You want a response to your trial balloon? Here it is.
Well, this is
discouraging :
Mrs. Clinton’s economic plan would be more populist and reliant on the government than the centrist approach of trade agreements, welfare reform and deficit reduction associated with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
“It’s not enough to address upward mobility without addressing inequality,” said Lawrence H. Summers, a Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration who is among those talking with Mrs. Clinton. “The challenge, though, is to address inequality without embracing a politics of envy.”
This is better:
"Where has the money gone?” asked Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. “That is the topic that is embarrassing for people to talk about, particularly in Washington, because even mentioning it creates the potential charge of class warfare.”
Mr. Reich, who recently sent Mrs. Clinton a five-page memo laying out his ideas, said candidates in both parties needed to abandon the politically safe discussion of upward mobility for the poor and middle class that dominated the 1990s, and instead take on the stickier issue of income distribution.
“Upward mobility, equal opportunity — those are safe phrases and safe aspirations,” he said in an interview. “I don’t want to minimize their importance, but they obscure the real issue.”
These are the kinds of buzzword thinking we are getting from the thinking phase of folks in the best zip codes of Manhattan. Upward mobility, opportunity, blach blah blah. The kind of thing that might sell you 35% of the vote in an affluent suburb and makes Democratic constituencies click the remote and escape. Throw in some of already failed minimum wage crapola and youve got yourself not a real economic plan for a winning campaign but yet another President Bush.
This is simple, and very clear: what we need in this country is MORE FUCKING MONEY. Its just that simple. The Clinton Campaign needs one message: higher goddamn wages and salaries, end of message. The economic thinkers need to figure out what needs to be done so that folks who have jobs, regular jobs not minimum wage jobs, get bigger checks. Lets talk mandatory profit sharing laws (like half for workers, half for shareholders). Lets talk bringing back pensions. Lets talk about shifting the payroll tax burden upward. Stop talking about dumb shit and talk about what people care about: MONEY.
Its going to be hard holding on the White House next year under any circumstances. But I'm pretty certain typical East Coast Establishment thinking is not going to work.