Is it ego? Naiveté? Madness? Insanity? What the hell makes Hillary Clinton think the answers to the economic troubles are in Bill Clinton’s head? How insane is she to think this is what the 2016 voter wants to hear? Does she believe it? What the hell goes on in that Chicago-Little Rock-Washington-New York-Wellesley-mind of hers?
How full of themselves can one couple be?
Thanks a lot all you smug BMG types out there for forcing this insane piece of garbage down our throats resulting in the now-liklihood of a Donald Trump White House.
Good for you!!
Please share widely!
I’ll tell you what she might be thinking. She might be thinking that the US economy was stronger during the administration of Bill Clinton than it has been since. She might be thinking that sixteen years of right-wing driven “austerity” — eight under George W. Bush and eight more under Barack Obama have been choking the engine that drives the US economy.
She might be thinking that Bill Clinton wrote frigging BOOK about how to handle right-wing obstructionism in Congress. They were foolish enough to threaten a government shutdown against Mr. Clinton — he called their bluff, gave them a spanking they remembered for years, and sent them crying to the woodshed. Barack Obama would have done well to pay more heed to Mr. Clinton’s example.
I hear more economic wisdom in fifteen minutes of Bill Clinton than I’ve heard in a year of Bernie Sanders and a lifetime of Donald Trump.
And speaking of “smug”, this thread-starter offers pretty much a canonical example of same.
So, the BOOK is to win by getting largely Republican ideas into law?
I think you give Bill way too much credit overall. On the economy, the Clinton administration had the benefit of riding a business cycle, and a unique one propped by a booming tech sector. That bubble blew up in 2000-01 and it wasn’t because of Bush. His subsequent tax cuts didn’t provide enough stimulus and put government finances in danger – huge failure.
And, we shouldn’t forget which administration set up the deregulation that led to the 2008 crash. Not full blame because the Bush administration failed at oversight, but 2008 still has a direct line back to the Clinton White House.
The neoliberal Third Way is not what we need now.
…about how economic indicators just happen rather than resulting from public policy.
We can have another Tulip Bulb run-up on the stock market again, lime when everything with the words ‘dot com’ in a company name meant a 200% rise in ephemeral value overnight! And maybe a new NAFTA, too…this time with…FRANCE! By the time the untenable economic impact comes home to roost, Hil will already be in her second term!
It was Al Gore who invented the internet, if you want to keep your right-wing lies straight.
Pero no comprendo: “We can have another Tulip Bulb run-up on the stock market again, lime when everything with the words ‘dot com’”
As you know perfectly well, a spelling error such as ‘lime’ for ‘like’ cannot be corrected. How difficult it must be for you to try to understand context on this unforgiving platform. You must lie awake at night seeing Cite for Site, and Amd for And, and….
I interpreted his comment as not understanding the relevance of the Tulip Bulb reference.
And the misattribution of inventing the internet to the Clinton.
They became as valuable as gold in the early 1600’s. Tulip bulb mania is widely referenced in economic classes as the first speculative bubble to burst. The housing bubble, beanie babies, internet stocks…
I believe this should be:
It is my understanding that within the sentence fragment, “Their shit does not stink”, that the subject, in this case, shit, is the subject of the sentence and as such, is consistent with the third person singular “it”, which means that the compound verb,”does not stink”, is the correct usage because it follows the pattern:
I do not stink
You do not stink
He/She/It does not stink
We do not stink
You do not stink
They do not stink
If you are going to attack the next President of the USA, I strongly suggest you not present yourself as an idiot while doing so. Let the counter attacks begin.
For some reason, the stupid mouse on my computer, when it is simply doing a “Roll Over Event”, triggers the “Click Event” without my actually touching the “Right Click Button”.
Alas, often when I am irritated at someone else’s crummy grammar, am about to post about it, and have a spelling error in the post. I feel your pain.
.
n/t
For those of you not paying attention (and supporting putting another Clinton in the White House), Bill Clinton tried (working with Newt Gingrich) to privatize Social Security and tear down yet another piece of the New Deal. Alas, his escapades with Monica hit the fan and cut his political clout so he was unable to carry this out. He did manage to deregulate the banks (Think: 2008 recession and market crash) but never got to hand over Social Security to the private sector (Think: speeches to Goldman Sachs and transcripts).
