Bill enters, stage right. Note the difference between the post title as edited at Bloomberg:
Bill Clinton Defends Hillary’s Middle-Income Ties [What does that even mean?]
and the URL, which shows the original title:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-24/hillary-clinton-tries-to-pivot-after-wealth-comments.html
C’mon. Nobody outside the Beltway ever “pivots” from anything to anything else. That tells you where this whole fauxtroversy is coming from and who’s expected to care about it. Nevertheless, to the story:
Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and a potential 2016 presidential candidate, is trying to rebound from a series of comments in which she suggested that she and the former president aren’t really rich.
Bill Clinton acknowledged that she didn’t “give the most adept answer”[1] to questions about their personal wealth. “You can say, ‘OK, I gotta clean that up,’ which she did.”
[Hillary Clinton] has been tripped up most often on questions about her finances — even when no question has been asked.
Clinton said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” when they left the White House in January 2001. She told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that the couple isn’t “truly well off.” Chelsea Clinton cemented the storyline with remarks to Fast Company magazine.
Logically, Clinton — I’m calling “Hillary Clinton” Clinton, now, and Bill Clinton “Bill,” reversing my 2008 usage — is perfectly correct; as Piketty knows, and heck, Karl Marx knew, income really is not “true” “wealth.” If you’re “truly well off,” you get to clip coupons! (To me, wealth is about ownership; specifically, about owning the product of the collective labor of others. That’s one reason that the “1%” frame from the Occupy movement was so analytically destructive; it distracts from social relations to focus on mere quantity. The Bloomberg reporter helpfully blurs this distinction with the formulation “not really rich.”)
The real issue is this: The fact that we’re even having this conversation is a sign of the policy vacuity at the heart, if any, of the Clinton non-campaign. If Hillary Clinton were advocating truly humane policies that benefit all equally — the 12-Point Platform gives a good list — we wouldn’t talking about Clinton’s tone deafness or hairstyle or health or looks or any of her personal characteristics at all: We’d be talking about policy. The political class would be outraged! Outraged! that Clinton advocated — picking an example at random — free public education K-16. Their hair would be on fire! Heck, even HOLC, back from 2008, an FDR-style bailout of individual homeowners, would put every pair of knickers in the beltway in a twist! FDR was a patrician, for pity’s sake; and the Roosevelts were a “truly” “wealthy” New York dynasty, not first-generation arrivistes from Mammoth Falls Little Rock. Arkansas. And FDR was brought to recognize the necessity of the New Deal, so kwitcherbellyachin, political class!
Clinton’s policy vacuity gave the opening to the h8terz, not inartful wording. Get back in your box, Bill!
Let’s go back to another time and place: Beijing, September 5, 1995, where Clinton gave the plenary speech to U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session. In relevant part:
The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued — not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.
At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries. Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.
Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for those women in my own country, women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.
It’s the same issue; Clinton, being an American, is by definition wealthy with respect to the rest of the world. Her answer: “Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not.” Contrast Clinton in her Guardian interview:
America’s glaring income inequality is certain to be a central bone of contention in the 2016 presidential election. But with her huge [What? Like a billionaire? Put down that hatchet!] personal wealth, how could Clinton possibly hope to be credible on this issue when people see her as part of the problem, not its solution?
“[CLINTON] But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” she protests, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names [why not?]; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.”
Such lawyerly parsing, when 1995’s answer, slightly revised — “Those of us who have the opportunities have the responsibility to speak for those who cannot” — would, at the very worst, been buried, and certainly wouldn’t have allowed the the Clinton h8terz to gin up a controversy. Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned in a mink stole!
A second contrast, still from the Guardian interview:
“[CLINTON] I would like the social fabric that has begun to fray to have been repaired, for people to feel we were all in this together, that the American dream was real, not some distant vanishing image on the horizon, that fairness had been returned to the economy and politics, that our education system was doing a better job and more kids were healthy, and that we were once again respected for our values and how we presented ourselves to the world.”
This isn’t exactly a Roger Mudd moment, where Mudd asked Teddy Kennedy why he wanted to be President, and Teddy stumbled through a non-answer. But the language is cliched (“social fabric”) and the policy proposals are both vacuous (“American Dream”) and pre-compromised (“better job,” “more kids were healthy”). Everything is all about feelings (“feel we were all in this together”) and goals without metrics (“fairness had been returned”). It’s mush. Feelings aren’t facts, let alone concrete material benefits. Contrast the vivid and precise language of Clinton’s 1995 speech. Again:
They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices and banned from the ballot box.
In 1995, every line not only calls out for justice, but calls up policies with verifiable outcomes. Sad. Very, very sad.
I’m not sure what happened to Clinton between 1995 and 2014 — almost 20 years is a long time in anyone’s life. I like to think of our political class as rather like a refinery with human resources — for example, that golden couple, the Clintons, but many, many others — as feedstocks. As the human crude rises within the cracking towers, it is “refined,” as more and more human characteristics (especially empathy) are stripped away, under immense heat and pressure. The purest essences that are drawn off from the top of the towers are sociopathic simulacra, and hence optimally useful as inputs to the systems that the political class, in turn, serves (see under “Oligarchs, owned by”). Only the most exceptional humans (Lincoln, FDR, even Washington, who after all surrendered power and freed his slaves) can resist the cracking process and retain some humanity at their core. Most don’t have a prayer. We could reform the process by banning the production and sale of the most volatile essences, but it may be our only hope is to shut down the refinery altogether and do without the product.
