Many thanks to Melissa Harris-Perry at MSNBC. An excellent speech, and while HRC is not an orator as skilled as President Obama or President Bill Clinton, those guys are acknowledged as the best of the best even by their enemies. Her content was unimpeachable — and exciting!
Jim Tankersley, economic policy reporter at the Washington Post:
Hillary Clinton is not running on the same-old liberal plan to boost the economy. She made that clear on Saturday in New York, in a speech officially kicking off her presidential campaign…
What she is running on is a very old liberal economic philosophy, updated and expanded for a post-Great-Recession America where widening inequality and a stagnating middle-class have commanded high attention from Republican and Democratic candidates alike…
The updated Clinton plan includes reworking the tax code to shift the behavior of private companies away from short-term profit-taking and high executive pay and toward long-term investment and profit-sharing with workers. It includes new government guarantees of pre-school and quality child care for every kid in the country; for paid sick leave and family leave; for more equal pay for women and higher minimum wages for all.
It includes new regulations on Wall Street, on top of the regulations imposed under President Obama, and new fees on fossil fuel production.
“It’s not 1941 or 1993 or even 2009,” Clinton said. “We face new challenges in our economy and our democracy.” Then she added: “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. You brought our country back. Now it’s time — your time to secure the gains and move ahead.”…
mattH
Good start. Who’s her campaign staff though? They are along for the ride, all the way into the White House if she wins.
Germy Shoemangler
the New York Times weighs in with a dash of cold water in the face:
David Koch
Try telling that to DKos. (AKA “the base”)
Davis X. Machina
@mattH:
The good news: Joe Stiglitz and some bods from the Roosevelt Institute are briefing her on economic issues.
The bad news: Mentions of the public option in today’s speech: 0.
Baud
I haven’t had a chance to view it yet, but I’m liking the buzz.
The three announced candidates are chasing the liberals in the party rather than the centrists. That’s a good thing.
SiubhanDuinne
Can’t watch until later tonight — waiting for a voice recital to start (daughter of a FB friend is going for a Master’s in Vocal Performance, and is doing a program of Lieder and arias. Have no idea if she has a future, but it’s a real treat to hear young artists on the cusp of their careers if they have the right stuff). I followed the earlier threads about Hillary so have a rough idea of her major points, but am looking forward to watching the video later. Thanks for putting it up.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
Lol.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Aren’t there four? HRC, Sanders, O’Malley and Chafee.
Edit: Oops, Bernie’s not a Democrat. But then everyone seems to overlook Chafee, probably with good cause.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: the NYTIMES seems firmly behind Mr. Bush. Any article i read about HRC will be accompanied with a splash of cold water to my face.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Heh. FWIW, I was counting Sanders and had forgotten about Chaffee.
Baud
@Germy Shoemangler:
We need to just internalize it now — the New York Times = Fox News when it comes to this election.
Tommy
You go girlfriend. I got issues with Hillary. But I just wish for a single day if I venture out of this site and others I can’t spend a day basking in the light of a pretty darn liberal speech. Hillary hit it out of the park here.
Germy Shoemangler
@Baud: I’ve come to accept that. Also Amy Davidson writing for the New Yorker.
chopper
if she’ll institute even a quarter of the shit she’s just talked about it will markedly improve this country.
(looks at congress)
well, shit.
KG
@SiubhanDuinne: Cahfee was on The Nightly Show this week, actually came across as interesting. I wouldn’t call him presidential, but he strikes me as someone who might be able to pick up votes with a decent debate performance – especially in New Hampshire where they have open primaries.
Cacti
@SiubhanDuinne:
Chafee’s candidacy is by far the most pointless.
Sanders and O’Malley will end up fighting each other for the anti-Hillary vote, and Hillary will sail to an easy primary victory.
That’s how I see 2016 shaking out on the Dem side, absent some sort of black swan event.
srv
I can never vote for someone whose arrow goes to the right.
magurakurin
@srv: nobody expects republicans to vote for her.
NotMax
A free range chicken in every recyclable pot.
Pogonip
Big storm #2 coming through! I’m enjoying this.
Hillary is definitely the lesser evil. I hope she wins.
the Conster
She needs to just hammer on over and over and over about the middle class – Bernie’s territory – and she’s got this, because all of the Republicans got nothin’.
lol
@SiubhanDuinne:
There’s also Webb.
Tommy
@Pogonip: I got a few issues with Hillary. As a few have said here last night I will bite my lip and vote for her if push comes to shove. That speech, which I watched a few times, was a home run. If she keeps talking this way it is going to be hard for me not to get behind her.
Tree With Water
“You got the words right, Livy, but you don’t know the tune.” So said Mark Twain about his wife cursing in order to shame him. I feel much the same when Hillary disses Wall Street.
Baud
@lol:
Has he stated his intent? I never heard anything beyond the speculation stage.
UncomfortableTruth
About the only thing she’ll follow through on is her promises to be hawkish on foreign policy.
“Whatever it takes to keep this country safe”
Translation: Cruise missiles and drones.
No thanks.
Davis X. Machina
@David Koch: DKos? I used to hang out there back when Wes Clark was president.
mclaren
Lots of Hillary hate on this site, but I’m not hearing anything from her that doesn’t sound good so far.