I’ve read these from Republican sites to highlight that they weren’t the boogeyman, even Clinton was going to do it crap for a while now. So glad that you have taken over to continue the legend.
We see it over and over in your comments and posts, it’s at best embellishments of facts or just lies.
in the sense of being impervious to reality.
They had some meetings with Republicans, and that’s about it. For years Republicans have argued this in order to show how politically mainstream an idea privatization is.
One thing that has surprised me over the last few months is how a what one would expect to be a liberal cohort of voters has turned out to be full of undiscriminating consumers of right wing media.
to JTM, then I thought about what I’d read about conservatism as motivated reasoning. The thing that struck me was “epistemic closure,” basically close-mindedness that can tend toward paranoia and conspiracy theories.
The following things were found to motivate or characterize conservatives:
death anxiety
dislike of system instability
dogmatism—intolerance of ambiguity
openness to experience
intolerance for uncertainty
needs for order, structure, and closure
dislike of integrative complexity
fear of threat and loss
The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.
The author of What’s the Matter with Kansas and now Listen Liberal is a Republican and a boogeyman? He covers this story in Chapter 5. It’s also covered by Steven Gillion in his book “The Pact”, but I have not read that book.
If it’s a lie or an embellishment of the facts, please prove it or please, shut up.
and you would like me to refute stories.
Let me guess, actual conformation by Bill Clinton in person that he did work with Newt to privatize social security…am I right?
I have supplied several sources and this falls in line with a president who deregulated banks, hurt the poor with welfare reform, an so on.
And it wasn’t privatization at all. It was basically the same kind of reform Obama and Boehner attempted with raising the retirement age, chaining CPI. and means testing. It’s definitely centrist and not progressive, but it’s different from voucherizing the program a la Paul Ryan or tying them to private indeces a la George W. Bush. It may still be a bad policy, I’d rather we raise the revenue and fudge with phasing in other universal benefit programs, but its distinct from the partial privatization Bush proposed.
She is not going to do that. George W. Bush partly lost Congress over his overreach on social security and the Dems in congress revolted at Obama’s modest reforms coming out of Simpsons-Bowles. There is no way this will happen, the base of neither party wants this and the senior lobby is one of the best funded, best organized and muscular groups on Capital Hill.
As a member of the Acela Corridor she probably wants to do some kind of entitlement reform, but there are ways to do that without cutting benefits and the policy proposals on her website not to mention the party platform will prevent this from happening. Do you think she wants to risk a primary challenge in 2020 from Warren or some other progressive over this?
It would be justified and she knows it. Not to mention killing her in the midterms when the “get government off our social security” ads start flying. This is a paranoid fantasy masquerading as contrarian analysis. I’ve been a staunch defender of your warnings about Trump’s appeal and the faux populism from Camp Clinton but this takes it a step too far. I really hope Vince Foster can stay off of BMG at the rate these kinds of posts are going…
…do you have entitlement reform without cutting benefits? Expanding them to make them even less fiscally sustainable?
I know this is incomprehensible and unthinkable to you, but here’s the answer to your question: YOU EXPAND THE TAX BASE.
when you have big dollar donors and “super delegates”?
Misread that one
I would be open to other reforms but only if they were accompanied with more revenue. I dislike the idea of expanding it as back door UGI, I think a UGI or negative income tax if implemented correctly could simultaneously shrink the administrative side of the welfare state while ensuring more people were covered with basic benefits. Were you a fan of UGI or the Negative Income Tax? I think it’s time botj made a comeback. You can argue for them from the left, right or center. If Ryan wanted to replace SSI wth an NIT or UGI I would be more open to it than most here, unfortunately voucherization isn’t what we should be doing.
…first step is payment on the first $500,000 coupled with an age hike. Tom and I must wait until 67 for full benefits but I think we may make it. We made that change in 1980 so we had time to plan.
We let it sit for 30 years, so a similar hike for those born in, say, 1963 is a little too soon but we should consider 68 for those born in 1985 and 68 for those born in 1994.
And why can’t this be indexed – add one year to qualify for full benefits every 15 Years? Oh, and have Medicare tied to social security age. I have to apply for that 2 years before social security.
..who has secret ties to Goldman Sachs that she will not reveal is very capable of doing whatever they tell her to do in order for their “donations” to keep flowing, don’t you? Bill Clinton looked into doing it. She’s already given up on the government’s central role in healthcare, a total reversal from where she was eight years ago. How can you say this is “too much” given her history?