NOTES
[1] This, from the candidate who ran on “The economy, stupid!”. It’s also a two-fer, in that Bill undercuts Clinton’s competence while trying to help her — reminds me that there’s some truth to the old saw that Bill Clinton can shake your hand while pissing down your leg — and in that the Rovian riposte is almost too painfully obvious. It’s so disgusting I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
[2] Here’s the video of Clinton’s 1995 speech in Beijing:
NOTE For Warren fans, and fans generally of running “the more effective evil” play with a white woman instead of a black man, let us remember that Warren hates single payer and is a hawk on Iran. So she should do well in today’s Democratic Party.
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Wasn’t Hillary Rodham a Goldwater Girl in 1964? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
50 years ago? She would have been 14 years old, probably mimicking the preferences of her parents.
Shoot. When at that age I read Atlas Shrugged and fell hook, line, and sinker for Ayn Rand.
Everybody knows that teenagers are young and stupid (except them).
FYI, teenagers are not stupid.
Just sayin’.
Certainly ignorant, and I’ve met my share od stupid ones.
Hey, don’t talk about economists like that. It’s not nice.
Yeah, I was in junior high then and campaigned for Goldwater. A few years later I joined SNCC, lol.
At least on a print level, I could see the appeal of Goldwater to a naive individual. The extremism, Republican nomination acceptance speech is pretty good. It’s more coherent than an Obama speech, and it echoed rhetoric of the dead JFK when compared to LBJ who was a real insider type. Kids like to rebel against their parents. It’s why Alex P. Keaton was endearing.
I don’t think one needs to postulate any great change in the content of her heart over the last twenty years. She speaks in platitudes on economic issues because she’s not in favour (now or back then) of the sort of extreme measures that would actually be required to improve the economic condition of the bottom 80% in a practical, measurable way.
I agree, thanks for the succinct comments. In my view the Clintons merit little commentary or deconstruction. They are degeneracy personified.
Whenever I’d complain about another blown opportunity by Clinton in the 90’s, my cousin would say “Clinton only cares about Clinton.”
I had some Friday or Sat. free, so, I went to see this brand new movie “Wag The Dog.” 2 daze after I saw it the Monica Lewinsky fiasco started up. I finally understood what “Clinton only cares about Clinton” meant.
I don’t vote repuke cuz they’re fascists, and 2008 was my 8th and final POTUS vote for Dim-0-Crap sell outs, cowards, political incompetents. I do not care who is running against Hillary, that pee on my leg will freeze over before they ever get anything from me.
rmm.
I voted for Obama in ’08 only because I feared McCain as a hot head. I trusted Obama better not to turn us into radioactive glass, and so far he hasn’t. My claim to fame in this life is I never bought any of his “hope and change” BS. It was just a rewording of Clinton’s “choice”. So the you-know-what what! You haven’t said anything. The Clinton’s and Obama’s despise each other only because they’re trying to occupy the same space.
It took me to the 2012 election to finally have the courage to vote for a 3rd party candidate. I don’t know why it took that long.
It was probably the chorus of “B-b-b-b-b-but YOURE WASTING YOUR VOTE!!!” that is screamed by the general public at anyone who even THINKS about voting for third party. Dont matter who it is either. It could be Jesus H Christ running for office and it would still be a ‘wasted vote’ accordiing to most of America.
Its either ‘waste my vote’ or not vote, IMO. Im not given other options than to ‘waste’ it in my humble opinion.
People vote for evil and then act surprised when evil is what they get.
Agree. They are efficient technocrats, IMO, but I don’t see them as having my best interests at heart, particularly. Hence, the “free-trade” regime we have today. The middle class in the US has sunk down, the Mexican peasant farmers have been displaced and are all here desperately competing for jobs with the rest of us hoi polloi, but Big Ag, Google, Facebook, Apple Computers (off the top of my head) are booming. I can envision Hillary/Billary as the “Even More Effective Evil.”
Efficient Technocrats would be nice, if they were Efficient Technocrats for the Common Good rather than vested interests.
Yes, indeed.
Clinton’s campaign strategy so far seems a xerox of Obama’s new foreign policy: Don’t Do Stupid Shit, so that she can ride the flood tide of inevitability in the Oval Office.
Why does she want to be President? So that she can be President.
Dear God. I’m more inspired to clean out my drier lint.
“Why does she want to be President? So that she can be President.”
Unfortunately, we could say the same thing about the last how many presidents? IMHO, Reagan was the last president who went into the white house to do something and did it.
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Thats true… And maybe would have been better if he didnt. So you definitely have a point there.
Between ‘Wants to be President’ and ‘Wants to radically change the economy for the worse’, there are not good options.
Yeah, it’s kind of an inverse of “I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member” — almost nobody who actually WANTS the job is worth voting for.
Reader should keep away from the junk filling the media dealing with Hillary. Part of it is a mad cow political disease that infected most of the junk writers. Modern presidential campaigns aren’t about ideas or originality. Doing the latter guarantees a lose. Campaigns are about attracting the mainstream. In other words, talk and walk gingerly and conservatively (behaviorally).
In 2008, Hillary was by far the better Democratic candidate. The mad cowers want and got Obama. In 2016, the Democrats should look for a young, fresh and daring candidate. Such a person didn’t step forward yet, but there are at least a dozen Democrats that can do it.
The distorted media history of the last 30+ years tells us that Reagan was great and Bill Clinton was terrible. With time, historians will hopefully correct the distortion, meanwhile we better turn the page to new faces.
“The distorted media history of the last 30+ years tells us that Reagan was great and Bill Clinton was terrible. With time, historians will hopefully correct the distortion, meanwhile we better turn the page to new faces.”
Bill Clinton’s Administration: NAFTA, DOMA, DADT. Welfare Cuts, repeal of Glass-Steagall, and many, many commodities/banking/finance deregulations that directly resulted in the Crisis.
Let’s just say Clinton and Reagan were terrible.