Of course, it’s possible that HRC is pulling an Obama — vague pleasant-sounding generalities (“We are the change we’ve been waiting for” “Yes we can!”) as a fig leaf for extremist far-right atrocities like drone murders, ordering the assassination of U.S. citizens without trial, the corporate putsch misnamed the TPP, and so on.
But if we take the nihilistically cynical route we’ll never do anything because we’d conclude that everyone running is hopelessly corrupt and the system is rotten to the core and there’s no point in voting and yadda yadda.
So while I have serious doubts about HRC’s sincerity, I’m not ready to give up hope yet.
the Conster
@UncomfortableTruth:
I worry about this too, but as much as I’m uncomfortable with her neocon instincts, she’s not stupid. But, she needs the Obama coalition coat tails, and please god, Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House.
Cacti
@Davis X. Machina:
Was that around the same time when Ned Lamont was US Senator for Connecticut?
Tommy
@UncomfortableTruth: That is my main issue with her. My father worked at high levels within the DoD. Republican. Funny thing he hates war. Even more funny because my father did war for a living. That was what he was paid to do.
War is a shitty, bad thing. I love my father always told the powers that be war is bad! But I guess they don’t listen to him and he is always right.
Baud
Election time brings out the best in people.
Baud
@Cacti:
Darcy Burner FTW!
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler: I wonder what the bold vision her critics want might be.
Bruce Webb
I like HIllary well enough. But hit it out of the park? Silent on trade, silent on Keystone.
And for God’s sake launching at Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms Park and not having one word to say about FDR’s most enduring achievement Social Security?
I read the speech. It was good. But there were significant, and what had to be deliberate, omissions.
gene108
@Davis X. Machina:
He was on and later headed Bill’s council of economic advisors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz#Clinton_administration
If this was some crazy “Hillary is going to be the worst fake liberal ever” website, I’d think it’s part of a conspiracy, but it seems Hillary is aware things are different than the 1990’s and so does Dr. Stilglitz.
Brachiator
Thanks for linking the speech. I will watch it a little later on.
Suzanne
WTG, Hillz. I think I might even feel pretty good giving you my vote.
MazeDancer
@Tommy:
Had the same reaction. Went from “hold nose and think of SCOTUS” to “Well, all righty, now, that’s what I want to hear from a Democrat.”
Have read all about how elections are only about driving turnout, now, not about persuading any one. Because there aren’t enough actual voters to persuade. That the only horse race is who can get the most voters to the polls. (Ignoring “and control counting votes in Ohio”)
So it looks like Hillary understands that turnout is everything and is going to go for exciting the base. Sounds good to me.
gene108
@Baud:
What exactly is a Democratic Centrist in this day and age?
I really think the electorate is self-segregating into liberal and conservative camps, though many people, who think of themselves as centrists tend to lean either Left or Right, but do not want to identify with a political party.
mclaren
@Brachiator:
How about bringing back usury laws?
No civilization in recorded history has survived without usury laws. The notion that America can continue with atrocities like 35% interest rates on credit cards when the actual going rate of inflation is closer to 1% is absolutely insane. With a 35% interest rate, the amount you owe doubles roughly every two years. That’s crazy. That’s completely nuts. It’s mafia levels of extortion, totally impossible to sustain in any reasonable economy with a middle class.
Read up on the Supreme Court’s 1978 Marquette decision and the colossal explosion of consumer debt due to legalized loansharking since then. The president could end all of that with a single executive order.
Here’s another “bold” vision HRC could offer: bring back the goddamn Fairness Doctrine.
Don’t need congress for this, just a president who will order the FCC to reinstate the old old old original Fairness Doctrine. Overnight the toxic cesspool of far-right talk radio and Fox News would vanish.
Or how about another “bold” vision? Set a nationwide minimum wage at $15 an hour with an executive order.
How about about this bold vision — issue an executive order to the bureaucrats implementing the ACA that bans drive-by doctoring?
Tons of things Hills could do..if she wanted to.
Baud
@gene108:
The people that people on liberal blogs are always bitching about.
gene108
@Bruce Webb:
I’m sort of the opinion that if Democrats are in control Keystone does not get built, along with the fact that the drop in oil prices makes excavating the tar sands out of Alberta, Canada less lucrative, thus putting less pressure to build the pipeline.
As far a trade goes, I think that was settled a long time ago. Tariffs are low, capital can move around the world with limited barriers.
Now it’s just dickering about the details, sort of like looking for a new car; will you buy the Toyota Corolla LE or opt for the Sport model.
Tommy
@MazeDancer: Had the same reaction. Went from “hold nose and think of SCOTUS” to “Well, all righty, now, that’s what I want to hear from a Democrat.”
I don’t thnk she cares about issues I do 24/7. But just give me a reach around and jake me off thinking so I do care.
mclaren
@gene108:
A Democratic centrist is a self-identified liberal who believes that U.S. citizens ordered murdered without a trial by the president should be executed by firing squad, rather than by slow garotte.
A Democratic centrist nowadays is someone who believes that when the TPP gives corporations the power to revoke national worker safety laws, the workers who get horribly maimed should be given a lollipop in compensation.
A Democratic centrist nowadays is someone who believes that instead of going to war with every country in the middle east, America should pursue a more moderate restrained foreign policy, and merely bombard them all with hellfire missiles from drones.
