I’m not saying that DLC documents aren’t historically significant. I’m not saying that they don’t belong in the Clinton Library. I’m just saying that the fact that the Clinton Library bought up all the DLC documents so that the DLC would have the money to pay off its debts and close up shop confirms a few things I had to say back in 2008. Namely, that the Clintons were, at heart, synonymous with the DLC, and that their ideology was dead and their time over.
In fairness to Bill and Hillary Clinton, I have revised my opinion of their terms in the White House in a favorable direction since witnessing Obama’s challenges in office. I am modestly less unimpressed with their performance than I used to be. This is primarily a result of my gaining a richer appreciation for process issues and the ways that the media, divisions within the Democratic Party, and (especially) Congressional rules make it difficult for any Democrat to effect progressive change.
Having said that, the biggest difference between Obama, on one side, and the DLC and the Clintons, on the other, is that the DLC and the Clintons set out to move the party to the right, while Obama has no such agenda. Obama has also had much more success on health care and gay rights, both of which bedeviled President Clinton during his first two years in office.
That’s really the key difference.
Clinton was a centrist because he wanted to be a centrist. He loves him some Big Money. And he had an overt neoliberal agenda. That’s where he saw the future.
Obama’s a centrist because our politics and institutions are hyperpolarized and deadlocked. He leads from behind and stays within range of the broader room at all times, covertly moving things to the left when possible.
I’m not so sure I agree with this anymore:
I used to think that, which is why I supported Obama after I had no choice (being a Mike Gravel supporter and whatnot). But this debt ceiling shit has made me rethink that.
Either Obama is hopelessly naive beyond belief — which could be true, but given his intelligence I cannot accept it. Or he’s exactly like them.
I’ve come to believe that Obama truly believes this nonsense himself.
I thought that Democrats were supposed to intelligent? I really don’t think that it’s fringe to believe that something must be done about the debt (because really, all politics aside, it is a catastrophe waiting to happen, no matter what or who caused it). You never quote the many times he says that it should be done with a scalpel and done smartly so you don’t lose the investment in the future. That’s what he really believes in.
That isn’t a winning message or a coherent message. “We need to cut spending, but keep spending here and here.”
It’s a loser’s argument. And I’m tired of him adopting their framing.
agreed, seabe. Moreover, it’s a total bullshit frame because guess what? FAMILIES RARELY LIVE WITHIN THEIR MEANS.
Case in point: my home equity loan years ago helped me buy a new car i couldn’t afford and consolidate some debt. Refinancing my house and taking money out helped me finally fix my porch roof, do the paint, and install hardwood floors, increasing the value of my house. Sometimes i use my credit card to buy groceries or gas i need today, especially if I can pay the credit card off at the end of the month.
The list goes on and on. Families deficit spend ALL THE TIME. Both parties know this: I expect the GOP to lie about it (they hate families, after all), but to see Democrats pick up the same lie? SHAME.
Are you kidding? Only rich kids who can pay cash for their college education are allowed to attend college. Families simply don’t take out loans for college.
These loans are figments of our imagination.
I really don’t think “living within your means” means what you think it does. Living within your means doesn’t mean that you don’t take on any debt; it’s that you don’t take on any unmanageable debt.
Except that when right-wingers use the “living with your means” frame with the US government, they mean what brendan says.
We have a national debt of $14 trillion. We have a yearly GDP of $14 trillion. Yeah that’s not so good, but have you ever bought a house? And did you spend more on your house than you make in a year? If so then the analogy to personal finance is that you are a horrible terrible person because how can you afford that?
The problem is that the analogy to personal finance is A HORRIBLE FUCKING ANALOGY THAT MAKES NO SENSE FOR A NATION. It’s a terrible analogy and people should stop using it because it leads TO FUCKING NONSENSICAL FAULTY REASONING.
And yeah I’m yelling here because it’s a really, really fucking useless analogy. Completely awful. And yet it strikes that “it’s just plain common sense”[] chord that resonates with people and leads to them electing Ronald Reagan president.