Agree. Bill ably followed Ron’s footsteps, and here we are.
Obama was always going to be the candidate in 08. He was groomed for it by the powers that be as can be seen from his selection as keynote speaker in 2004 and the joyous reaction from the propaganda personalities in the “press” on that night. Hilary never had a chance.
Now she seems to be the official selection but the problem is that the current political situation is much more confused than it was at that time–both parties are split and that split will continue. So it’s Warren or Clinton since the candidate will probably have to be a woman. It seems that the negative press on Hilary shows some strong opposition within the nomenklatura to her candidacy because the issues are very trivial–hint–that’s how you can tell their gunning after someone–just remember the Howard Dean yell–completely bogus and engineered “controversy” to get him out of the race.
They tell us Bill Clinton was terrible? Golly gee willikers, they got something right!
If she isn’t truly well off now (I think Bill raked in $100M since he left the White House), it means she has an appetite for more! :)
I agree and disagree with both the author and lolcar. I think she did like the theory of what she was talking about then so it does have more substance. But it was still a theory, a mind game. Intellectualization. And when she spoke she actually had a reference, both the poor elsewhere but also those she had encountered in Arkansas who really were poor, an image in mind. But even with that point of reference it might as well have been the meaningless platitude of ‘we pay regular taxes’ because it was as based on as much reality as the PNAC boys plan about the Middle East was. (And I do love how little anyone is pointing out that the regular taxes thing is probably a direct result of her almost sixteen year run for the Presidency).
But to get back to that point of reference thing, I doubt that Hillary Clinton has seen a poor American in 25 years. Oh, see might have encountered one or two in the best clothes they own, but actually see them? See the fact that despite the television in the room, the cupboard is bare and the electricity is barely on, and the need to decide between food and medicine or figuring out how to make it to the beginning of the month so they have the joy of making that choice. Not likely. She can’t begin to have a point to pin her remarks on. And while I understand the author’s excuse and get that there is a point in the difference between wealthy and ownership level rich (Jeter may be wealthy, but the Steinbrenners are RICH), there is still a huge chasm between wealthy and struggling middle class, much less anyone below that economic level. And her wealth is still enough to blind her to the reality of most Americans lives, not just the very poor. She has no idea that her ‘hard’ work is nothing compared to what many working people do everyday. She doesn’t understand that she can take off when she falls. Because no matter what her goals and drives are, she isn’t dependent on being Secretary of State, or Senator, to have a meal tomorrow. And while I agree that this attack is not based on anything substantive policy wise, it is valid. Because Clinton has chosen who she will work for, and the lack of policy issues is merely there so as not to tell Americans who are not among the investment class that their issues will always take fourth or fifth fiddle to those of the RICH and the wealthy. She chose to be the political equivalent of Greta von Sustern on Fox. She has chosen to the have largely the same policies as Barack Obama. Because both of them know that is where the wealth is. I’ll never know if she is really afraid of Iran, or just afraid of losing X, Y, and C donors because she isn’t backing Israel’s paranoia. And what is really sad about this is she could quit, but she isn’t driven by the need to put food on the table.
Warren is the best of a bad lot. Just as Dean was the best of a bad lot. And dare I say it, Edwards if only because of Elizabeth’s influence. All of them are fatally flawed Democrats for various reasons. but compared with the other candidates of their time, they are closer to being, to paraphrase one of them, from the Democratic wing of the party. And there you have the explanation of why I will no longer vote LOTE. THEY should be the right wing of the party not the LEFT. And Clinton and Obama should be the leftward edge to the Republican party they actually love (and Obama even claims as his ideology).
“Hillary Clinton has seen a poor American in 25 years.” She certainly did. Do you think only rich people attend campaign events? The post-February 2008 Clinton campaign used disposable cellphones as their contact medium, as opposed to the Obama campaigns web-driven approach, exactly because they were appealing to lower income voters who weren’t sitting in Internet cafes sipping their lattes.
I bet she also saw poor people taking away the coffee service at all those Walmart board meetings she attended. However, I don’t think that “she hasn’t seen a poor person in 25 years” comment was meant to be taken literally.
Hillary Clinton never had a touch starting with the Clinton health care plan which managed to alienate both Democrats and Republicans. The closest she’s come to actually being in charge of something is her stint as Secretary of State–Obama busy golfing, checking his Blackberry–with the result you see. President’s have far more power in the foreign policy realm than the domestic. The last thing we need is another r2p hawk.
But the Clintons do make pretty speeches.
I suggest the country just hold a lottery and pick someone at random to be President. It might short circuit the vast narcissism that seems to go with job these days.
I am all for sortition. It was one of the defining features of Athenian democracy.
Not sure how much it matters how much she has on her bank account, although she clearly needs to improve her talking points in order not to become the next Romney.
More of an issue that she is at the heart of the politico-economico-industrial-complex, perhaps. Clearly impossible to brand her as not a super insider.
The Clintons, broke after leaving the White House, now have roughly a tenth of a billion dollars.
Profit without production, of anything useful.
“Profit without production”, pretty well summarized.
She is everywhere, writing ton loads of books that make little sense, travelling all over the world and what not.
@lambert strether commented that.. “People vote for evil and then act surprised when evil is what they get.” Quite true..
Cindy K
Hillz sounded genuine at the Beijing Conference on Women because she is genuinely a feminist. She sounds like a phony when she talks about economic inequality because she is a phony Democrat. Unlike Bill, her native charm and gift of breezy gab is not sufficient to elide the yawning gap across what a Democrat needs to say to win the nomination and how she genuinely feels about the economic situation of most Americans. Bill could say he felt your pain with a straight face and have that serve as an answer to an unasked question. Hillz can’t.