A Democratic centrist today is someone who firmly advocates giving every protester the right to freedom of speech, behind closely guarded barbed-wire enclosures located far away from any public venue, and under the supervision of riot-armored militarized police who have lawes rockets and grenades aimed at the protesters.
A Democratic centrist is someone who thinks that privatizing the K-12 public schools can go too far, and that commercials for corporate products should not be played over the intercom during lunch breaks (but inserting commercials in the textbooks is fine ‘n dandy).
A Democratic centrist is someone who thinks that labor unions should not be outlawed, but instead subject to criminal fines, endless harassment by corporations, and cause for immediate termination of the workers involved.
A Democratic centrist is someone who advocates debt relief for college students who can’t pay back their unaffordable loans by giving them more loans at even more exortionate interest rates with even bigger balloon payments.
A Democratic centrist is a person who believes that throwing poor people in jail for not being able to pay their fees and fines is outrageous, and that poor people who can’t pay their fees and fines should instead be put to work for giant corporations in indentured servitude.
Baud
@Tommy:
I’d hate to be Jake.
srv
@Baud: After mclaren’s (first) comment, this blog has gone Inception level.
Davis X. Machina
@gene108:
He wrote a book about it.
Major Major Major Major
I liked it. And “she’s no Obama” is an irrelevant criticism unless you can point to somebody in the GOP who is.
Liked the hedge fund/kindergarten teachers thing, even though it’s frankly facile. Good rhetoric though.
lol
@Baud:
He announced November last year.
Baud
@lol:
Wow. Invisible.
mclaren
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, it’s not just good rhetoric that I find so promising about HRC. She’s talking specifics. Obama was notoriously vague in his 2008 campaign. The few specifics he came out with (hammering on a mandate and calling it impractical — “if mandates were the answer, we could solve homeleness by mandating that every homeless person buy a house”) during the 2008 campaign came in response to Hillary’s proposals, as criticisms.
Don’t recall Obama specifically proposing to do a lot of concrete detailed policy stuff, other than peripheral issues like ending the kangaroo court military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay.
By contrast, Hillary seems to be talking about extremely specific policy proposals. New regulations on Wall Street, reworking the tax code, government-mandated sick leave and maternity leave — that’s not vague “feel good” rhetoric. Those are specific concrete proposals.
different-church-lady
@mclaren: Oh. So in other words, a democratic centrist is a straw man.
piratedan
well as far as the attention that the shrinking middle class is receiving from the GOP appears to be more along the lines of game plans to stamp them out of existence… but hey… attention is attention I guess.
gene108
@the Conster:
You do realize the Neo-Cons coalesced in the 1990’s, because they thought Bill was too much of a weakling in not throwing around America’s military might throughout the world as the planet’s lone Superpower?
He was holding America’s greatness back by building coalitions before getting involved in the Balkans, only bombing Iraq, when Saddam violated whatever U.N. resolutions where heaped upon him, after the first Gulf War, negotiating with North Korea to get them to suspend their nuclear program, etc.
Get as mad as you want about her AUMF vote, but Bill’s foreign policy team was pretty rational. And I’m sure plenty of the same folks, from the Clinton Administration have rolled over into the Obama Administration, as Democratic Presidents tap officials from prior Democratic Administrations to run things (Republicans do the same thing, so the next Republican President will be surrounded by neo-cons).
Major Major Major Major
@mclaren: This was a really good speech for a Dem. No ego there anywhere either. I like 2.0 so far!
Obama’s mandate thing was always stupid, to boot. You need guaranteed issue/mandate/subsidies all at the same time or else it falls apart. Not that I didn’t work for his campaign but that was a weird way to try and differentiate himself.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: I remember when Obama was first elected, and picking his staff, everybody was like “these are all just Clinton retreads!” And I was like well who’s he going to hire from, the Carter administration?
NotMax
Perhaps have experienced just too many campaigns, but can’t shake the niggling suspicion that this is the mirror image of the Republican ‘move to the right for the primaries, move to the center for the general’ tactic.
Also too, if a candidate is pushing for a Constitutional amendment as the way to fix political campaigning, realistically that’s just giving lip service and/or munching on pie in the sky.
HR Progressive
She’ll get my vote only when Sanders cannot receive it.
David Koch
@NotMax:
But Sanders is doing the same thing and no one is calling that lip service.
mclaren
@different-church-lady:
No, the policies I describe accurately represent the positions of the majority of self-identified Democratic centrists.
Hillary Clinton is a Democratic centrist because she advocates more endless unwinnable foreign wars, but in a restrained way compared to the Republicans:
Source: “The Military-Industrial Candidate: Hillary Clinton prepares to launch the most formidable hawkish presidential campaign in a generation,” The American Conservative magazine, 20 November 2014.
Source: “Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions,” ABC News, 31 January 2008.
Source: “Hillary faces Pakistani ire over drone attacks,” NBC News, 30 October 2009.
Source: “Why Liberal Democrats Are Skeptical of Hillary Clinton, in One Paragraph — Hint: It’s the same reason an auditorium of Goldman Sachs executives gave her a warm welcome recently,” The Atlantic magazine, December 2013.
Proof once again that the accusation of a straw man is the single biggest straw man on the internet.
Nice try with the Ann Coulter technique of accusing people of doing things you are actually the only one doing, different church lady. But you need to sit at Ann Coulter’s feet and absorb a little more of her expertise in crafting smears, because you’re just not pulling it off.
