence on this issue. Harshly partisan battles about a genuine issue that people care deeply about are FAR MORE profitable for the media than letting people know that youth violence was largely solved by government regulation thirty years ago.
…blaming the Great Recession on Clinton. The chocolate cake analogy fails because presumably you know it’s bad to have too much AT THE TIME you consume it. If anything that probably better fits the 80s when greed was in and Wall Street really went to town and we should have known better. The Clinton presidency saw everything headed in the right direction: Jobs-up, inflation-down, markets-up, income levels-up (yes, ALL levels), war casualties-down (almost non-existent), peace dividend-up. The United States was then in the best shape it’s been during yours and my lifetimes.
but the GOP owned deregulation, TANF, etc., too, so it wasn’t a criticism that could really work for them. There was equal blame on these issues, and unlike at least some Democrats, the GOP never stopped supporting them.
Chris — you should be able to recognize that good things can happen to a country while bad bills are passed that make countries more at risk for bad things in the future.
The 90s were great for many people, but many of the things passed during them set our country up for the Great Recession, increased the pain of it, and made it more difficult to recover from. Those are facts that can’t be washed away. We can recognize them and argue to change the policy, and help undo the damage… or we can bury our heads in the sand.
I advocate the former.
…but I don’t have the crystal ball to tell me it WILL. I get unintended consequences, but you have to go with the best info you have at the time and I just don’t think it’s fair to judge too harshly on 20/20 hindsight.
I think some of Rye’s best critiques have been directed towards their horrendous record addressing black poverty which welfare reform and mass incarceration exacerbated. Now, we can argue the politics of the time, especially post-Gingrich, called for every expansion of government to be couched in “tough love” language.
And it’s no accident Clinton won by pluralities twice, the white electorate, which was stronger during this time had given up on the Democrats for 5 out of 7 electoral cycles. Does it make some of this language and framing any less of a dog whistle to our time? No, but it’s important to also recognize the reality. And as whites we should also concede that this racism was mainstream and a major factor in our policy in our lifetimes, even my comparatively shorter one.
What ryepower12 quotes here really are recent studies that examined political influence. I encountered them first at Vox, and certainly not at the Washington Times which I never read and to which ryepower12 has uncharacteristically linked.
There’s a strong tendency not to want to believe the results because they suggest that mass movements only have any effect to the extent that they move elite opinion. That’s a rather depressing view of the world, and one would strongly prefer not to believe it
Alas, though, sometimes things are true that we don’t want to be true. So these studies must be approached not just with skepticism about them but with skepticism about one’s own views and unexamined beliefs.
I’m never going to live up accidentally linking to the Washington Times, am I?
Totally thought it was the Washington Post. I knew the study I was looking for while googling from memory, and pulled up the link that had “washington” in it, one of the first, thinking it was The Post… /sigh
I grew up in Washington DC, and during the 1950s and 1960s there were two cultures of newspaper readers — those who preferred the “evening” paper (the Evening Star) and those preferred the “morning” paper (the Washington Post). Each was a fine paper, each far superior to anything published in Washington DC today. My family was among those who read the Evening Star.
Sadly, the Evening Star was an early victim of the changes in the newspaper industry. The Watergate triumph of the Washington Post played a part (but only a part) of killing it. The Washington Times is a sad and shameful echo of what the Evening Star used to be.
Don’t feel bad about your mistake, it’s no worse than inadvertently linking to a piece in the Boston Herald or NY Daily News.
For anyone who’d like to read it. It goes into the study in depth, and is pretty fair IMO.
and it’s as good as it is unsettling.
best examples of why the Left has been marginalized. Strident, purist, and divisive. Marisa DeFranco would be proud.
Let’s engage in conversation instead of throwing insults around.
Do you think having our party dominated by politicians who have neoliberal views on the economy is a good or bad thing for Democrats or the country?
If we have a candidate who has a real shot to win (arguably, a better shot) and rejects neoliberalism, and would try to build a party that rejects neoliberalism, why wouldn’t we take it?
Thanks for seeing my comment as a challenge. (I spelled many of my thoughts out here).
My first premise is that, things ain’t the way they used to be. The 1990s is not 2015. Hillary and Bill Clinton had a very specific historical response to movement conservatism’s success. Since Reagan, the Democrats were getting their a$$es handed to them. Bill Clinton, as the candidate of the DLC, espoused a market-based “liberalism.” Faith in the market was extreme. I lived through this time, but Thomas Frank documents it very well in One Market Under God. The Left was, for all intents and purpose, dead, after lapsing into identity politics and alienating lunch-bucket Democrats. Movement conservatism had all the money. You couldn’t call yourself a liberal without experiencing derision. I disagree with much of what President Clinton did and thought, but there was NO ALTERNATIVE. The Dems needed Wall Street money to compete. The country and the world are a different in 2015. Bill and Hillary Clinton are different too. Not in all ways, to be sure. Hillary is, in campaign method, still an establishment candidate.
