How to Save Clintonism

[portlander23]

How to Save Clintonism
DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

Celebrated by its supporters as a synonym for peace, prosperity and a common-sense centrism, Clintonism was — and is still — derided by its detractors on the left as corporatism and on the right as a shorthand for scandal and impeachable offenses. As Mrs. Clinton tries to unite her fractious party and turn her focus to Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, she is also looking to what can be salvaged and what must be discarded from her husband’s legacy.

In its original form, Clintonism was an effort to pull the Democratic Party — which had lost five of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 — back into political relevance. Forged out of Mr. Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas, it involved more than just tweaking Democratic orthodoxy. Mr. Clinton wanted to help big corporations thrive, favored trade policies that unions loathed and spoke of reining in welfare and fighting crime.

But Clintonism 1.0, designed to carve out a middle ground, may prove obsolete in 2016, when the center might not hold. Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to push Mrs. Clinton left on the issues of income disparity, student loan debt and health care costs. And even as Mr. Trump assails the liberal goal of immigration reform, he has also voiced the frustration of white working-class voters who, like liberal Sanders partisans, are angry about stagnating wages and trade.

But for Mrs. Clinton the challenge is probably greater because, unlike the children of presidents, she was there by her husband’s side, his partner, during two turbulent terms. So while she can share in much of the credit for the achievements of Clintonism, she must also bear the weight of its mistakes.

The basic thesis that the Clintonism of the 90s is obsolete is sound. However, I haven't seen a serious deviation from Mrs. Clinton that would suggest there's such a thing as Clintonism 2.0. Now that Mrs. Clinton has the nomination effectively sewn up, it appears that she's embracing her husband's legacy rather than running from it.

Related:

Bill Clinton’s track record on economy is back in the spotlight

[pmorlan1]

1. I don't want to save it

Drive a stake through it, yes. Save it? No.

[Thinkingabout]

2. Continuing to look at Sanders qualifications is a good start.

[highprincipleswork]

3. Big mistake to save it.

[Todays_Illusion]

4. I favor a quick end to "Clintonism," and to me Clintonism is running as liberal and governing

as conservative as any old white male reactionary conservative. Welfare reform= translates to throw the poor out the back door.

Income inequality for Hillary will be. No more pay increases, but expand the clever tax support for the lowest paying employers called E.I.T.C. and E.I.T.C. lifts no one from poverty, it was only designed to prevent actual starvation and loss of housing and it didn't even do that, so the food supplement program was changed from handing out surplus and a really bad food stamp program to the debit shopping card and that provides profits from tax money to, the farmers, the food processors and the retailers.

[lapfog_1]

5. 90's "clintonism" led directly to the second great depression

of 2008 thru today...

Wall Street speculation in housing derivatives was caused by the repeal of Glass-Stegal signed into law by one William Jefferson Clinton.

The income disparity existent today is a direct result of all those trade policies.

The argument was that the US didn't NEED or WANT dirty manufacturing jobs... the US would re-educate its workforce and move into a "information" economy... cleaner (no factory waste to deal with), higher paying, etc. The shipping of those dirty low paying jobs overseas (especially to China) would further reduce international tension (you can't go to war with your largest customer).

It was a grand experiment... foisted on us by the "best and brightest" in public service. Economists cheered. CEOs licked their chops. The elite would still own the means of production, but their costs would drop and their profits would soar. What could possibly go wrong?

The fundamental failure was not recognizing that not everyone was going to be retrained into those information economy jobs... and also not recognizing that with the advent of the internet (on which 90s prosperity was built), those same information economy jobs could just as easily (or even more easily) be moved to cheaper labor markets than the manufacturing jobs that they were to replace. And the final miscalculation was that we are not a capital driven economy (trickle down)... we are a consumer driven economy... only the consumers evaporated.

They tried to paper this over with a huge housing bubble... allowing millions of people to treat their homes (with inflated values) as an ATM machine and "keep up with the Joneses" by continuing the consumption practices and the mythology that everything was fine... the resulting crash and the subsequent creation of low paying "service sector" jobs has created what used to be called a 3rd world country that the US is (or is headed to) today, complete with income disparity and other ills (infrastructure ills, rise of nationalism - "lets blame the immigrants", racism - "shoot the black guy first because he might threaten me" and other problems of the second decade of this century).

Overlayed on all of this is climate change... the result of which isn't known yet, but likely billions of dollars have been spent on weather disasters that were a direct result of climate change.. sucking resources away from the other needs of society, not to mention that climate change is a likely motivation of the strife in the middle east and north Africa and that has also taken billions if not trillions from the US public coffers.

[St Aug girl]

6. Terrific analysis!