…for the idea that Bill Clinton ever had designs on privatizing Social Security. If you are going to blame 2008 on a President who had not been in office for eight years you really are as bad the GOP in the lagging indicators department. BTW, are you noticing that people who probably largely agree with you on the merits of various policies are starting to lose patience with you? That has to say something.
Chapter 5.
Or this
Or This
Or LA Progressive
Translation: Bill Clinton wanted to gut Social Security, but knew it would be so controversial that he wanted to bring along the Republican Party so he couldn’t be blamed alone.
The rose-colored glasses the Democratic Party wears for the Clintons are amazing. Rank and file Labour members had the right idea in the UK for how Tony Blair should be treated; ostracize him almost completely for the disgraceful figure that he is.
I also distinctly recalling hearing Clinton exclaim during a SOTU that we must SAVE Social Security first.
. . is a ten-second google search. Christopher? It’s not like you can’t think of anything else to say.
I try to cite and source as much as I can, and Clinton supporters overly rely on their narrative on the economy. I will say I don’t mind that he was fiscally sensible and balanced budgets with a Republican Congress. To me balanced budgets go hand in hand with good governance which is ultimately what progressive government should be about. Invest money and even raise taxes if need me to meet key concerns of government but do so with fiscal sanity and probity. We will likely need to make a mixture of raising taxes and cutting programs to balance budgets and sustain entitlements, but I certainly think we can pare back the bloated defense budget and many of the affiliated wasteful programs and reform the tax code. I’d rather kill the home mortgage deduction before chaining CPI.
Well, yes. Ask any economist and they will tell you this is bad policy. It hurts the poor, is a wash at best for the middle class and it a give-a-way for the wealthy.
I’d be in favor of a first time home buyers tax credit up to a certain amount, but that’s it.
That said, many of my Democratic pals are realtors and fierce defenders of this (and the 6% that they magically get)….as Upton Sinclair said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
I try to cite and source as much as I can, and Clinton supporters overly rely on their narrative on the economy. I will say I don’t mind that he was fiscally sensible and balanced budgets with a Republican Congress. To me balanced budgets go hand in hand with good governance which is ultimately what progressive government should be about. Invest money and even raise taxes if need me to meet key concerns of government but do so with fiscal sanity and probity. We will likely need to make a mixture of raising taxes and cutting programs to balance budgets and sustain entitlements, but I certainly think we can pare back the bloated defense budget and many of the affiliated wasteful programs and reform the tax code. I’d rather kill the home mortgage deduction before chaining CPI.
They don’t need to be ‘balanced’ to be in balance. Governments can spend more than they bring in indefinitely, so long as they a) print money and b) ensure deficits don’t widely exceed rates of inflation over time.
In fact, it can be fiscal *insanity* to try to balance a budget during an economic downturn.
(And, honestly, the idea that most households have “balanced budgets” year in and year out is laughable for any who have a mortgage, a car payment or a credit card, and so on and so forth.)
I think you’re simply mistaken when you write “balanced budgets go hand in hand with good governance” when speaking of the federal government. The world has learned, over and over, that this is not the case.
When the economy is expanding and things are good, government surpluses are a symptom that the government is taking too much out of the economy. When the economy is shrinking or stagnant, then increased government spending — especially in areas that put money directly into consumer wallets, such as unemployment compensation — is the most effective tool available to government for addressing the malaise. That requires deficit spending during recessions or whatever it is we are in the midst of right now.
In fact, the “balanced budget” canard is one of the more pernicious ways that the already-wealthy add to the already obscene wealth and income concentration problem. Governments balance budgets by cutting government spending on goods and services. That means abysmal public rail transportation (see Amtrak), reduced unemployment benefits, reduced social net spending, and so on.
Because good and effective government targets those most in need for such spending, then cuts in that spending impact those most in need.
There is no need for either killing the home mortgage deduction or chaining CPI. What is needed, instead, are significant increases in the following:
– Upper brackets of the federal income tax
– Upper brackets of the capital gains tax
– Upper brackets of the gift and estate tax
– Elimination of the ceiling on social security taxes.
