See You in September
Last summer—otherwise known, in election time, as a long time ago, in a land far away—when Hillary Clinton unveiled her campaign, she was positioning herself as the inheritor of FDR, championing the little guy and inveighing against…economic inequality. Much to the applause of her defenders in the media:
It’s not all that’s gutsy about Clinton’s latest roll-out, which she marked on Saturday with a lengthy, policy heavy speech. There’s also the fact that a mainstream Democrat is trying to become the first woman president by invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her speech, billed as her Campaign Kickoff, replaced recent Democratic simpering about Ronald Reagan and “reaching across the aisle” with jabs at trickle-down economics and a chilly invitation to cooperate with “willing partners;” that was refreshing. But even more surprising was hearing decades of centrist posturing give way to a citation of Roosevelt’s call for “Equality of opportunity … jobs for those who can work … Security for those who need it … The ending of special privilege for the few … The preservation of civil liberties for all … a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”
“That still sounds good to me!” bellowed Clinton, in her sturdy way.
And while Clinton’s delivery, like Clinton herself, was more dogged than flowery, even her language on Saturday showed leftward shifts toward sanity. Banished were the anodyne residents of “Main Street”; instead, Hillary spoke of “poor people” and “the wealthiest” and “income inequality,” mentioning the “middle class” only as a dying historical possibility in need of “a better deal.”
Salon‘s Joan Walsh had this to say about Clinton’s new look:
There was plenty of economic populism, too, as she railed against an economy that’s seen most gains go to the rich.
“Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain too,” Clinton said. “You brought our country back. Now it’s time — your time to secure the gains and move ahead.”
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Even the event’s setting, on Roosevelt Island with the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, felt bracingly risky. New York was the laboratory of the New Deal in the years before the Depression, the birthplace of child labor laws and health and safety regulations and so much more. Then it wound up as Ground Zero for liberalism’s meltdown, synonymous with good intentions gone bad: crime, overspending, the welfare state run amok. The legendary 1975 Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” summed up the country’s attitude to its profligate cultural capital, just as Clinton was coming of age politically. For years Democrats, too, ran away from, and even against the city.
Clinton reclaimed New York as part of the Democratic Party story, and FDR’s New Deal liberalism, too. FDR harnessed the power of government to transform the country; Bill Clinton told a cynical nation that “the era of big government is over.” Though Hillary herself promised “smarter, simpler, more efficient” government,inspired perhaps by Stan Greenberg’s advice about how to reach government wary white working class voters, she left no doubt that she saw government as a way to right the wrongs of the last 30 years.
But that was June. This is February. And Clinton now has a candidate to beat who takes these ideas seriously. So what does she do? She declares that it’s not the economy, stupid, that Sanders is too focused on the billionaires and wages. Now she’s channeling Goldwater, claiming that Sanders is too fixated on economics, and complaining that Sanders’s proposals will cost too much money and expand the size of government. Here’s what she said in last week’s debate in Milwaukee:
WOODRUFF: But, my question is how big would government be? Would there be any limit on the size of the role of government…
SANDERS: … Of course there will be a limit, but when today you have massive levels of income and wealth inequality, when the middle class is disappearing, you have the highest rate of child poverty of almost any major country on Earth. Yes, in my view, the government of a democratic society has a moral responsibility to play a vital role in making sure all of our people have a decent standard of living.
CLINTON: Judy, I think that the best analysis that I’ve seen based on Senator Sanders plans is that it would probably increase the size of the federal government by about 40%…
June was FDR Month, February is Goldwater Month, what will we see in the fall, I wonder?