Mike J
@NotMax:
It doesn’t matter what office you elect her to, she can’t over rule the Supremes. Right now the only option is an amendment, even though it’s along shot.
gene108
@Davis X. Machina:
I read his book. Interesting stuff and accessible for a lay person.
There’s just a lot of cries on the Left about “Clinton’s inner circle” or “Clinton’s people” being some sort of code for a bunch of two-bit whores for Wall Street, when it seems that a lot of the views of folks from the 1990’s, who worked with Bill seems to have changed as the times have changed.
I am more of a wait and see attitude about how the Democratic Party will evolve in the near future, but unlike the Republicans (who have a one sized fits all program no matter the problem), it sure does seem that the Democrats are pragmatic enough to realize economic approaches that might have been reasonable 20 years ago are no longer practical and adjust accordingly.
Davis X. Machina
@NotMax: She doesn’t have to move an inch to the left to land the nomination.
Two theories — she’s not moving to the left at all.
She’s moving to the left because she wants to.
Keith G
@Pogonip:
Never been evil. Not always correct, but never evil.
jayjaybear
A Democratic centrist is someone who thinks mclaren belongs in a rubber room.
srv
I hear the celebrating started early in Dallas:
mclaren
@Mike J:
That’s by no means clear. A president can issue an executive order, or sequester funds, or implement a law paased by congress in an entirely different way than congress envisioned. This gives the chief executive in America vast power.
When various kooks and cranks and crackpots rush forward to deny these documented facts, just consider one small example: Obama’s recent directive to the IRS not to implement one of the provisions of the ACA for a year. This is a clear and blatant violation of the law, in direct contravention of congress’ intent. And guess what?
Obama got away with it. No impeachment, no supreme court meltdown, nothing.
Likewise Obama decided not to defend DOMA in court and he decided not to order his Attorney General to enforce certain provisions of recent immigration legislation.
Out here in the real world, the details matter. How a president enforces a law, or implements legislation passed by congress, can have a profoundly important impact — up to and including effectively nullifying that law.
In 1963, the Kennedy Administration refused to defend a law that codified the doctrine of “separate but equal” in hospital funding. Likewise, there are cases where one Administration decided not to defend a law and the next Administration’s interpretation of its constitutionality is different and they choose to defend the law. For example, the Carter Administration decided not to defend a ban on non-commercial radio stations from editorializing or endorsing candidates on First Amendment grounds, but the Reagan Administration found a way to defend the law. The Bush I Administration decided not to enforce the “must carry” provisions of the FCC, but the Clinton Administration changed course.
People who assert that “the president is helpless to do [X — fill in the blank] if the Supreme Court gives a ruling” are simply unfamiliar with how government actually works. The president can require that a law be enforced, but at such a low level of priority that it effectively becomes a dead-letter law.
Presidents can do a lot. The Supreme Court is only one branch of government, and does not have the final say over public policy — no one branch in the American system of governance has the final say. It is a dynamic system, constantly able to readjust how polices get put into practice provided that creative and determined people occupy the West Wing.
Germy Shoemangler
Connally: “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
mclaren
@Keith G:
Hillary Rodham started out as a Goldwater Republican.
You may recall Barry Goldwater adocating the nuclear bombing of Vietnam to win the war. You might also remember Barry Goldwater’s fanatical opposition to both the Civil Rights Act and medicare.
I think we can safely define these political positions as “evil.”
Cue the centrist Democrats who will rush forward to defend Goldwater’s threat to nuclear-bomb Vietnam was “not evil, but merely an alternative path of policy which, in retrospect, looks positively progressive” in…3…2…1…
NotMax
@Mike J
No one is proposing “overruling” the Supreme Court. But Congress can pass new laws addressing the situation and those laws will have their own day in court.
An amendment is attacking a cockroach with a piledriver. Not to mention (by design) pretty darned difficult to get through two-thirds of each chamber of Congress and then successfully through two-thirds of state legislatures.
There’s sound reason (insofar as practicality goes) that no serious effort has ever been made to push through an anti-abortion amendment even though oceans of rhetoric have been spilled advocating such. (And no, I do not and never have favored such an amendment, just dragging it out for illustrative purposes.)
@David Koch
Same criticism apples to Bernie, but he’s not the topic of the thread. Note I said “A candidate,” not “Hillary.”
David Koch
@gene108:
they coalesced in the early 70s. they were part of the old left and roosevelt’s coalition ( nyc intellectuals, marxists, and trotskyites) who strongly opposed vietnam, but had become radicalized by terrorism against israeli civilians and soviet oppression of jewry and soviet support for arab nations. their focus moved from economics to militarism.
though this happened later in time, a great example is christopher hitchens. he was an unabashed card carrying trotskyite who campaigned for nader, then 10 months later 9/11 happened and overnight he became a war mongering neo con calling for the destruction multiple arab nations.
Keith G
@Davis X. Machina:
Maybe a third: In a “base election” a candidate moves to where the emotions of the base are. Her hubby moved right to flirt with “Regan & Sam Nunn Democrats” The members of that cohort that are still alive will never vote for a Democrat, so HRC gets no utility moving rightward (except to please the Village). By facing left, she get the energized base she needs.
mclaren
@jayjaybear:
Exactly right, and well stated.
When I stand up and say that the president of the united states has to obey the constitution, a Democratic centrist is someone who thinks I belong in a rubber room.