Meanwhile, her cat-in-the-doorway act is, for some reason freezing out any alternatives. Iowa Caucus Democrats didn’t like her in 2008 and will like her even less in 2016, but the received wisdom is so strong among elected Democrats, that they are assuming that Hillz can waltz into the nomination if she wants it. The fact that she only wants the nomination if we beg her is to me a sign of petulance. The fact that no Democrat has a hot enough fire in the belly to proceed to Iowa without reference to Hillz is a sign that any other Democratic nominee will be another compliant striver who talks the talk like Obama did in 2008 and will sell all of the rest of us out at the first offer.
I don’t think anyone really wants to be President at this time. It is an office without real power despite the growing power of the Executive. Everyone realizes in Washington that there is an un-elected permanent government filled with various feudal barons in the Executive branch and Congress. Just think of a couple of dozen mini-Frank Underwoods all playing the same game at the same time from different parts of the State.
Like Frank Underwood, feudal barons in the Executive Branch and a powerless president are fictional. Every single political appointee in the Executive Branch serves at the pleasure of the president.
Does the NSA spy on politicians and, following J. Edgar Hoover’s line, blackmail ones in power? Of course. But the system operates anaerobically. Have a president call out massive NSA spying preemptively and publicly and fire the head of NSA, and the NSA counterattack that he is a doper/womanizer/drunk etc. is empty.
“Winning the day” in the 24 hour cable news cycle is a sucker’s game. Your three minutes of democracy every four years (for a president) is the proper focus. Democrats are destroyed by CNN because they take it seriously. Anthony’s Wiener showed up on Twitter and he quit. David Vitter was dressed in a diaper by a whore who later died under mysterious circumstances. He was reelected by better than 20 points.
The only way to curb the excesses of the barons of finance is to prosecute them. No one could have stopped Holder if he had chosen to do so. He refused to even try. He serves at the pleasure of Obama, not some fictional baron.
That’s theory and not practice. The President is not free to do what he wants–bottom line is that there are people with great power out there who maintain that power over decades not eight years. There are alliances and plots of all kinds which is how power works and has always worked in great Empires. If the President were an Emperor then of course, the power of the office are substantial but in the American system the President is a broker of all the powerful forces already in place. Wall Street, for example went to President Bush in 2008 and dictated terms to him and those terms remain in place, pretty much, to this day.
Hillary is an American celebrity.She is completely undeserving of any accolades.What has she ever done?(that was a credit to this country)
It seems to me her history was purely luck and manipulation.
She was a lawyer for the Chicago law firm(? ,? Rose,,?) that was embroiled in many scandals, and seemingly specialized in the seedy side of capitalism. One of the main connections that the Clintons had to whitewater was through that law firm. Wasn’t that in the after effects of the savings and loan scandal?
( a great book on the savings and loan scandal was titled, “the mafia, the cia, and George bush” by pete brewton)Not that I remember her firm being in there, but in those days, what was corruption, is todays political class. We have had decades now of bushes and Clintons and this other Chicago tool.)
Her public life was that she rode the coat tails of her Koch funded DLC favored candidate husband in Arkansas. Back then her syrupy southern drawl was an asset. Since she “made herself” a new Yorker, she has lost the drawl, and put on the cool effete of new York exceptionalism.
Her brief high spot was being the cheated on spouse, this she can take to the bank ,in many voters eyes, and memories…. but again, without bill, that wouldn’t be something she did either.
What I don’t get is why so many Manhattanites and long islanders’ see her as something real. What did she do as a senator?, bring in some pork?, like down state new York could tell. wall st. , by simply association ensures the never ending stream of money, which means Manhattan defies gravity, when all others fall. The state went further into a hole on her watch, not that she did it, but she didn’t help.
As a sec. of state, she was a joke. Except to the hob knob set she pals around with. And really while Benghazi may have been an unfortunate incident. It happened on her watch. Why is everyone except the republican blowhards(whose rhetoric against Hillary means nothing), so remiss in not holding her responsible for not being “on the job”, before and while that took place. Then while the media was dis-informed for weeks afterwards, by the propaganda/spin machine seeking to obscure whatever it was that happened.
But really the wiki-leaks releases showed she was just another hack with a job thanks to nepotism.
Why would people support a Clinton? Two decades of bush/Clinton isn’t enough for you people?
as an aside,
what is the deal with Chelsea getting a deal with NBC, for a $600,000 /year salary for doing 58 minuites of on air work, much of which was her being asked questions as to her feelings about her families celebrity.
Like the young relatives of the kennedy’s of old. Why America thinks these morons deserve to be running things just because their family is supported through the mass corporate media into being our royalty.
Chicago? Little Rock!
The Rose law firm, where Hillary was a partner, notoriously represented busted savings & loan Madison Guaranty while it was partnered with Whitewater Development Corp., in which the Clintons were investors.
HIllary, with her signature ethical blindness, saw no conflict of interest.
Its kinda like the new version of being born into a countship or a barony or a dukedom, only these days instead of getting a title they get a job at a major media company instead.
The more things change, the more things like families with power maintaining long powerful dynasties remains the same.
Hello feudalism, we are BACK baby!
Clinton seems to be on the outs unless she does something dramatic. I think Warren is beginning to get pretty good press lately with her book. I think the political establishment after initially sneering at her are beginning to show respect because she’s playing a pretty good Machiavellian game at the moment. Of all the potential candidates in the field she is the smartest. BTW, if she wants to be President she has to be Machiavellian to the core–if she isn’t it would be like a basketball player trying to play basketball without dribbling–it’s possible but very limiting. So looking for purity in any candidate is absurd. I don’t think, however the left should support her completely–we should support, and always support, a true leftist candidate and never fall for the Obama con again and I mean never. We can privately cheer for Warren but our support should always go to someone like Sanders or Nader or whoever comes along with the banner–we know they will lose but the winning candidate will need to move in our direction.