We don’t need Bernie Sanders as president to build a party that rejects capitalist excess. (Neo-liberalism does not apply here). We need a party and an organization that does. Bernie has continued the organization that began with Occupy and Elizabeth Warren.
Spin aside, Bernie doesn’t have a better shot a winning. I would argue the conventional position that he has a worse shot at winning. We’ll be able to better argue that tomorrow.
It wasn’t quite the market as God of the supply side conservatives, but still defaulted to a capitalist model.
I’m old enough to remember how much sense a lot of the things the Clintons did in the 90s made to the broader public at large, or that many just trusted that these were the right things to do because of how successful the economy was at the time.
And I don’t disagree with this:
It is possible that Bernie and Elizabeth could inspire many, many more like them. But if we have establishment democrats in the White House, and subsequently establishment Democrats running the party, and establishment Democrats holding leadership in both houses of Congress (and subsequently establishment Democrats running both the DSCC and DCCC), it all becomes very, very unlikely.
Possible, but unlikely.
I mean, heck, just today Deborah Wasserman Schultz is joining in with the GOP in attacks on Elizabeth Warren, and the soon-to-be minority/majority leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate is… Chuck Schumer. (It doesn’t get more depressing than that.)
The nomination of Bernie Sanders ensures a majority at the convention to change the DNC in ways that can deeply progressify it (for lack of a better word), which in turn would help all the candidates out there who want to run on the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders platform.
The party establishment is running away from those candidates right now. DWS has long protected Republican friends over strong democrats in key legislative races, for example. And that’s not going to change without radical change at the top (and the votes that make that change possible).
And I just don’t think we can elect enough better democrats to overcome the establishment until we nominate someone like Bernie Sanders to lead our party. I hope that’s 2016. It could be 2020, or 2024. I’m pretty positive it’s going to be someday, though, because too many people are suffering under this economy and that’s not going to change with the current crop of establishment leaders in our party.
I hope Sanders gets a lot of platform language in and that the chair of the DNC can advocate for these things with a straight face. Yes, that’s easier if he has a majority, but I hope Clinton recognizes it’s in her political interest to unite the party by, among other things, throw the Sanders folks a few significant bones regarding the platform.
Why, with the rise of Blue Dogs and “bigger tents” that have invited “business friendly” democrats into the fold, is the party’s ranks depreciating so severely in the past 30 years, and especially in the past 8 years? Is the Democratic Party really shrinking because the Left is “strident, purist and divisive,” or because millions of Americans have decided those corporate-friendly neoliberals and “Blue Dogs” don’t represent them and aren’t different enough from Republicans?
in decline. (See me recent post for my thoughts on that). I think you give far too much credit to ideology here. There are material reasons party membership is in decline.
Here’s an old article on it. Here’s a more something more recent:
The fact is, people don’t belong to things like they used. Parties are one.
And I would add to the problems of the Left, an overemphasis on ideology.
and will probably grow a fair amount during this election for years to come, unfortunately.
The Democratic decline actually got worse since those numbers by a good margin. Although, I imagine the primary will help stabilize them a bit, at least for a couple years.
[Recent numbers for both parties are in that above link.]
I just fundamentally disagree with you that people are leaving the democratic party because it’s ‘too Left.’ I think far too many of them are leaving because it isn’t fighting for the leftwing policies they want.
For a little evidence to suggest I’m right, even as the Democratic Party has shrunk considerably over the past few years, the number of people who self-identify as liberal has grown. And most of these core ‘leftwing’ policies are broadly popular.
I think if our party zeroes in on a focus of reining in Wall St., raising taxes on the rich, expanded social security, debt free public college for all academically-eligible students, universal health care, climate change, and racial equality/social justice, we will have a huge increase in our ranks… but it’s tough to do that and take in big money from Wall St, or if we don’t have everyone on board with at least the talking points on these issues (instead of many high ranking democrats actively undermining them, including policies they’ve historically supported once an insurgent candidate uses them to galvanize the base.)
I mean, just think of it — how many people are going to want to flood to join the Democratic Party’s ranks when Chuck Schumer’s fighting for more Wall St deregulation, and Nancy Pelosi’s saying the Fight for $15 is asking for too much, and that even as millions go without insurance (people who could all be Democrats for generations), we can’t talk about universal health care.
if I said or implied that the Democratic Party was too far to the the left. I think there is plenty of room on the left that we can move toward. We can talk about and disagree about all of it. That’s where we’ll make progress. The more people in the party pulling us left, the more the party will move in the direction at least on ideas.