When I state that America must reinstate usury laws and end the atrocity of 35% credit card interest rates, a Democratic centrist is someone who thinks I belong in a rubber room.
When I point out that Hillary gave a $200,000 speech to Goldman Sach saying that “bashing the bankers…is unproductive” and that’s why real liberals are skeptical of her, a Democratic centrist is someone who thinks I belong in a rubber room.
When I quote Hillary giving a speech earlier this year in which she said “America needs a more assertive foreign policy” and I point out this is insane given the number of endless unwinnable wars America is currently embroiled in, a Democratic centrist is someone who thinks I belong in a rubber room.
Thank you for providing such clear evidence of what a Democratic centrist really is, jayjaybear.
Elizabelle
@HR Progressive:
That’s fine. And fair.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
Constitutional amendment. Or seating a better Supreme Court, and having another go at Citizens United.
Citizens United is extremely unpopular, literally. I’d bet you could make a run at it with a constitutional amendment. But there may be a quicker fix.
mclaren
@Keith G:
Yes, this is the central question about HRC. Is she running the Obama scam of “fake left, then move right,” or is she being pushed by the realities of America in 2015 that are simply forcing Democrats to recognize that many current policies are unsustainable (rich getting richer, ever more endless unwinnable foreign wars, exploding college tuitions, eroding middle class)? Or did she really change her policy views since the Clinton administration now that she’s seen the horrific effects of the neoliberal policies her hubby implemented (repealing Glass-Steagall, welfare ‘reform’ that gutted the safety net, the start of extraordinary rendition under Bill Clinton, etc)?
Other ex-members of the Clinton administration have seen the writing on the wall after the 2009 financial meltdown and marked their views to market. Brad deLong, for example. Maybe Hillary has too.
mclaren
@HR Progressive:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we’re ready for the lone gunman, coming onto the grassy knoll from stage left — wait for the cue, people! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We don’t want any “magic bullets” this time around…
trollhattan
@mclaren:
When you state that Hillary was evil for supporting Goldwater at the age of seventeen, you reveal a lot about how you think.
David Koch
@Keith G:
problem is it’s not working. and the energized base is with Sanders.
mclaren
@trollhattan:
Evil is evil. Supporting someone who proposes nuclear-bombing a nation of peasants is evil, whether you’re 17 or 70.
gene108
@mclaren:
She also started off her legal career working for the Children’s Defense Fund.
She’s clearly a flip-flopper and can’t be trusted.
Supporting Goldwater one election and then McGovern. Working for a nonprofit and then trying make money as a lawyer. Just seems to do whatever she wants, with no moral compass whatsoever.
ruemara
Shorter purity brigade: “BUT WHAT ABOUT MY ISSUES! WHAT ABOUT MY INTERPRETATIONS OF HOW THINGS SHOULD BE!”
Jesus. Bernie Sanders is just about the edge of where my left begins. He’s who I’m supporting in the primary because I think he’s a much stronger contender than mainline democrats give him credit for. However, if Hillary wins, I won’t feel too bad because she’s been making the right statements on policies that matter to people like me. I don’t have to love all of it (Bernie on guns for example). I just have to get a sense that they are willing to do the right thing if they have the right information.
mclaren
@David Koch:
Indeed. That’s what primaries are for.
Naturally, this is why “centrist Democrats” hate and despise anyone who runs on a genuinely progressive plank in a Democratic primary, because [insert transparent rationalization for corporate serfdom here: “you’re splitting the party and helping the Republicans!” “The other candidate can’t possibly win!” “Politics is the art of compromise, and we must choose the lesser of two evils!” “The perfect is the enemy of the good!” “We rule by love and not by the bayonet (Josef Goebbels)!”].
srv
@mclaren: What did you expect from centrist BJ?
John Cole is the only progressive FP’er here, although Betty leans our way.
Germy Shoemangler
http://mashable.com/2015/04/25/hillary-clinton-early-days/
Keith G
@mclaren: I had family members who were Goldwater Reprogs. They were wrong, but they were not evil. Goldwater was wrong about Vietnam as was ~99% of our political leadership. His discussion about using low yield nuclear devices to defoliate infiltration routes in Vietnam was bonkers, but not evil.
Remember that he had charged LBJ with recklessly lying us into a hot war in Vietnam and he proposed that we either do whatever it took to support the troops in a war effort or we should get out. It was LBJ’s propaganda shop that made it conventional wisdom that Goldwater wanted to nuke everything above the DMZ. Again, Goldwater’s views were mostly wrong, but not evil.
Goldwater’s opposition to both the Civil Rights Act and Medicare was also wrong and also not proof that he or his supporters were/are evil.
So repeating from earlier, HRC is not evil.
Keith G
@David Koch:
Good for the Bernie! He will energize folks who are too left for Hillary to reach (and others too to be sure). He will say the things that a candidate who wishes to win in the general cannot yet say. And that will pull even more folks into the mix. And I hope they all register to vote and/or participate in caucuses and primaries.
And sometime next spring, I would like to see them take their participation to the next level and join forces to support the party’s choice to be the nominee.
rikyrah
Video shows Arkansas cops slamming cooperative blind, black man to the ground
12 JUN 2015 AT 10:12 ET
A legally blind Little Rock, Arkansas man who can be seen on video complying with police officers is asking why the officers roughly threw him to the ground in a June 1 incident, resulting in a back injury, local station Fox 16 reports.