Bearing in mind that political punditry is everyone’s favorite play at home game, I don’t think she will run despite the pressure from groups like Wall St. and the neocons. Someone–it may have been Pat Lang although I can’t find the link–said insiders told them that she doesn’t want to run and it her crazed husband–still longing for that third term he used to talk about–that is pushing it.
If she does run she will be a Republican pin cushion for sure. It will be ugly.
Interesting insight.
Hilary sure is acting like somebody who plans to run.
John Michael Greer has a theory that the two parties have an agreement to pass the White House from one another every eight years. But in a less paranoid vein, one thing that has happened quite consistently in American elections is that there is a swing against the presidential party two cycles after they win control of the White House -their margin and popular vote percentage drops compared to the previous election, even if they wind up winning. And there was a 3% margin last time. So we will probably see a Republican presidential victory in 2016 regardless of who is the nominee.
Given that you will probably lose anyway, why not nominate an old warhorse who has tried and failed to win the presidency before, not to elect him but as sort of nomination as lifetime achievement award? That is what the Republicans did in 1996 and 2008.
Could be. As the fortunes of the majority of the electorate worsen and their standard of living declines, and there are only two parties “available,” it’s logical to assume that the presidency will periodically switch parties. Just as it happened in 2008, when a victory by the Dems was a given, and the whole McCain/Palin thing was “democracy theater.”
The second term gets a little dicier as in 2012, when control of the election demanded the pure, pretty much universally-acknowledged buffoonery of Romney to assure the desired outcome, without calling on Diebold or the supreme court. That gets kind of messy.
I’d say the candidates are first chosen for their loyalty and commitment to the demands of their owners, and then the electorate is conditioned to support whatever unique quality–black, female, bootstrapping business owner–the chosen candidate brings to the table. The other guy/gal/party is just a prop. “Democracy” is about voting, you know, and so it’s at least got to look like people have a “choice.”
Halleluia. I’m not the only one that sees the obvious conspiracy (obvious, and highly plausible: they talk to each other all the time – that’s what we pay them to do.)
Ed is pointing to them nominating Hillary as a consolation prize, like McCain. This also means that liberals should be careful what they wish for: I’ve seen a lot of celebration about the more reasonable Republicans being taken out by scandals. But if the Republicans are going to win anyway, barring an electoral rebellion, then we should be hoping for a reasonable one (Jeb Bush? wouldn’t that be humiliating!)
Or, of course, we could be working on an electoral rebellion. We’ve got about 2 years – not that long.
Also 2012. Still the Democrats’ turn.
You know, it’s really pretty basic.
I just don’t LIKE Clinton.
And all of her desperate attempts to attach herself like a leech to a middle class to which she’s never belonged–“hard” work, “regular” taxes, under-valued female, Grandma Hill–make me like her even less.
We’ve seen this playbook before–appropriation of serious, legitimate struggles by people who wouldn’t recognize those struggles if they got hit in the face with them. The only “pain” she feels is the “pain” that she may not be the first woman American president.
I cannot be convinced that this leech in a Chanel suit wants any more from me, or anyone else in the disappearing middle class, than the legitimizing imprimatur of perceived association. Well, this time around, that’s going to be damn “hard” to come by.
‘Chelsea Clinton cemented the storyline with remarks to Fast Company magazine.’
“I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life.” — Chelsea Clinton
Chelsea is so poor that she installed a clothesline on the roof of her $10.5 million Gramercy Park condo.
If it’s Wednesday, this must be wash day.
” I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t.”
Well, I DO. On EVERY level. So hand it over, NOW. ALL of it.
How’s that for a “middle class” experience?
Un effin’ believable.
lol
Amy Carter, like her dad, a bit different from the Clintons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Carter
I had forgotten Amy! She was a darling child it appears.
Amy C’s alright.
Of course. Her disdain for money is why she married an I-banker.
Perhaps he’s the one Buddhist of the breed.
They’re all Buddist’s, dincha know? None of them care about money. They’re just actualizing themselves, seeking Nirvana, with love.
Sure she doesn’t care about money. That’s easy when you’re loaded. I’m sure she would care a lot more if she had to choose which necessities that required money she would pay for this month and which she would have to live without.
“In 1995, every line not only calls out for justice, but calls up policies with verifiable outcomes. Sad. Very, very sad.”
Every public line in the 1990’s was written by a staff speechwriter (like Clinton’s current book, “Hard Choices”).
The Guardian interview is HRC’s off-the-cuff, unfiltered persona. (even though it was set-up as an ‘ez slam dunk’ for Clinton to promote her book).
And your point? Do you really think any high-level politician utters anything spontaneously?
per your post: ” a sign of the policy vacuity ”
Yes.
How could it be otherwise? The Democratic party has become incoherent; talking about helping Main Street while working hard for Wall St. and TTIP and TISA, just like the GOP.
As ol’ George H.W. Bush used to say, ‘Message: they care!’
I don’t care if she’s wealthy. I care about whether she is a suck-up to wealth, and whether she is disposed to pursue the same neoliberal, Wall Street-friendly policies the Clintons have pursued in the past. Such policies have been the stock-in-trade of the Clinton machine since it was created in the last century as part of the re-engineering of the Democratic Party away from its New Deal and pro-labor orientation into its modern Third Way, DLC or “New Democrat” manifestation as a finance-friendly and capital-friendly engine of the new inequality. I’m sure HRC will be working hard on a rhetorical make-over. But I don’t see how they can junk that old machine and start over again.
