Or so R J Eskow maintains, writing at Alternet. "Bill Clinton's Out of Touch Economically -- and That's a Big Deal; The country deserves better" is a look at statements coming from the former president that should be worrying to anyone looking to the future and a Hillary Clinton campaign.
The 1990s are over. This is a different country now, both economically and politically. But the presumptive nominee's partner and most important colleague still holds views which are sharply at odds with both economic reality and the nation's mood. That's a big deal. His opinions could have a profound impact on our political and economic future.
If Hillary Clinton disagrees with the former president's views, she hasn't said so.
More below the
Orange Omnilepticon.
I am, of course, recommending that Reading The Whole Thing is the best way to evaluate the case Eskow is making. That being said, here's an excerpt to give a taste of the points Eskow is making.
When Bill Clinton speaks on economic issues, he reveals a deep wellspring of neoliberal belief and a profound detachment from the lived experience of most Americans. His latest slip took place in a speech he gave this week at the University of Southern California. After some bland bromides ("The Internet has done a lot of good") and self-helpish sounding political advice ("what you gotta have is an agenda and get things done"), the former president said this:
"We are in the best shape of any big country in the world in the next 20 years. No big country that is running this well is as young as we are, as diverse as we are or as technological as we are. In the next 20 years, there will be bad days, there will be bad headlines, but you can keep the trend lines positive."
The millions of Americans who struggle with falling wages, shrinking personal wealth, and rising healthcare costs would presumably be astonished to hear this sunny assessment of their future.
Compare and Contrast:
It's true that, for the extremely wealthy, the "trend lines" are positive indeed. For the rest of the nation, not so much. Consider some of these very negative trends:
Real wages have fallen since 2007 for eight out of every ten Americans, rising only for the wealthiest among us. This follows nearly five decades of stagnant or falling wage growth for the middle class, as wealth inequality continues to rise.
Wealth inequality increases since 1979 cost median-income households an average of $9,500 in 2010, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities' Jared Bernstein. When adjusted for inflation, median income has fallen $2,100 since the start of the Obama presidency and $3,600 since 2001.
As a result, the middle class is disappearing. In 1970, 55 percent of households were in the "middle tier" of income. A recent Pew study showed that this figure had fallen to 45 percent by 2013. All the wealth which the middle class accumulated in the growth years after 1940 is now gone.
Eskow continues by laying out how Wall Street and big corporations are doing very well - and how another Clinton presidency would be just fine with them. It should be remembered that Bill Clinton was
very dismissive about going after the Wall Street bankers who wrecked the economy; he's never acknowledged how
deregulation helped set the stage for the collapse. If there are any indications Hillary Clinton would break with any of this, she's keeping very quiet about it.
To be fair, these attitudes are not exclusive to the Clintons among the Democratic party elites. Elizabeth Warren has noted loudly how the Obama administration has time and time again put economic policy in the hands of Wall Streeters; Obama's obsession with Grand Bargains and use of Republican talking points is an echo of Clintonian triangulation and the neoliberalism that has made the Democratic Party seem like Republican Lite all too often.
It should be remembered that Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform has had mixed results, not all of them good. (This 2007 NPR discussion has some interesting points - and that was before the Great Recession and the GOP cut off of unemployment benefits.) His policies on DOMA, DADT, and declaration that "The era of Big Government is over" all represented conscious moves to adopt and adapt GOP positions; we've seen how well that has worked out. Here's the full quote from that speech:
We know big Government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We know, and we have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic Government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big Government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.
And yet, despite that last line, that's exactly where we're headed if the Republican/Wall Streeet/Big Money agenda goes unchallenged.
There is a perennial cry that both sides should work together for the good of the country, that we're all Americans, etc. etc. This ignores a simple truth: on some things there can be no compromise - they are inherently incompatible. And that's especially true where those things are at odd with reality. For all of Bill Clinton's triangulation and neoliberal abandonment of old-line Democratic principles, his reward was total war from the Republican side, up to and including impeachment. There are signs that President Obama may face the same threat.
Paradoxically, President Obama seems to be liberated now that he no longer has to worry about keeping the Senate out of Republican hands. Faced with a hostile Congress and a hostile Supreme Court, he may be limited in what he can do, but he no longer has to keep up the pretense that he must reach out to the other side - unless he chooses to. Good luck with that. And good luck for America, on the things they DO agree on.
Clearly, Bill Clinton's approach to governing is past its sell-by date; further he had the advantage of an economy that wasn't doing all that badly, and didn't have imminent Climate Change breathing down on him. The ability to "get things done" sounds great - unless they are the wrong things. Clinton's accomplishments were based on advancing and legitimizing Republican policies, despite the spin he put on them - and it only made the Republicans bolder and more hostile. The dirty little open secret of American politics that the media keeps overlooking is there's no point in trying to work with the other side, when the other side has no interest in getting anything done, and lots of things it wants to prevent from happening.
The fatal addiction to corporate cash and subservience to Wall Street has corrupted politics on both sides of the aisle - restoring America to a functional democracy where citizens turn out to vote is not something to trust to the hands of a party which is deliberately making voting more difficult. And voters are not going to turn out for a neoliberal agenda which has proven to have nothing to offer them. (As a side note, here's what the English version of neoliberalism has wrought.)
Before Hillary Clinton gets handed the nomination, we need to know if Bill Clinton's views are an accurate reflection of hers. Because if they are...