In a police report obtained by Fox 16, one of the officers claims that Eric Wilson “pulled away violently causing me to lose grip,” and he was “afraid that Wilson would strike myself or my partner with the handcuff.”
But video of the incident shows nothing of the sort.
Wilson, who told reporters he can only see shadows, can be seen walking toward the two police officers when they summon him. When they tell him to take his hands out of his pockets, he does so. The video shows Wilson standing quietly with his hands behind his back as the officer goes to handcuff him. The officer then suddenly pushes Wilson to the ground.
“When they tell him to ‘come over here,’ he walked towards them,” Wilson’s attorney Reggie Koch told Fox 16. “When they tell him ‘take your hands out of your pockets,’ he takes his hands out of his pockets. What more do they want?”
The incident occurred at about 4 p.m. after Wilson had gotten off work at Lighthouse for the Blind. He missed his bus and began to walk home. Police were called by someone who reported a man “fitting Wilson’s description” who was either running away or chasing someone, and who looked afraid, the station reports.
Police reported seeing a black handle sticking out of Wilson’s pocket. That turned out to be a clock designed to read the time for blind people.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/video-shows-arkansas-cops-slamming-cooperative-blind-black-man-to-the-ground/
David Koch
@Keith G: Heh. tell the kumbayas to president gore.
Keith G
@rikyrah: I do hope that some enterprising soul make a montage of all these Assaulted While Black video clips. Maybe the impact of seeing so many outrageous acts of violence by police officer would be too traumatic for many folks to ignore.
David Koch
@Germy Shoemangler: you know what’s hilarious is the purists who attack Hillary for being once being republican yet worship Elizabeth Warren even though she once was also a republican
Keith G
@David Koch: Gore was his own worst enemy. I actually would have a hard time figuring out what his good moves were during that campaign. The list of bad moves are burned into my memory.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
@HR Progressive:
Yep, my thought also. Nothing terribly wrong with Hillary IMO, but Bernie is better. Forces everyone to talk about the unmentionable, and face the monster hiding in plain sight.
Brachiator
@mclaren: Why would you think that the fact that Clinton was a Goldwater Republican means anything? Not just today, or heading into 2016, but even 20 years ago? Then again, your insistence that the political categories you have in your head are meaningful seems to have you stuck in the 1920s.
Brachiator
@rikyrah: I can’t stand this. The actions of these cops, including their lies about their behavior, is reprehensible. But who are these fools calling the police who seem incapable of recognizing a serious situation from everyday life?
mclaren
@gene108:
Now, that’s a fair criticism of my points. I have been emphasizing Hillary’s far-right early politics, but there’s more to her than that. That’s one of the reasons I find her campaign salutary and encouraging. She has taken a number of different positions over the years, maybe because of the prevailing political currents at the time. The prevailing currents in American politics right now are definitely populist and progressive.
Brachiator
@David Koch: The link you provided doesn’t seem to showcase anyone from the energized base. It seems more the typical entitled fool who lives a comfortable life and who would not be terribly inconvenienced if a Republican won.
mclaren
@Brachiator:
Let’s see…
Out-of-control Wall Street greed and corruption…corporations running roughshod over the average person…America sending gunboats to foreign countries on the other side of the world and getting involved with internal wars where we have no business…advocacy even on the part of allegedly centrist Democrats of business deregulation…critics warning that a giant economic collapse is coming, but no one pays attention…
Yep, sounds like we’re all stuck smack dab in the middle of a replay of the 1920s in America today.
Brachiator
@mclaren: Sorry, you’re not stuck in the 1920s. You’re stuck in the Gilded Age.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
You and the DNC, according to an email from earlier today!
ruemara
@rikyrah: So instead of asking the “afraid” man, “Evening sir, how are you. Is everything ok? We had reports of a man who seemed to be lost.” They threw him to the ground and arrested him. Fucking morons.
SiubhanDuinne
@srv:
Yeah. Gotta say, I really hate hate hate everything about that logo.
SiubhanDuinne
@lol:
Webb has an exploratory going, but AFAIK he hasn’t yet declared officially.
Brachiator
@ruemara: And why, exactly, was he being handcuffed and arrested? This stuff is insane.
Brachiator
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude): What is the unmentionable? Go ahead, you can mention it, and the monster hiding in plain sight.
TBDL79
@mclaren:
Yeah, no change under Obama at all.
A functioning near universal health care system providing coverage to over 30 million people (15 million of which never had it), the existence of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, gay marriage soon to be legal throughout the whole country, Don’t Ask Don’t tell repealed, marijuana legal in several states, student loan reform (REPAYE, which caps monthly payments at 10%, covers half of unpaid interest each month etc), the most meaningful moves ever on global warming, Syria disarmed of their chemical weapons without a war, Iran soon to be disarmed of their nuclear weapon capabilities without a war, starting up normalized diplomatic relations with Cuba, the auto industry rescued from oblivion, the economy going from loosing 800,000 jobs per month, to gaining over 200,000 per month, the DOW tripling in value, had a bullet put in Bin Laden’s eye, passed the “Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill, the “Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” and the first complete food overhaul of our food safety laws in 70 years, and the largest land conservation bill in 25 years.