[
] “just plain common sense” is what tells you that the Earth is flat and that lower taxes on rich people will lead to more money for the middle class.
Do you write a blog? I’d love to read it.
It seems to me (not an economist!) that Obama is getting at the relation between the cost of government borrowing and the debt burden. I imagine that if the debt burden is too large it becomes more expensive to borrow. (Thats what happens to families in debt, anyway). So, “confidence” matters, and keeping the debt burden down also matters in this sense. WHat the correct level should be though, I have no idea.
Certainly, if we default , it will cost the government vastly more to borrow, which will be a huge drag on the economy. That’s why Greece really does need to pay off its banksters, like it or not. They screw themselves in terms of future borrowing if they just default, which some commenters advise.
Current cost of borrowing for the US is 3%. Most of the money that private US investors have put in there is recycled from the trillions that the Fed has released into the money supply in hopes that it would go into expansion of the economy. That says that the estimated ROI of most real investment in plant and equipment and operating capital is less than 3%.
A 3% rate doubles in 24 years. Given the 14th amendment guarantee of the good faith and credit of the US government, how high do you think a D (S&P) or a Aa (Moody’s) rating will shove up the interest rate?
There is a progressive criticism of chronic debt. It is that it represents a real transfer of money $300 billion or so a year from average taxpayers (mostly middle class, broadly drawn) to those who can afford the size of investments that T-bills are (mostly affluent). And that is reverse Robin Hood (dooH niboR) economics. But we can deal with that after we get folks back to work. The current debt crisis isn’t a crisis. Doing absolutely nothing but drawing down troops from Afghanistan and Iraq on schedule, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and the Medicare providers cuts to take effect ends the deficit immediately.
“A 3% rate doubles in 24 years. Given the 14th amendment guarantee of the good faith and credit of the US government, how high do you think a D (S&P) or a Aa (Moody’s) rating will shove up the interest rate?”
I have no idea! If the rate doubled, that would be a pretty massive hit on the budget, but I don’t know if that is realistic. I get the Keynesian argument for deficit spending in a recession, but there is a trade off in terms of increased borrowing cost. I agree that the current level of debt is probably not a “crisis” as the right would have us accept, but I am a numbers person and have not seen anyone lay out the argument as to where the “sweet spot” is.
What the 24-year number means is that the principal amount doubles under compound interest at 3% over 24 years. It’s a rule of thumb called the rule of 72’s.
So if you are evaluating a mortgage, a 6% mortgage causes your total amount to double in 15 years.
But the situation is that without a temporary stimulus, demand never cranks up the economy to get tax revenues back on track without raising tax rates. Even if the interest rate for two years is 12% (doubles principal in 6 years), the tax revenues generated from growth would probably create a surplus (as long as there were no other wars), which would begin to compound and quickly cause the interest rate to drop again. Whereas limping along without surpluses for a quarter century would double the debt and never be fully paid off.
The sweet spot is when there is around $2 trillion more demand in the economy. Now that does not all have to come from government. But there are only four sources: personal consumption (which is hampered by massive unemployment and wage freezes), business investment (which is waiting for demand and holding $1.4 trillion in cash), government spending (on goods, services, and salaries but not on tax cuts and interest), or an improved balance of trade (increased exports and reduced imports). I’ll let you figure out how likely the US is to have a $1 trillion positive balance of trade. Of the others, only government has the current ability to spend — and it’s not doing it. A $1.5 trillion infrastructure, education, and research fund and whatever it takes to backfill state budget deficits would be the way to go. It would be slightly less than what should have been done in 2009. And looking to recapture that through income taxes or financial transaction taxes when the employment figures are nominally 4%. As well as mapping out a repayment plan from the states. Say in the 2018 timeframe might prevent another bubble economy–and move to rapidly paying down the debt. That is, get us back on the path that Gore was going to extend had he been elected.