All of these hit upper-income and/or wealthy taxpayers far more than working-class taxpayers. The purpose of these is NOT to balance the budget, it is instead to reduce the obscenely high wealth and income concentration that is already destroying our society. We need to — yes — capture and redistribute wealth from the very wealthy so that it may be distributed among everybody else.
You’re confusing the balanced budgets that were the result of good governance in the 1990’s with the austerity obsession of the Acela Corridor.
I meant to add that Clinton balancing the budget, with a Republican Congress, and leaving office with a surplus he or President Gore would’ve used to fund a healthcare expansion, permanently sustain social security, and paid down the national debt was definitely good governance.
Cutting taxes while funding a necessary war and a war of choice was definitely not. Cutting benefits now in the midst of a recovery the middle class has not felt and only cutting while not also rolling back unsustainable tax cuts also makes little sense. But I won’t hide from the fact that balanced budgets in good times are worthy goals which can be achieved with a mix of tax increases and cuts to unnecessary expenditures (I’d kill the F-35 before gutting pre-k).
The millionaires tax in California was a key factor in taking it from one of the most bankrupt and broken states in the country to a fiscally solvent one investing in its people and its future again.
And that was also the context of looking at social security. There were budget surpluses for the first time in memory. What to do with the money? The whole point of “fix social security first” was supposed to ensure that the GOP wouldn’t temporarily forget about social security, enact a big tax cut, and then return to yelping about how it is unsustainable, etc. because it doesn’t have the money (which is exactly what happened).
We Sanders people do not do our own research.
I can tell you that I do mine.
I’ve read/researched
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
Listen Liberal
Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
And they all cover the same reality that wages for laborers (like me) have been flat for the past 40 years and half those years have had a Democrat in the White House. At the same time, a small number of Americans have made huge financial gains from the enormous rise in productivity. Americans are, on average, working 40 hours more per year than they were in the 1970 and more of us have college degrees, but more of us are going bankrupt, struggling to make ends meet, and now, experiencing shorter life spans.
Hillary promises more of the same, incremental gains, slowly, over time, trust her, she knows what can and cannot get done.
40 years of flat wages, a falling life expectancy, and still the only developed nation without health care as a human right, and you all want me to tone it down, fall in line, and stop whining?
Ain’t going to happen.
good books. I’ll give you that.
it nailed so much about what is wrong with America. Chris Hayes gets it. So few do.
…than Mr. “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”? All economic indicators, effecting all segments of society, trended the right direction during his presidency.
Because after his presidency, the seeds he sowed bloomed…. and nearly destroyed the worldwide economy. When you make decisions that outlast the years in office, you don’t get to have your record judged by just the economic indicators while you were in office.
Also, not all segments of society benefited from Clinton. Extreme childhood poverty, for example, skyrocketed during and immediately after his Presidency, because of his destruction of the welfare state and betrayal of one of the core principals our party has held since the days of FDR.
who suffered from Clinton’s policies still like him for the economy and jobs, which, he had less to do with than they think.
Still, that was then. This is now. Having come of age (in my 30s) during the 1990s, all I can say is that it was a conservative time. The feeling was that things would be okay if you played your cards right. There was minimal left-wing commentary. I read The Nation, but unfortunately, The New Republic. I remember thinking Charles Krauthammer was deep! It wasn’t until the advent of the blogosphere that there was an arena for ideas on the left side of the spectrum.
Clinton did what he did. But he did it in another time. Would we have been better with Bush or Dole in the 1990s. Conservative was a compliment. Liberal became a joke.
to make you think they are philosophically largely different from then?
Which terrible policies did they produce then that Hillary has made a campaign issue out of this election, wanting to repeal them?
The sad fact is that Hillary’s lesson from 2008 — when she ran a substantive, issue-based campaign — was to subtract policy from her campaign almost entirely.
She certainly isn’t running a campaign largely interested in undoing the wrongs of the 1990s and reversing this country’s long, steep path toward neoliberalism that’s killing the middle class (often even literally).
We can throw our hands up in the air and say the 90s were a different time, but we can’t excuse ourselves when we’re putting the exact same people in charge of the country today, selling the same old neoliberal nonsense on economic issues.
“Better than Donald Trump” is a disastrously disappointing slogan for our party in 2016, especially as hundreds of millions of us are being marched toward the economic cliff.
. . .however much it disappoints you as a slogan is reality-based. Somewhere on the internet there must be a reality-based blog where such a slogan can be posted.