The Clintons are what they are. They already have their network; their established allies, and their embedded political operation with its established financial apparatus. That power machinery has well-entrenched commitments that can’t be altered except at the margins. If they trash it, then they trash their power base and their whole reason for existing. The zeitgeist is changing and the Clintons are 20th century dinosaurs trying to revive and cement a legacy that needs to be overturned, not revived.
Bill C. pushed back the other day on the new anti-inequality and anti-capital tendencies in the air, as did Summers in a recent FT piece. We’ve all had more than enough of the Clintons Bob Rubin, Larry Summers and friends. They don’t get it; they don’t want to get it; they’re part of the problem. Time to move on.
“The purest essences that are drawn off from the top of the towers are sociopathic simulacra, and hence optimally useful as inputs to the systems that the political class, in turn, serves (see under “Oligarchs, owned by”).”
How eloquent. I would like to point out that these are the individuals you are proposing to give currency issuing authority to, as well as the authority to arbitrarily redefine our Constitutional rights. Something about that doesn’t seem precisely rational to me.
First, we have fiat money now. Second, using fiat money for public purpose is the walking part. Cleansing the sociopaths is the chewing gum part. Does that help?
Hillary never had the touch. Bill was the gang leader for a reason.
Like Obama, her support was linked to obvious attributes and status as a working woman, especially among women over the age of 45ish*. Younger women don’t care as much. The connection to a pre Title IX society doesn’t exist. There is WNBA afterall, insufferable jokes aside, Hillary was never questioned except by insane Republicans. Her Senate race was largely a celebrity candidacy in a safe general where there wasn’t a single alternative Dem. candidate on the bench. Even in 2007/2008, she largely ran a coronation, had no message until she started bleeding support, and didn’t seem to grasp how delegates were relocated. She spent resources trying to front load the primaries and announced super delegate commitments which led to an expected backlash.
At the same time, people are worse off, and they want answers, platitudes aren’t working. There is no reason to think s he knows how to do this. Has she ever gone into a small room with little people as an unknown and not as a spouse? The reception is different, not from the nuts, but everyone else for an unknown challenger and a celebrity. The answer is no, and we are just seeing Hillary/triangulation-types trying to make a case when answers are demanded because she has a record and one by association which includes: deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, protection and support of the Bush crime family, “free trade”, and so forth.
I don’t remember the year of the cap gains cuts, but Hillary in 95 didn’t have her record today.
To play devil’s advocate, one explanation is the rank and file Dims are largely just non persons who were recruited as self-funders initially and enjoy the idea of being elected. They aren’t interested in any kind of work. When we hear anything good about Congress, it’s the usual suspects, and the ultimate result is a constant plea from the members to be noncommittal because they are just more successful versions of writers of LOTEs denouncing partisanship and demanding both sides learn to work together as if they had sprinkled a sacred truth. Hillary needs their support to avoid a campaign which would not be a great thing for an almost 70 year old because her record is open to attack and without a sense of inevitability a candidate with energy might go for it.
*Female elected Democrats naturally love her.
OK. Second time I’ve seen this in these comments. What is a LOTE? Did I miss it?
God, I detest acronyms.
I hate them too. They’re insider-speak and I traverse too many groups to keep them straight
LOTE = lesser of two evils
Gracias. Never would have figured it out myself, although now it seems pretty obvious.
They’re like crashing head first into a reading comprehension brick wall.
There is also LOTW: lesser of two weevils.
Ha. Aubrey/Maturin reference. +100.
LOTE means lesser of two evils, but I meant to write LTE, letter to the editor.
Lambert, I’m all in favor of the “indivisible” 12-Points and 12-Reforms, but don’t understand how any of them can possibly be instituted or maintained for a hot minute without the 28th Amendment: 1. Corporations are not people; and 2. Money is not speech. More at http://www.movetoamend.org.
From Corrente, here they are:
The 12-Point Platform
1. A Living Wage
2. Medicare for all
3. Tax the Rich
4. Job and Income Guarantee
5. Debt Jubilee
6. Retirement Security
7. Post Office Bank
8. Enforce the Bill of Rights
9. End the Wars
10. Slow Food (Too)
11. Clean Air and Water
12. Carbon Negative Economy
The 12 Reforms
1. Net Neutrality (revised to Internet a Public Utility)
2. Fairness Doctrine
3. Local Ownership of Media
4. Public Campaign Financing
5. Electoral Integrity
6. Self-Organizing Web-Based Citizen Deliberation
7. MMT Macro-economic Policies
8. Preserve and Expand the Commons
9. More Co-operatives, Fewer Corporations
10. Fiat Justitia. Ruat Caelum
11. Strategic Non-Violence
12. Points and Reforms Are Indivisible
The Single Value
Public Purpose
I like all that and I think substantial numbers of people would align with most of it–many of the ideas are rational and pragmatic. This is why I would start with the idea of actually agreeing that public policy ought to be pragmatic and rational which would be my idea for a new political party because the current system is utterly irrational and entirely opposed to every pragmatic idea that comes down the pike.
Fiat Justitia. Ruat Caelum Lambert
Actually, justice will PREVENT the fall of Heaven onto our heads.
Besides, let’s not imagine that a cartel of counterfeiters is essential to the economy; it isn’t.
No doubt about it, Carla, campaign finance reform has to preceed everything else. The 28th Amendment is the beginning of that.
Even more important than “campaign finance reform,” Jon, is ending corporations’ bogus claims to Constitutional rights. The Constitution and Constitutional protections are for human beings, not corporate entities of any kind. We must not settle for anything less. Nice to see you here!
I’m here all the time, Carla, but usually so far behind, about 2 days, that I don’t bother commenting. The comment section I tend to be reading is not where everyone’s currently writing. But I see yours and nearly always agree with whatever you’ve said. Cheers!