How high will a Aa (Moody’s) rate shove up interest rates on federal T-bills? It’s hard to say; a lot of states and cities successfully borrowed with Aa ratings and then were able to improve their scores. But that was before the meltdown. S&P’s rating is that of a junk bond–it has rated Portugal with that rating already and is trying to scuttle the EU agreement with Greece. It seems to want to make third-party betters on default whole. In the US, I see the S&P threat is part of GOP political pressure on the President and not a reflection of the bond market.
Obama is a DLC’er too. I don’t know why people don’t want to admit that. He hired Rahmbo and Daley after all. He was the one who let Baucus control HCR in the Senate. Look at the debt nonsense. Remember, he let Bob Rubin hang around before he got too toxic to be seen together in public.
And yet, Boo, how do explain the fact that the same people that hated Clinton then now think he was the paragon of liberal virtue and that Obama is the biggest sellout ever?
The past is always more glorious than the present? I wish the internet existed as strongly in 1996 as it does now. Would have loved to read some of those opinions.
Fucking internet crybabies think history began only ten years ago, that’s all it is.
Riddle me this, has Obama had a campaign directed from his left that could draw almost 3% of the nationwide vote in a presidential election?
What was that? No? No third party insurrection? Hmm? Well, but I bet all those racist white liberals loved Clinton, right?
What?! No?! You’re saying Clinton had lower favorable ratings among self-described liberals and Democrats than Obama? That so much of his electoral strength came from independents? And that he never even won a national majority in either election?
Well, shoot. Impossible, I’m sure there’s some sort of hideously unfair racial conspiracy out there. The numbers are clearly lying. Reading the internets told me so.
By the way, have you heard of a blog called firedoglake? I hear they control the universe…
They must. They are cited as an example of something on a whole lot of other blogs. They’re the new Huffington Post, now that Arianna cashed out.
ROTFLMAO
There is an assumption that the party was not there on January 2009. Given the number of Heath Shuler types and Kent Conrads in the party, Obama didn’t have to work very hard to shift the party to the right. They had already done that in the thirty years since Ronald Reagan. Financial contribution spoke stronger than any “leader of the party”.
Why did he work at it at all? This is the President who promised “fundamental change”. How many of us knew that the fundamental change was for a Democratic President to throw EFCA, Universal Health Care, SS and Medicare under the bus?
I’m not sure that he did work at it. EFCA was a hard sell to a lot of Democrats in Congress (hell, anything that labor wants is a hard sell). Baucus and Conrad dictated the shape of health care reform (and Conrad held it hostage to get a catfood commission). And it remains to be seen whether Obama has thrown Social Security and Medicare under the bus (or whether that is the sentiment among some fraidy cats among Congressional Democrats). Rhetorically, it’s a good position to be in if you are portraying the GOP as irresponsible.
Check back with me in October as to whether I think he threw those under the bus; I have a definite personal stake in both of those.
We have gotten fundamental change. Labor union members are clear what the GOP stands for (and if they didn’t, Joe Biden just told them). State employees who voted Republican in 2010 have gotten a shock. The effect of the passage of the not-as-yet implemented DADT repeal emboldened some legislators to move harder at the state level to pass marriage rights legislation. People are noticing that it isn’t a federal government problem; it’s a GOP elected official problem. More people are clear now that the problem transcends parties and goes to lobbying and the financing of campaigns. People understand that the issue is fundamental change in a way that they didn’t in 2008 in which fundamental change looked like just getting a Democratic President.
The Congress and the state legislatures are what the 2012 election will be about. If those get taken care of, we will be able to see by 2016 what Obama’s real agenda is. If they don’t, we’ll never know.
Just remember that the campaign slogan was “Yes we can.” And that’s still true, except now it’s “Yes we must.” If progressivism is a grassroots movement, the grassroots must be the ones to move. You can’t substitute executive orders of the President for that. The Tea Party should have brought an immediate and strong grassroots progressive response. It didn’t. Maybe this time we’ll get smart and worry more about how to turn out a movement that goes beyond 2013.
But we need us a Big Daddy. Haven’t we always in the brave “progressive” movement. Without FDR, LBJ, SOB where would we be?