But you confuse support for our policies with party membership. Our liberal policies are popular, but that doesn’t mean people are going to join the party. They might vote for our candidates, but that’s somewhat different. Your generation as a whole, and those I have in high school now, are more liberal than my generation. They will have to fix the problems caused by the generation before mine.
I disagree with this idea, “if we don’t have everyone on board with at least the talking points on these issues.” It’s unlikely that we’ll ever have everyone on board. The Democratic Party has always been coalition. Every party is a coalition. We’re not all going to disagree, particularly on Bernie’s platform. It’s tough to do that when his economic policy is not based in reality. It’s tough to do that when you imply everyone who doesn’t agree with you supports oligarchy. Your manichaean view is almost guaranteed to alienate those you would wish to persuade.
I do believe we need to work toward those goals, but I don’t believe in revolution. It seems like you do. I don’t believe things change by putting the “perfect” person into place. I don’t think putting Bernie in the White House puts us closer to making those things happen. He may have the right ideas, but there is a great distance between the right ideas and the political skill to carry them out.
… and inherited my politics from my Dad, a union carpenter. Although I have not held a union job in my life, I still consider myself a labor liberal.
As time has gone on, what has passed for “Democrat” and “liberal” has felt to me like one of those chocolate Easter bunnies that is hollow. While there has been a lot of social progress, that has all been like outer layers of chocolate. The core, however (IMO) has been hollowed out and it only takes a little pressure to make the whole thing collapse.
So it seems like Bernie should be a slam dunk for me, but I have been keeping my mind open. About the only argument I have left with myself is that I believe that, in the end, Clinton will get the nomination and it might make sense to get it over with soon and let the press focus on the clown show on the other side (seriously, did Rubio just go down the “dick size” hole today??).
But I have to stay true to my core, and my core is economic and labor liberalism. So Sanders will get my vote tomorrow.
I am voting for Sanders, but I am utterly baffled by the tone of this thread. Especially since it was written by someone who voted for Clinton in 2008 and as recently as last week was highly critical of my attempt to help create an alternative to neoliberal parties right here in Massachusetts.
You went out of your way just last week to say you took your pledge to support the nominee as a DTC member as a solemn and unbreakable oath. Even when it came to supporting a neoliberal nominee like Martha Coakley who was entirely contemptuous of civil liberties and a local party governed by a neoliberal and hackish conservative Democrat like DeLeo and his cronies in the legislature.
To that I say, don’t lift a finger for Clinton this campaign since you feel so strongly. You think that’s a dance with a devil than you should totally help me elect a slate of alternative candidates locally in Massachusetts who live up the idealism and openness espoused by Bernie Sanders. I think that’s a far better use of your time, energy, and the intelligently optimistic outlook you typically espouse in your writing. And I welcome that. Harness this anger for something good.
If Clinton is our nominee, she’ll have my vote. She is much preferable to the Republicans.
But I recognize that a Clinton administration in 2016 will not halt the slow decline of the middle class, because neoliberalism can’t stop that decline, it will just be a softer, more graceful decline, one with continued social progress even as more and more fall by the economic wayside, as compared to Republicans.
If we can avoid staying out of a major recession in the next four years, most people may not even notice that things aren’t getting better, as struggling families continue to suffer largely in silence.
If I sound angry or strident, it’s really just my frustration. People are suffering all across the country, and I’m sick of tempering myself. It’s an economic devastation for so many people, all of whom are largely powerless in our society today (hence my linking of Princeton’s study showing we’re already an oligarchy). If Bernie Sanders doesn’t win, no one is going to represent these people in the White House. Not really.
It’s primary day. Passions are high. I see a lot of, sorry, pure hokum here about the Bill Clinton administration.
I remind all of us that the alternative was George H. Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996 (I discount Ross Perot). Does ANYONE here, including the author, seriously argue that a second administration of George H. Bush or a Bob Dole administration would have been better for ANY of the issues cited?
Can anyone cite a Democratic contender that would have, in retrospect, been a better President than Bill Clinton?
I find the animus against Bill and Hillary Clinton misplaced and inappropriate. In my view, Bill Clinton was without hesitation the best president of any party in my lifetime. I find it a little tiresome to be lectured by someone who was eight years old when Mr. Clinton was first elected president about what an awful evil man he was.
He was not. Bill Clinton was a great president who did great things.