I think that “____ must precede anything else” is a bit of a trap; efforts must proceed in parallel. I’m for bringing immediate concrete material benefits. That is, I think it’s better to agitate for something concrete, rather than against something abstract.
I’m not sure Clinton ever was in touch. I don’t think anything happened to her. Her camp actually proposed more liberal policies than the Obama team in 2007, yet she still lost the Iowa caucus. To both Obama and Edwards.
I don’t really understand the comparison to the women’s conference. Clinton really does believe in treating women like human beings. She really believes that she deserves to be President as much as a man.
What she does not believe is that the past couple decades of crony capitalism need to be swept away.
Does anyone know who actually wrote that Beijing speech?
My thought exactly.
That matters why?
Because that person has obviously been fired. Now, fired by whom? There’s a potentially enlightening piece of information.
Hillary Ready for Pillory! (and justifiably so)
That’s Hillary-ous.
Dame Endgame Hillary is within sight of the pinnacle of her career. But wait! There’s a blizzard blowing in from the direction of K-2 Street. (I almost said that her ship of state is entering some Whitewater Rapids, but, nah, too obvious.)
That Warren “hates” single payer is a bit misleading. She went from supporting single-payer to accepting ACA as a step forward. “We approach the health care debates from a single perspective: maintaining the financial stability of families confronting illness or injury. The most obvious solution would be universal single-payer health care.”( http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/06/factcheck_does_elizabeth_warre.html)
As for her predictably stupid positions on Iran and support for Israel, we are hopefully approaching a point in history wherein U.S. preferences as regards the Middle East, and other spheres as well, are being outpaced by events in that and various other regions. I seriously doubt that Robert Kagan would be as “comfortable” with Warren as he recently stated that he is with Clinton.( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?_r=0)
It is her positions on the economy, particularly as regards the financial sector and trade policy that are and should be of greater concern to most. These issues being in your wheelhouse, I look forward to whatever you may provide regarding Warren’s positions on these matters.
Warren’ position on FP, particularly the ME cannot be other than it is. There is no third rail more powerful than Israel whether you are a politician or an academic. If she were critical, in any way, of Israel she’d be finished and would get pilloried in the media and stripped of all power and influence in the Senate.
More’s the pity.
It’s a shame really. Political Correctness in the matter of Israel is really a back handed form of anti-Semitism. If one is afraid to openly debate the issue from all sides, one obviously fears what might come out. The status quo is frozen in place, and eventually, the unrelieved stresses shatter the entire edifice. Somewhat like Samson at the Temple of the Philistines.
The fact that a rising star in the Democratic Party — and their Plan B for a woman candidate in 2016 — and one ho clearly takes pride in her no-nonsense independence and defending “the middle class” can’t bring herself to advocate for “the most obvious solution” speaks volumes about how corrupt the Democrats really are. To be fair, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. How about “stone cold indifferent”?
I think the reason I throw up in my mouth a little every time I think about Hilary for President has to do with what you must call the “slime” factor. The sense you’re being played for a sucker. That all she ever cares about are the optics and the triangulation, not the actual people who are hurt and impoverished by her (party’s) policies. Now I’m sure she’ll attempt what looks like a human reaction, “oh,oh, I really do know it’s like to be poor…”. Which will make me retch just a little bit more. And anyone who gets ringing endorsements from Rupert Murdoch MUST be just a continuation of Obomba’s business-as-usual-fascism. As Travis Bickle said “someday a REAL rain is gonna come and wash this scum away…”
I can tell you EXACTLY what happened between 1995 and now: she lost a top-notch speechwriter. Might be nice to know who really gets credit for that speech.
She also got old and tired, but that happens to all of us, if we’re lucky.
Her stump speech after the writing was on the wall in 2008 was pretty good when she dumped the previous campaign, but her real problem is her record.
Hillary on paper circa 1995 can’t be reconciled with Hillary’s career and Bill’s presidency in the end. Her dead broke statement caused a scandal, but how does Hillary speak to the antiwar crowd? Oh, Hillary was lied to. What does she mean by that? And if she was lied to, how does she intend to proceed? The GOP will flood the world with images of her helping W. work on his Vienna Art school application. 95 Hillary doesn’t have that problem.
In the end, she is limited as a candidate because much of her supporters have projected a radically different set of values on her. For them, she is 95 Hillary, but her record can only hurt her. Swing voters are idiots and will do whatever, but they are so few they are negligible. Republicans will vote against her because it’s what they do.
Her path to the White House is based on locking in the female vote with her stand by her man routine and as a result being an inevitability. Short of being damaged, the current GOP can’t win the electoral college.
I think Hillary is limited above all by a lack of imagination. We forget that Washington was a big-time land speculator and a slaveowner; that Lincoln was a railroad lawyer; that FDR was an old-money New York patrician; that the LBJ of the Civil Rights Act and Medicare was a vote stealer and a suckup to racists and a Machiavellian armtwister. The issue is, can they grow in office to meet the challenges of the time (“of the people, for the people, by the people”). Obama clearly was not going to do that growing, and anybody who was paying attention knew that from his FISA flip-flop in July 2008, or when he whipped the CBC for TARP in October (IIRC) 2008. Obama’s massive surveillance program and the giveaways to the banksters are foreshadowed right there in those votes.
So the Clintons cut some kind of deal with Obama at Denver in 2008. My guess is that the Clinton camp traded (a) no Hillary nomination, (b) no ugly charges of caucus fraud, and (c) full throttled support from Bill in 2008 and 2012 to get from Obama (a) the SoS position for Hillary and (b) that it would be “Hillary’s turn” in 2016. That seemed smart, because SoS kept her away from Obama’s horrific domestic policies, but as it turns out, she really is a hawk and believes all that shit; it’s not just a matter of “she has to say it.” And it does seem like both sides stuck to the deal.