Your perception of the Clinton administration, of the 1990s, and of the 1980s that preceded is, I fear, badly mistaken.
The “long, steep path towards neoliberism that’s killing the middle class” began LONG before Bill Clinton took office — it began with Ronald Reagan and his lies, delusions, and fantasies. Some would argue it began nearly twenty years prior to that with Barry Goldwater.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have, in fact, RESISTED that trend far more effectively than Barack Obama did and more effectively than nearly all contemporary Democrats. In particular, Bernie Sanders was SINGULARLY absent from making ANY contribution whatsoever (other than get himself into some photo-ops).
The list of Democratic political warriors since 2000 who have been profiles in courage as they fought the trend we all decry DOES include both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and does NOT include Bernie Sanders.
gained steam with Ronnie, and got booster rockets with Clinton.
Again, wages have been flat for 40 + years despite a growing economy, increases on productivity, more people graduating from college and working more hours.
Where have the gains gone? To the folks at Goldman Sachs and their ilk.
All why Democrats were in the White house for 20 of those years.
Look at the trends during those forty years.
Rightly or wrongly, America moved to the right, starting somewhere around the Carter election. I have no clue where your “booster rockets” comment about Bill Clinton comes from. What I do know is after years of shuttered storefronts, failing banks, failing businesses, increasing unemployment, and a Massachusetts economy spiraling ever-downward under Presidents Reagan and Bush, there was an immediate and marked turnaround under Bill Clinton. That turnaround reversed itself literally the day George W. Bush took office.
Perhaps you argue that a second term of George H. Bush would have been better. I disagree most strongly. Maybe you argue that Robert Dole would have been better for working-class men and women had he been elected in 1996. I disagree even more strongly.
Indeed, the gains during the past 40 years have gone disproportionately to Goldman Sachs and their ilk (the 0.1%). The point is that America has, like it or not, cheered while that happened. Enough Americans have been lied to by enough outlets like Fox News that they believe “liberals” (or “illegals”, or “gays” or whomever the scapegoat du jour is) are responsible.
Bill Clinton resisted that move. The result, after eight years of Bill Clinton, were FAR FAR better than they would have been under four more years of George H. Bush or four years of Robert Dole. The failure of Barack Obama has been that he was not enough like Bill Clinton, not too much.
Your ire towards the Democrats that were in the White House is perhaps better directed at the electorate that has been driving government for the past forty years. In particular, the mainstream media has been far more active in spreading outright lies about economic policy (such as the premise that in times of recession, government spending should be cut in order to “balance the budget”).
Politics — especially national politics, and MOST especially presidential politics — is a lagging, not leading, indicator.
it is a ridiculous and absurd notion to say that Clinton “resisted” neoliberalism.
Reagan was the primary guy, but Clinton turned it from a Republican Party thing into the new status quo for everyone.
(And, yes, John is right to say Carter was the one who actually started it — but it was very, very minor back then, whereas Clinton took Reagan’s neoliberalism and dialed it up to 11, doing things that I’m pretty sure Reagan would have scarcely conceived.)
You offer one interpretation of what Mr. Clinton did.
Here’s how I remember what went down as we collectively lived through it: Bill Clinton co-opted the “Reagan Revolution” and stopped the conservative juggernaut dead in its tracks. I was blown away at the time, and I still think it stands as a marvelously positive achievement.
It seems to me that you are looking back at that and complaining about what transpired afterwards. In my view, the benefit is as much in what DID NOT happen as anything else.
Whatever it was the Bill Clinton did while in office, it was compellingly preferable to what any of the other candidates would have done. In a similarly way, whatever it was that Bill Clinton WOULD have done had he been allowed to serve more than two terms, it would have been compellingly preferable to what George W. Bush and then Barack Obama did.
We do not have the choice of perfection, and your vision of perfection might be different from mine.
From 1968-1992, the White House was essentially a GOP “safe seat.” Carter was a fluke, resulting entirely on circumstances that were unlikely to be repeated. The other presidential elections during that period were essentially blowout GOP wins. GOP dominance in presidential politics during this period has all kinds of long-term consequences (not least the composition of the SCOTUS) that have not yet played out. Clinton came along, in the election right in the wake of Gulf Storm that all reasonable people expected Bush to win handily, and turned the tide.
