At The National Interest in an assessment of the two political campaigns Will Marshall remarks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
All in all, Stronger Together is a workmanlike compendium of small-to-medium-sized proposals for helping working and middle-class Americans buffeted by economic change, anemic wage growth, and growing disparities of wealth and income. There is little to fire the political imagination here—few if any bold innovations, radical changes in existing policy, or ideas that might discomfit any Democratic constituency.
As an unreconstructed “New Democrat,†I can’t help being struck by how different this is from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. In the years running up to the race, Clinton worked hard to develop new and often counterintuitive ways to advance progressive goals. His novel approaches recast Democrats as a reforming and modernizing party.
The issues and political context are very different now, of course, but there are two lessons Hillary Clinton might usefully have drawn from her husband’s electoral and governing successes. One is the primacy of economic innovation and growth for the aspiring American middle class. Reflecting contemporary liberals’ fixation on inequality, Stronger Together offers little fresh thinking about how to revitalize the U.S. economy following a long spell of slow growth and meager wage gains. Instead, it prescribes more government redistribution as the answer to the markets’ failure to provide good jobs and mass upward mobility.
The second lesson is that progressives should reform government, not just expand it. An especially pernicious effect of today’s paranoia-drenched populism is to deepen the public’s already profound mistrust of Washington. Bill Clinton’s push to “reinvent†government acknowledged that mistrust, and sought to make government more responsive to citizens and more results-oriented. He reinforced this theme by making radical changes in underperforming public systems—ending the welfare entitlement, shutting down crime-ridden public housing, supporting public charter schools to break the traditional districts’ monopoly, turning the Federal deficit into a surplus. By the end of his second term, public confidence in government was actually rising.
or, in other words, politics by focus group with all the sincerity and passion of a marketing campaign for a bar of soap.
He also makes some observations about Donald Trump. What is there to be said? Trump is Trump.
Shorter:
1. Expect the Average Joe’s condition to continue to deteriorate.
2. Expect the Average Joe to wonder in 3-4 years “what happened, that Lucy girl with the football told me I’d be Zestfully better off?”
3. Expect the elites to say “Yeah, but at least our side won. Its those damned Republicans who got in the way. But what the hell, at least I’m doing fine. Waiter, more Margaux please.”
He reinforced this theme by making radical changes in underperforming public systems—ending the welfare entitlement, shutting down crime-ridden public housing, supporting public charter schools to break the traditional districts’ monopoly, turning the Federal deficit into a surplus. By the end of his second term, public confidence in government was actually rising.
And yet as Hillary Clinton found out in the primaries the Democratic base wants nothing to do with markets, cutting government, welfare reform, innovation, or whatever else was popular in 1988 with centrist wonks from the south. No one is charmed by those focus-grouped catch phrases. She was so clueless she was actually shocked that welfare reform wasn’t exactly viewed favorably by academics. But her job requirements called for her to shift, so she did.
Meanwhile check out Will Marshall’s wikipedia bio–
He served on the board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization chaired by Joe Lieberman (I) and John McCain (R) designed to build support for the invasion of Iraq. Marshall also signed, at the outset of the war, a letter issued by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) expressing support for the invasion. Marshall signed a similar letter sent to President Bush put out by the Social Democrats USA on Feb. 25, 2003, just before the invasion. The SDUSA letter urged Bush to commit to “maintaining substantial U.S. military forces in Iraq for as long as may be required to ensure a stable, representative regime is in place and functioning.
–and you know why he’s writing for a nothing publication like the American Interest. He’s just trying out as a sensible critic of the upcoming Clinton Presidency, and hoping to get out of the D-list.
Watching right-leaning centrists fail to understand everything about the outside world in order to keep their internal world in order has been one of the many delights of this election. Personally, I hope Trump never goes away. The guy ran as someone who would put in Hillary in her place and now he’s basically her crying bitch. All of the liberals concerned about his not conceding…what’s going to happen? A bunch of 50-somethings with BMIs over 30 afraid of any black male under 25 gathering at a Golden Corral to plan their next move and then retreating home when an ironic tweet about concentration camps for whites is read seriously by Breitbart and Drudge? 40% of America is providing endless comedy. It should not stop.
We are hiring a person to fill a job. We have two applicants. The choice is between the dull but competent applicant on the one hand, and the scat-flinging orangutan on the other. It’s a choice between a beige Toyota Camry and a crazy street person’s purloined Safeway cart full of rags and nightmares. There is absolutely nothing difficult about this choice, unless of course one insists on pining for choice C) Fantasy President.