Hillary Clinton Is Focusing on the Middle Class—And That's a Good Thing

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/hillary-clinton-focusing-middle-class%E2%80%94and-thats-good-thing


Hillary Clinton Is Focusing on the Middle Class—And That's a Good Thing

—By Kevin Drum


Matt Yglesias takes a look at an economic blueprint from the Center or American Progress and suggests it's a useful proxy for Hillary Clinton's upcoming presidential campaign:

In some ways, it defies stereotypes of the Clintons as standard-bearers for neoliberal centrism by endorsing fiscal stimulus and a strong pro-labor union agenda while downplaying the strong education-reform streak of the Obama administration. But it's also notable for the Obama-era liberal ambitions it pushes aside. In the main recommendations for the United States, there's no cap-and-trade or carbon tax in here, no public option for health care, and no effort to break up or shrink the largest banks. Nor is there an ambitious agenda to tackle poverty.

Instead, you get a multi-pronged push to boost middle-class incomes. After an extended period in which Democratic Party politics has been dominated by health care for the poor, environmental regulation, and internecine fights about Wall Street, Hillarynomics looks like back-to-basics middle-class populism. It should in many ways further infuriate Clinton's left-wing intellectual critics — and then further infuriate them by turning out to be an agenda that makes the party's voting base perfectly happy.

....The report is especially striking for its endorsement of labor market regulations not normally associated with the Summers wing of Democratic thinking....On the non-wage front, inclusive growth calls for paid (gender-neutral) parental leave, expanded Family and Medical Leave Act eligibility, and universal paid sick days and paid vacation days — all loosely under the banner of increasing women's labor force participation. Clinton has, in the past, field-tested feminist frames as a means of selling big government.

None of this should come as a surprise. The Great Recession spawned a great deal of government help to the poor from the Obama administration but not a lot for the middle class, and politically the biggest problem Democrats now face is offering concrete programs for the middle class to compete with yet another round of tax cut proposals from the Republican field.

But the truth is that this helps the poor too, in the long run. Middle-class workers with stagnant incomes have become less and less willing to support more spending on the poor. That's just human nature. But if Hillary can successfully get the economy into a higher gear and funnel some of that money to the middle class, eventually things will ease up and it will become easier to win support for higher benefits to the poor.

I don't know if Hillary's proposals will go far enough, but they're the right thing to do. For the time being at least, Washington needs to focus on the middle class for a while.

[Rod Beauvex]

1. Focus on the poor and working classes....

And the middle class will take care of itself.

[Cleita]

2. Looks like she's paying attention to Elizabeth Warren's popularity because

of her message of raising the middle class. I'm sure her campaign speeches will start reflecting that. However, is she going to be able to stop pandering to her Wall Street banking supporters or will she be able to walk that tightrope between the two?

[cali]

3. could someone tell me what "great deal of help" for the poor we've seen?

[Maedhros]

5. Yeah, that part made no sense.

We should just send Yglesias some pom-poms.

[Cleita]

6. I was asked by an acquaintance if I wanted to volunteer to help out at

a church shelter for women and children in our county. The churches take turns housing and feeding these people who are moved around from church to church and expected to sleep in a variety of accommodations usually in the auditorium. This is how we take care of our homeless. Well, it's better than nothing.

Yet, our County Board of Supervisors voted a $10,000,000 package to build a new animal shelter. Now I know we badly need a new shelter but can't we do both? Yet our Supervisors seem to think its okay to burden the churches instead of working to get the funds to find permanent housing and for those who can, permanent and decent jobs.

Why did this happen. People here are mostly conservative and still believe that people who have fallen on hard times are at fault themselves for their circumstances. Yet, when I point out, how about the children? Are they responsible for bad decisions too?

[Maedhros]

4. First, the Party's "voting base" is "happy" with whatever the Party tells them to be happy with.

Second, Yglesias trivializes an incredibly important issue as "internecine fights about Wall Street."

I find his analysis uninspiring.