This stuff was in the news. It actually happened. But bonus points for being pretentious enough to use the word “putsch”.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
These “fools” are the remaining hateful racists who never see a black person without “knowing” that said black person is either fleeing from a horrific crime they just committed, or heading towards a horrific crime they plan to commit. So they call the cops to execute a 12-y-o kid with a toy gun. Or a guy shopping at Wal-Mart for a present for a kid.
I’m pretty disgusted with bad cops and racist pigs calling cops on little kids and ordinary guys who were the wrong color for the pig’s neighborhood. The wrong people are getting shot.
I’ve read this whole thread, and there are nuggets of gold in amongst the trash.
Tuition costs and loan rates don’t make much difference when there are no jobs for graduates. If you get good jobs and make a good salary, you can afford to pay back those terrible loans. If you can’t get a good job, doesn’t matter. They can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, nor find a homeless person to make them pay their student loans.
The middle class can get by and do well with blue-collar jobs, if there are plenty of openings at union-scale wages. If there were thousands of jobs crying for equipment operators on construction sites, those guys would all be middle-class. If there were thousands of jobs building high-speed trains, all those folks would be middle-class. If we were building the needed sewer systems, water systems, and high-speed broadband Internet systems, all those people would be middle-class!
What we need to do is borrow to invest in our future, building homes, factories, roads and sewers, trains and cleaning up the environment, and paying wages that land all those workers smack in the middle-class income brackets.
We should set the interest rates right where they are now, borrow a few trillion dollars at the current interest rates (somewhere between zero and 1% !! ) and spend that money on wages, union wages for union workers doing high-level work worth doing.
And we need to set up realistic methods to provide for future spending to maintain all the new things we build. People in Europe go to school in buildings a thousand years old, and here we need to build a new school house after 40 or 50 years, because even a well designed and built school can’t last very long with no maintenance.
I can vote for anyone who makes a believable promise to do just that – build new infrastructure, and keep it in shape!
I have made political contributions to candidates, gone to town to make phone calls for candidates, and now I get phone calls from someone calling for Nancy Pelosi, the Dem Governors group, Obama’s group, etc, etc. I’m telling all of them no dice.
I finally had to hang up on a nice sounding girl with a script from hell, who wasn’t listening for verbal cues from the person she was talking to, I felt rude, but I wasn’t going to make a contribution, and I was wasting her time allowing her to talk to someone who wasn’t going to make a contribution.
I have had good short talks with phone workers after telling them I was behind them, understood how hard the work was, couldn’t make a financial gift, but wanted to tell them, good job, keep up the hard work, eventually I will be out there again, making calls or stuffing envelopes or whatever the managers think will help.
But not right now. Nearer the election, maybe when politics locally starts up again, but not right now.
mclaren, get over yourself. ’nuff said.
rikyrah
@Keith G:
Only White people can say this.
If you were Black, living under the Police State known as Jim Crow America,
opposition to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were downright evil.
rikyrah
Florida Walmart calls police on black customers for shopping too slow
June 13, 2015 at 11:10 AM
A Walmart in Pensacola Florida in under fire after video surfaced of the police being called on some shoppers who were doing nothing wrong.
When the police showed up, they became aggressive with the shoppers, who were African-American, and asked them to leave. When the group tried to finish up their shopping before they got out, the police thought they were taking too long to leave and arrested one of them.
What’s more, this incident comes on the heels of another recent Walmart video, this one involving two white women.
In the video, two women came to blows, brawling in the aisle of a Walmart as one woman’s 6-year-old son gets involved and begins throwing shampoo. In stark contrast to the Florida shoppers, these women were not arrested and were in fact gone by the time police arrived. Their descriptions were not taken down by security, either.
https://youtu.be/jIcOJp0PzRE
http://thegrio.com/2015/06/13/florida-walmart-calls-police-on-black-customers-for-shopping-too-slow/
Brachiator
@J R in WV: Lots of good points. I am on the road now and can’t respond more. Just a note though that government spending on infrastructure is a start, but only a part of the solution. Even during the age of FDR works projects put men to work, but didn’t do as much for women. Society and the economy has changed much since then.
redshirt
I can’t wait to vote for the Hill Dawgz, yo.
Word.
Arclite
This. 1000 x this. 1,000,000 x THIS.
hitchhiker
@Germy Shoemangler:
Thanks for that link. Things like that take a little of the “dynasty” air out of the balloon. She was nobody when she got to Wellesley. It’s true that some of her opportunities came from being Mrs. Bill, but by no means all of them . . . and there’s no way to know what she’d have done if they’d never met.
Compare to the pedigree sported by Jeb, and the accomplishments in his own right that qualify him to be crowned.
fuckwit
@hitchhiker: It’s altogether possible that a lot of Bill’s opportunities came from being Mr. Hilary. She may have had more influence on his career and policies than we know (though the VRWC certainly thought they knew… and were howling with rage about it).
Peter
@mclaren: People think you belong in a rubber room because your insane ramblings bear almost no resemblance to reality, let alone proportionality.
jl
@Davis X. Machina: @gene108:
Good news that HRC is getting advice from Stiglitz. Like Krugman, he has changed his views away from being center-left Washington Consensus economist on many issues as strong evidence has arrived that disproves many of its tenants.