…but as we BMG veterans say, “Six sixes for the above comment!”
wasn’t such a terrible President. Raised taxes when needed. Passed the disability act. Stopped at Baghdad in the Gulf War, even though a great many people in his administration wanted “regime change” (many of the very people who gained leadership roles in GWB’s administration). He made a SCOTUS appointment seen by many as a ‘moderate’ in this day and age, earning him almost as much animosity among the GOP base as the tax hike.
And, no, he didn’t pass TANF.
I have no doubts he’d have passed some of the same things Bill Clinton did, but a lot of those things never would never have ever seen his desk if he had a second term, either. Bill Clinton passed a lot of what he did to show how ‘tough’ he was to the democratic base, liberals and African Americans, as well as to the then largely ostracized LGBT community. He liked his “Nixon goes to China” moments — only they had a peculiar, and IMO deeply shameful, name under Clinton — his “Sister Soulja” moments.
He did that with mostly Republican votes in Congress on many of these issues. (Although, sadly, mass incarceration did enjoy broad popular support — society just did not understand the issue then, even as it was desperate to solve it, hence my link on lead above).
And, I absolutely, absolutely agree that Clinton was as much a product of his time as he was a Democratic President who was bad on core democratic issues, ditto Hillary in her support of many of these issues. But they still own their mistakes, and they’ve continued to be on the wrong side of all too many major issues since then, especially Hillary in her capacity as a public official.
You forgot to mention a few things about the administration of George H. Bush.
– The first near-collapse of the housing market and banking system, the “Savings and Loan Scandal”. That scandal grew and festered during the entire Reagan administration (while Mr. Bush was Vice President), and was worsened by the explicit attempts of the Reagan administration to hide it.
– His complicity in the Iran Contra scandal, coupled with his self-serving pardon of all participants.
There are others. Because of his self-serving pardon, we will never know what was ordered and done during the years that he led the CIA, and we will never know the full story of what transpired between the CIA and the late William Casey while Mr. Bush was, as Vice President, the primary contact point between the CIA and the Reagan administration during the Iran Contra scandal.
We will never know the full facts behind the striking timing of Mr. Casey’s death less than 24 hours after being named in congressional hearings as having assisted the Iran Contra scandal.
The fact is that George H. Bush was, in fact, a TERRIBLE president as was his predecessor. You seem to still be attempting to paint history from the palette you hold in 2016, rather than as it happened.
I was one of the first people to recommend this diary because it is a clear statement of what’s at stake.
I don’t want to relitigate the 1990s. It’s tempting … but I’ll pass. Let me just say two things:
1. I was dissatisfied with the Clinton presidency.
2. Clinton was not a “neoliberal.” (I really have no idea what that means; it sounds like a term The New Republic invented to insult people.) He was a founding member of the Democratic Leadership Council — a “centrist” organization whose members included Al Gore and (I believe) Joe Lieberman. The DLC said, rather explicitly, that Democrats lost because we were too liberal. I had (and have) problems with this.
So again, to Rye’s point, the choice Clinton offers (has always offered, has celebrated even) is pretty clear.
I’m not happy about it.
But then the question becomes, does Sanders offer an alternative? Clearly he does, in word and deed. A viable alternative? No one can really answer.
Some people I respect have argued that HRC is different this time, by which they mean different from her hawkish 2008 run. And they said this before Iowa, before Sanders put any real pressure on her.
Everything I’ve ever written comes down to: the party is sick. The party needs to kick itself in the ass. The party needs to re-energize. In 2008, I came to Obama slowly, reading his books (I never read that type of thing, but his first book is amazing). 2008 was the happiest I’ve ever been in an election year. No one will ever convince me Clinton would have been a better President; if she really is better now, it’s because she learned from the experience of losing to Obama, of watching people hope for something better.
I have issues with Sanders being a Socialist, I have to admit it. It’s not the issue of electability, though I can’t deny worrying about that. It’s that he built his reputation outside the party. It was easier for him.
When people say Clinton is “battle-tested.” they mean Republican battles, but she’s also been tested by Democratic battles. We fight, and then we come together.
Bernie didn’t have to do that. He got to stand outside. This is a party election.
So, with some reluctance and with some admiration for Bernie’s honest approach and his credibility, I am voting today for the Democrat, and in November I will support the Democratic nominee.
Right here.
I think it’s important for people to understand the term.
It’s an economic term, not a political one (with roots that come from economic theory, not political theory, which is why it’s such a confusing term for many). It’s certainly not a term created as an insult, and certainly not a word the New Republic would use to insult anyone. (The Nation, on the other hand…)
I don’t think many economists would disagree with me that the Clintons have been highly influential neoliberals… but check out the wiki page so you can get a basic understanding of the term and let me know if you disagree.
n/t