This is some audacious “both sides do it” nonsense from the New York Times. Headline: “The millions of Americans Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump barely mention: The poor.” Paragraph one: Hillary Clinton doesn’t talk about poverty. Paragraph two: Hillary Clinton doesn’t talk about poverty. Paragraphs three and four: Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump talks about poverty. Paragraph five: House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Obama have some proposals on poverty, including “tackling a criminal justice system that has saddled minor offenders with lives of economic struggle.” Paragraph six:
And Mrs. Clinton’s policies, although rhetorically geared toward the middle class, would most likely have a broader impact. She has promised an economy that works for “everyone, not just those at the top.” She has called for raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour from $7.25 an hour, which would directly benefit many lower-income workers. And her proposals to help the middle class would benefit some lower-income families, too. She has proposed expanding federal subsidies for health care, child care and education, and mandating improved benefits for workers.
Yeah, I’d say raising the federal minimum wage from a below-poverty level is an anti-poverty measure. As are affordable child care and health care. As is paid family leave, another issue Clinton has highlighted. And yes, she too has talked quite a bit about mass incarceration, mentioned just one paragraph earlier as a driver of poverty.
There are lots of poverty-related issues Clinton could and should talk about more—affordable housing and evictions are mentioned in the article—and it’s appropriate for people on the left to pressure her to talk about those issues, develop policy proposals on those issues, and ultimately appoint people to her administration who will find creative ways to work around congressional Republicans in improving anti-poverty policy. But an ostensibly neutral newspaper article equating Clinton with Donald f’ing Trump on this front while downplaying the extent to which the policies she is talking about would have strong anti-poverty effects? That’s outrageous.