Since Clinton, Democrats have at least been competitive in presidential elections, even when they have not won. It seems silly to villify him for being carried by an advancing generation-long tide, even while breaking its advance, when 25 years later that tide still shows no sign of receding.
…why we could not have nominated a true liberal in 1992 my response is to say we tried that in 1984 and 1988 and got creamed. OF COURSE it made sense to try something different.
We don’t know what might have happened had Bill Clinton been president during the eight years after he was forced to leave office. In my view, we DO know that his successor was utterly incompetent — especially in matters of economics and tax policy.
I will always believe at least the following:
1. The disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, and all that has followed, would not have happened had Bill Clinton been president.
2. The catastrophic collapse of the economy in 2008, and all that has followed, would not have happened had Bill Clinton been president.
3. The war crimes that shamed America and will shame us for decades would not have happened had Bill Clinton been president.
4. The 22nd amendment, imposing a two-term limit, was a terrible blunder that has hobbled American government since its adoption. Had it been in place prior to FDR, we would likely be speaking German today. FDR would have been ineligible to run in the 1940 election (and either Windell Wilkie or Thomas Dewey — both isolationists — would have likely been elected). It was put in place after the GOP was unable to forward candidates competitive with FDR. Rather than reform themselves, the whiny sore-losers changed the game. We collectively paid the price in 2000, when Bill Clinton was forced to step down in favor of the utterly incompetent George W. Bush.
It seems to me that only fair comparison is between Bill Clinton and the presidents that came before and after him, and between Bill Clinton and the candidates who ran against him.
In my view, I suggest we first compare the eight-year administration of Bill Clinton to the following (these are the presidents of my adult lifetime):
– LBJ (D)
– Richard Nixon (R)
– Gerald Ford (R)
– Jimmy Carter (D)
– Ronald Reagan (R)
– George H. Bush (R)
– George W. Bush (R)
– Barack Obama (D)
In my view, the administration of Bill Clinton stands head and shoulders above each and every one of the others. The only candidate not on the above list is Robert Dole — I think there is ZERO evidence that Mr. Dole would have been any different or better than any of his Republican colleagues.
I reject your characterization of his welfare policies. First, you slide over what the alternatives would have been had he not been elected. You slide over the irrational, racist, and ignorant stance towards childhood poverty that drove GOP dogma and policy until Mr. Clinton destroyed the issue. I suggest that the changes in childhood poverty “before and immediately after his Presidency” in fact reflect the actions and policies of his GOP predecessors and successors.
Those of us who remember the aggressively racist and strident dog-whistles (and worse) of the pre-Clinton GOP know that Bill Clinton put a cold, hard stop to their lies. There have been no “Willie Horton” campaigns from the GOP after that. We have, thankfully, stopped hearing about “Cadillac mothers” and the rest of that explicitly racist GOP rubbish (except from segments of the Tea Party and from supporters of Donald Trump). In fact, it was Bill Clinton who set back the explicitly racist, ignorant, homophobic, misogynist, and xenophobic mainstream of the GOP in 1992 by at least a decade. The “Trumpism” we see resurfacing today is the rebirth of the attitudes that Bill Clinton handled so masterfully during his administration. If only Barack Obama had been so effective.
Your characterization of the Bill Clinton administration is far too harsh. Hillary Clinton would do well to achieve half of what her husband did. Barack Obama hasn’t come close.
Given that Clinton’s welfare “reform” bill was far more draconian than what the Republicans in the House wanted, then I’m pretty sure we can definitively say that the alternatives would have been better.
Note, too, that not even Ronald Reagan touched welfare.
And Barack Obama has run circles around Bill Clinton, with a much more difficult political climate. I’ll take a Barack Obama over 10 Bill Clintons any day.
I’m sorry, I think you’re simply mistaken about what happened before and during the Clinton years.
In particular, your assertion that “Clinton’s welfare “reform” bill was far more draconian than what the Republicans in the House wanted” is in STARK contrast to my experience at the time.
The GOP of that era, not surprisingly, argued loudly that federal spending was “out of control”. You slide past the infamous “Read my lips — no new taxes” pledge that was required of the GOP candidate. The TARGET of those cuts was the minority community. Those were the Willie Horton days, the “Cadillac mothers”, one racist lie after another.