Perhaps with more imagination the trade could have been for a domestic policy area — of any kind. That would have opened up the possibility of an Eleanor Roosevelt strategy — “listening tours” on a national scale. On the trail, after the February caucus debacle, the 2008 Clinton campaign basically went under the radar to smaller venues in town after town after town, and although I’m sure some commenters may not want to hear this, Clinton was much better at connecting with non-creative class Democrats than Obama was. This doesn’t speak to the merits of her actual policies, which were marginally better than Obamas, but to her very real skills as a politician. There is, after all, a reason Clinton in 2008 won the Democratic popular vote, if all the votes are counted, NY, CA, and the major states in between.) But if anything like that were going to happen, it would already have happened — say, if Clinton had gracefully resigned 2 years into her SoS term.
In reference to Banger’s comments on continuity of leadership outside the President
Indeed—one such partial list (Glennon, 2014) is for the following high level and mid-level national security officials(Deep State boys and girls) who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations
Both Big/Deep State and Big Capital/Wall Street have their respective sets of revolving doors and overlapping as well as competing interests
Dennis Blain, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence 2009–2010, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command in the Bush Administration.
John Brennan, CIA Director and former Assistant to the President for Homeland Security in the Obama Administration, who served in the Bush Administration as Chief of Staff to CIA Director George Tenet, Deputy Direct of the CIA and Director of the National Counterterrorism Center,
James B. Comey, FBI Director in the Obama Administration who served as Deputy Attorney General in the Bush Administration
James Clapper, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence since 2010, who served as President Bush’s Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration from 2009-2011, and also in the Bush administrations
Stephen Kappes, Deputy Director of the CIA in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2010 who served in the same position in the Bush Administration.
Michael Leiter, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama from 2009-2011 and earlier under President Bush
Douglas Lute,, Obama’s coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Staff from 2009 to 2013, who served in the Bush Administration as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan
Michael Morrell, Obama’s Deputy Directory of the CIA from 2010 to 2013, who served as Associate Deputy Director in the Bush Administration.
Victoria Nuland, Obama’s State Department spokesperson, who served as Deputy National Security Adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney
And on and on
Hilary Clinton talks like Eleanor Roosevelt, but she walks like Marie Antoinette. ‘The poor, they have no bread? Then say we care and let them starve! Vote for me the Republicans are even worse!’
The Clintons are just like the Obamas: a power couple that sold out for money.
I recall back when Bill was first running, and he was like 4% in the polls and going nowhere. Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, his campaign was showered with cash, the corporate press pushed him and pushed him – and when elected, he ruthlessly stabbed the American people in the back and was paid more than $100 million dollars and counting for services rendered to his wealthy patrons. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the Wall Street boardrooms back then: it certainly looked like the fix was in.
Then Barack “Magic Sparkle Pony” Obama had some meetings with Rupert Murdoch et al – who stated that he looked forward to working with Obama – and the rich decided that he’d be a better figurehead even than Hilary, and the fix was in again. Hilary could do no right, she was only running because she was egotistical or post-menopausal and she had wrinkles and bad taste in pantsuits. And good old Barack has stabbed the rest of us in the back so deeply he makes Nixon look like FDR. And Barack’s rewards will make the Clinton’s pale in comparison.
So it all boils down to this: is Hilary Clinton going to be the appointed standard bearer of the oligarchs on the Democratic side this time, and if so, will they like her better than the appointed standard bearer of the oligarchs on the Republican side? You will know when the fix is in by the sudden sea-change in press coverage.
If the mainstream press turns on a candidate it’s virtually impossible for them to win. When all that everyone hears is ‘so and so is out of it’, it seems like a consensus, even though it is likely just a script approved by a handful of the people who own the media. And if a candidate is ignored, if their logical arguments get no coverage, and you only occasionally hear some brief mention of problems in their personal life and their ‘quixotic’ quest for public office, well, it becomes accepted as common knowledge. The press can’t quite get someone like Romney widely accepted – but they do have a veto power, and can pretty much destroy anyone if they care enough.
So I wonder what Hilary is promising and to whom, to avoid being culled like last time? The negotiations must be interesting. Maybe the oligarchs are asking her if she would be willing to reintroduce child labor and indentured servitude? Whatever, it will take a lot to match Obama’s track record.
“is Hillary Clinton going to be the appointed standard bearer”? I don’t think so. We’re seeing the same “inevitability” narrative that we saw in 2008, so it’s lack of imagination all over again. The waters, as it were, feel very very choppy to me right now. This:
I think Clinton, or Clinton + Bill, have lost the imaginative capabilities to react swiftly to events and seize opportunities. Read the Guardian quotes again; they’re terrible. And this is a book tour, not a Presidential campaign. Appointed or not, I think she’s going to drop the standard or have it taken from her. That doesn’t mean the actual candidate will be any better than Clinton, just different. The Democrats, after all, are what they are.
I think her campaign decided to make a play to win over the resentful 99% and it didn’t work. The second thing she said, “But they don’t see me as part of the problem, because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.” was taken out of context though. It doesn’t look to me like she was claiming she’s not ‘truly well off’, and it’s deceitful to claim she was, imo
It’s just that rich elites can’t really claim any solidarity with the rest of us. I’ll be voting for Jesus H Christ.
Whatever happens makes very little difference: in the end, taxpayers will still pay for her retirement and health insurance. And since only the good die young, we’re in for the long haul. Once again.
Where, in the Constitution, is there any mention of “public servants” being fully supported by the people ’til death do us part? And where can they resume an uber-lucrative career once they leave office, while still being fully supported by taxpayers?
Answer: only in America.