Stigliz has an interesting history (this is a repeat of a comment some time ago). Started in development economics and noted that some strange facts of labor markets existed in developed world with labor market regulations, and also in developing economies with exactly zero regulations Why? These facts could not be explained by neoclassical markets with perfect competition, and strange labor market behavior in developed countries was therefore blamed on pesky regulations.
I think up to 90s Stiglits figured that highly developed financial markets would act more like neoclassical theory said they should. But he turned his attention to bank lending and applied same ideas he developed to explain why same ‘odd’ things happened in regulated and unregulated labor markets. And Stiglitz began to find oddities in financial markets.
So, Stiglitz has been slowly applying the same insights he first had, mainly problems from asymmetric information, to more and more areas of economics. And he claims he can use theory to explain some insights of Adam Smith that sound like they are coming out of the mouth of Warren or Sanders.
So, economics is a poor excuse for a science, but many smart people do try hard to get it right. Most economist view themselves as too much practical men of affairs to do methodology (one place they do not try to ape the physics they idolize in other ways), so on some fronts they don’t know what they are doing and are not very interested in trying hard to figure it out. And economic systems can change very rapidly.
The last 12 years or so have been a huge and obviously very risky economic experiment for the whole world. No intellectual crime in getting some of it wrong 20 years ago. But I think it is a serious intellectual crime not to even try to learn from the experiments we are forced to endure. So, let us see what HRC with Stiglitz and like minded economists can come up with on policies.
I heard some snippits from HRC speech and the delivery put me off. So was not in a good mood about HRC when I read it, but I thought it was pretty good. it is a start. Let’s see how she follows up.
Krugman says in his NTY column today that he got some purported background ;’real dope’, on why Obama is pushing TPP so hard. He says it is not the economics at all, but all about geopolitical strategic positioning. So, Krugman is not ready to dismiss TPP on that basis. But, I am. There is one bunch I have a lower opinion of than the average economist, is the strategic geopolitical BS artists.
Applejinx
Hillary Clinton gets my vote only if she sounds like Sanders and I can’t make Sanders be the Democratic nominee.
Which I’d prefer, ‘cos Sanders can peel off some of the teahadi crowd because he is old, white, male and means everything he says. He is not fooling and he is prepared to not just ‘triangulate’, he’ll tell you no if you are demanding something he won’t go along with. I was twenty feet from the guy when he took a question about whether he’d support term limits, and he gave it a big clear nope, on the grounds that lobbyists will still be there and will train all the newcomers. I believe him on that. More importantly, he was plausible on the matter.
I gotta get to bailing my life out just enough that I can make time to go work for Sanders (back in the day, partly due to Balloon Juice pressure, I physically went and volunteered at Obama campaign offices, and it was great and we did win). I don’t know if Bernie has offices yet but let’s start some. Clearly being asked for money isn’t enough and you only pull off the crazy upset victories when people go out and physically do campaigning stuff.
The Dems only ask me for money, ever. But I see some of the same energy behind the Sanders campaign that worked twice for Obama. Maybe it’s the outrageousness of seriously proposing to elect a socialist President so he can hack American capitalism just enough that we don’t all freaking die? I don’t think anybody else is gonna do it in time. Overton window and all. We basically have to kick the Overton window on economic issues, and climate issues, because we have no time anymore.
Do more than throw money at Bernie (which I’ve already done).
And I will only vote for Hillary Clinton if she reads the tea leaves and BECOMES a faux Bernie. Not just postures, but figures this stuff out, gets the nomination and makes Bernie and Elizabeth Warren her new BFFs and policy gurus. It’s not impossible, Hil’s as much of a pol as Bill was, she’s about as principled as Ted Cruz. The difference is, Cruz is deeply nihilistic. It’s possible to do good because one knows it will play well with the base.
Let’s get out there and redefine ‘the base’, and then if we do end up pulling the lever for Clinton it won’t be a suicidal act. It’s okay to hit the on button on the old machine if you’ve had the luxury of reprogramming it, and woot, female Prez, about time.
AxelFoley
@TBDL79:
BOOM!
But just so you know, this will fall on deaf ears (and not only mclaren’s).
Either way, great post.
TerryC
@mclaren: I started out as a Goldwater Republican, too. It was, like, high school, man :)
samiam
I figured I should watch this because if ‘Hillary has cooties’ Cole thought it was ok then it must have been pretty good.
I was impressed. Pitch perfect I would say. Hopefully this sets the tone for the rest of her campaign. So far it looks like she is being well advised and has some good writers.
The Beatles “Yesterday” reference was pure genius.
Davis X. Machina
@AxelFoley: No public option, though…
I mean, it is the most important issue facing us in this, the second decade of the 21st century.
Lose-friends important. Not-vote important.
It was, anyways. Maybe it isn’t any more. I’m not on the internet that often.
Davis X. Machina
@Applejinx:
I’m not sure how to become black. Or a woman. And I’m not willing to drop my income to under $35,000.
John
“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.”
The problem with this statement is that it’s not the CEOs and hedge fund managers and billionaires and corporations that get fucked by this kind of initiative. They’ve got huge amounts of money to spare and paying a bit more in taxes isn’t going to kill them. The people that get well and truly fucked by all this populism are the reasonably well paid hard working urban professionals and the successful self-employed who get tax hikes on the substantial, but not obscene, incomes they are killing themselves for. All without any discernible benefits.
Screw all of you, I’m voting Republican next time.