There was a related false claim — “Democrats are soft on crime”. Bill Clinton reversed that as well, by putting thousands of cops on the street. Part of why he is loved by the minority community is that he put those cops in urban neighborhoods where neighborhood leaders had been begging for increased police presence for years (and in some cases decades).
The implied GOP message was “The Democrats are soft on crime, and won’t protect upstanding white people for black criminals. We want to bring law and order, and we’ll do that by hiring cops that will kick the ni**ers asses”. The Bill Clinton masterpiece was to invert that — he made an enormously positive difference in urban neighborhoods, and destroyed the GOP talking-point while doing so.
I lived through these years. Your comments here fly in the face of my experience during those times.
It was much, much uglier than that.
http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
I understand you don’t feel this way — 20-25 year old memories are fuzzy things that can’t be trusted, but facts are facts. And the facts are that the Clintons do not have a good record on race when it comes to policy.
The bigger question is why you want to keep trying to focus on these issues? These aren’t doing Hillary any favors. There are plenty of other issues you could choose to focus on instead that will.
I’d like to move past the infighting and focus on the general now, and get ready to support Hillary in the general. But if you want to keep reliving the past, I’m not going to ignore what actually happened. Your choice.
the one he voted for. That one?
and he only voted for it because that’s what it took to get an important domestic violence amendment attached to it. And after bashing the rest of the bill on the floors of Congress.
Do I wish he voted against it? Sure do. I think he’d like that vote back, too. But, unlike the Clintons, he didn’t champion it by pushing for above and beyond what the republicans in congress were asking for.
he ran on that vote showing his tough on crime bona fides. Already detailed, just going around in circles here. It happened.
Before praising Bill for combating racism, maybe you might want to consider digging into his wide — and deeply disconcerting — use of the dog whistle. Most notably Sister Souljah, and — as Michelle Alexander often notes — the fact that his policies were tougher on black people than even Republicans wanted — so he could show how ‘tough’ he and the New Democrats were to black people. Etc. etc. etc.
Look — I’m all aboard the unity train for the general election, but let’s have an honest recognition of what the 90s were, knowing all the context and facts we have available about that era from today. Rose colored glasses are going to rub people who hadn’t long since joined the Hillary marching band the wrong way.
You want to say the economy in the 90s was strong and lots of people were doing well? Sure, great. But if you want to say Bill Clinton was some great champion on race and his welfare “reform” was great for the times…. that is a bunch of baloney.
I see. So your assertion is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are actually racists.
I guess that the OVERWHELMING support and even passionate affection for Mr. and Ms. Clinton among black and Hispanic communities is because they aren’t sophisticated enough to hear the Clinton dog-whistles. I’m sorry, but your claim just doesn’t connect to reality. It is Bill and Hillary Clinton that are loved by the communities you claim they exploit.
They supported racist policies. I think that’s a tough one to debate.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s tough AT ALL.
ALL of us support “racist policies”. The standard you set is impossible for any official to achieve. I am quite certain that ANY policy you or anyone else puts forward today will be found to have had unexpected consequences ten or (in this case) twenty years from now.
The choice we get is between the candidates who run for office, and the policies advocated by those candidates.
I invite you to share evidence that the policy proposals of George H. Bush or Robert Dole would have been preferable to those put in place by Bill Clinton.
The policies probably wouldn’t have been better. I’ve never argued that, and I’m not sure where that’s coming from. Yes, Bill Clinton was better than the alternative, but the vast majority of things he accomplished were not great by any stretch. I’m being realistic about his legacy, you’re wearing rose-colored glasses.
On the contrary, I am not sure that tom has ever bestowed hero status on a politician. A politician can’t be “good” but only “good in context.” Indeed, I think that a segment of the left (including you) tends to fall excessively in love with a candidate, and projects all kinds of unrealistic hopes and aspirations upon them, reality notwithstanding. (See, e.g., Obama 2008) They aren’t heroes. They are tools.
Say that the superdelegates decide that HRC is trouble, and decide to pitch the nomination to Sanders, notwithstanding the results of the primary vote. And say that he then survives the GOP campaign and wins in November. What, then, do you expect? Under the best case scenario, the Dems come out with a bare majority in the Senate, and the GOP still controls the House.
President Sanders says that he has a mandate to enact single-payer health care, and free college for everyone. Congress, please proceed accordingly.
What do you expect will happen?
The GOP House majority, along with Sen. McConnell, laughs. The entire Dem caucus in Congress is going to say, gee, didn’t we just have this fight, and didn’t it cost us the majority?
Do you expect them all to go to the barricades on these issues? If that is what you are expecting, how do you propose to alter the national political consensus in a way that might make the outcome different than it was in 1948, 1965, 1972, 1993, and 2010?
So that means that you would probably have to bounce a significant chunk of the incumbent Democrats, plus flip a some 30-40 GOP House seats to Sanders Democrats. Which means that the first half of President Sanders presidency is an extended mid-term campaign, which means that President Sanders has to win a series of tactical political confrontations, such as budget brinkmanship, nominee confirmations, terrorist crises, and the like– all against a hostile Congress and possibly without the support of those Dems who are slated for bouncing by Sanders Dems.
What I gather that you want, under these circumstances, is a President who achieves nothing at all, rather than achieve what he can in a system where power is held by people who do not share your goals.
Tom has written glowingly of the Clinton legacy quite often.
I’ve never written here expecting Sanders to get all of his plans through. Never even implied such. I don’t think he’s the right guy for the job, but I think he’s preferable to Clinton because he has the right priorities.
It’s hilarious this picture you paint because it applies just as much to Hillary Clinton. Her middle of the road proposals are equally non-starters in the current and likely Congress, so any outcomes would be even further compromises on starting proposals that would be great to have as final compromise position. Maybe she really is the masterful politician some claim and she’ll be able to get 75%+ of her proposals. I’m not bullish.
Back to the original issue – the Clinton administration of the 1990s did some actively bad shit that we’re still feeling. Even in context it is bad.
…that part of her experience includes a better shot at getting her agenda through Congress, though there is more to being POTUS than legislator-in-chief. I just disagree on the 1990s. Sure, I could find a couple of things I wish had gone differently as I’m sure we all can, but I’m loathe to argue with success, no context necessary.
I support HRC because I think her less likely to be a sitting duck, and more likely to actually fight. Fight, as in taking the offensive, rather than being martyred on principle.
As Michelle Alexander has often noted, many of his policies that he pushed through or proposed disproportionately impacting black people went out of their way to be much tougher than what the Republicans wanted then. He didn’t have to do that. He saw doing that as politically beneficial, or in keeping with his personal ideology. Welfare “reform” is the perfect example, but not the only one. Two core things Clinton’s “reform” did that Republicans didn’t ask for was banning ex-cons from ever getting public housing, *including* moving back in with their parents if their parents lived in public housing. Another was forever banning them from ever having food stamps –because why should the government help ex-cons be able to eat when they can add retributive policies that increase recidivism?
I think the Clintons have changed since then, and I think they understand the Democratic Party has changed since then, too. But let’s acknowledge the past even as we understand today isn’t the 1990s.
I guess that today’s black and Hispanic communities LOVE the taste of baloney.
I would enjoy being a fly on the wall while this claim is being defended in a gathering of minority voters.
I don’t think this dispute can be resolved.
Was Bill Clinton a racist? I don’t think so. Did he engage in racial politics? If you deny that, you’re in denial.
Was he (and by extension, HRC) a problematic leader? YES.
But the problems are deep, and involve dilemmas we still struggle with, so the argument comes down to emotion. What matters is now.
And yes, now is problematic.
…is a positive one for the party. It should a Dem nominee could buck being held hostage to identity politics.
…It SHOWED a Dem nominee…
Or put another way, racial politics.
A hippie punch, if you will, but for hip-hop. A hip-hoppie punch.
“We’re a society, not an economy.”
Think about the implications of that (and conversely, the implications of the Clinton original). They’re huge.
I prefer the Birmingham version.
Clinton will remain Hillary Clinton as President. We are who we are, but as it says, in Hamlet, “We know not who we may be.” This is true for all of us.
Hillary Clinton will respond based on who she is, but she will be who she is in a different time with different political pressures and contexts. Times have changed. Times are changing now. This isn’t the 1990s, and there is no going back.
Predicting how a President would govern in a different time might have some probability, but we make a mistake assuming people remain completely the same and respond as they would have 20 years ago.
…but to the extent she is running on a combination of offering a third Clinton term and a third Obama term that is a huge plus for me. She is smart and compassionate enough to adjust for circumstances as are the two Presidents themselves.