Those “big daddies” represented the victory of the progressive movement. The progressive movement drove their agenda because it was electorally critical and could vote for Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas at the next election (and did). Those were the times when even conservatives were trying to wrap themselves in the “progressive” label. Try “progressive executives”.
But it started with a bunch of uppity women, a few preachers, an ambitious prosecutor or two, and a few muckraking journalists all concerned about corruption in government (generally dealing with brothels and liquor). And with the socialist-driven labor movement in all its different forms from the monopolistic union (IWW), radical industrial unions (later the CIO), and moderate and accommodating craft unions (Gompers’s AFL). And those started way back with a bunch of uppity girls out of the Lowell Textile Mill in Massaschusetts.
They didn’t wait for big daddy.
I guess the left is just as capable as the right in wishing for the strong man father figure leader on the white horse to come save us, and to govern in extra-constitutional ends-justify-means ways if that’s what it takes. Because when you wish for a Big Daddy type of strongman, you risk ending up with a dictator or what passes for same in our system.
As for progressive big daddies of the past, I have my doubts about FDR, who showed in 1937 with his unforced and disastrous Hooveresque economic policies that he was not quite the great liberal savior some then (and now) thought he was. And LBJ — it’s laughable to call him a “progressive”. Signed some liberal legislation, yes, he would have been in serious trouble from the Kennedy liberal wing of the party so soon after Dallas had he not done so. He showed his true conservative/reactionary macho TXan stripes soon enough in 1965 as he started his unnecessary war, then lied about it.
We don’t need a “big daddy”, certainly not the one crook you mention. We do need strong leaders committed to a liberal Dem philosophy, who don’t need constant prompting from the base and from activists storming the barricades to do what is right.
I suggest the last true liberal prez, JFK, is our model — except for the very dicey CR movement (where he did finally act, boldly), Kennedy didn’t wait for sufficient discontent to arise in the party’s base that his inaction or excessive moderation on a pressing issue was continually becoming an issue in itself, as with Obama today. He simply went about trying to do the right thing, even if it royally ticked off the Pentagon and CIA and nat’l security establishment, and, as with the CR bill of 1963, even if it would cost him politically.
I think you have a Kennedy complex or something, because most Civil Rights leaders at the time certainly didn’t see it that way.
I’d say Kennedy is to Civil Rights as Obama is to gay rights. He governs over a change as activists push around the country where it needs to be.
Not sure what you mean by “most CR leaders didn’t see it that way”. JFK’s bill was endorsed by the major leaders of the mainstream groups, including MLK and the SCLC, iirc. Which ones rejected it?
And it was a very substantive and historic bill, with enforcement teeth, unlike the soft for-show 1957 bill. Not sure if Obama on gay rights comes close to that — beginning to put DADT to rest, finally, and only well into his presidency, is only a moderate, delayed move affecting a narrow slice of the public in one area. Nothing approaching the sweeping changes in society contemplated by JFK’s 1963 bill. JFK also acted boldly the year before he was up for reelect — and at a time when CR was hardly a slam-dunk favorite with the public, let alone the Congress.
But it wasn’t just CR — also on matters of war, Kennedy acting boldly to stymie efforts by the JCS and CIA to get us deeply involved militarily in SEAsia. Then he rejected their advice again, wisely, during the missile crisis. He also acted against their wishes after that as he sought a Test Ban Treaty and détente with the Soviets — the military brass and CIA and most of the nat’l security complex were against all such measures.
There’s nothing wrong with reminding liberals that they don’t have to go back all the way to FDR (or make the mistake of invoking anti-liberal, reactionary warmonger LBJ) to find a strong liberal president. And Kennedy was, I’d suggest, more consistent in governing as a liberal than FDR was. Probably because he was one.
In 1992, the conventional wisdom–yeah, we now know where that comes from–was that the Democratic Party could not survive as a liberal party. Or at least win the Presidency. I’m not sure that that conventional wisdom has changed. A part of that conventional wisdom is the observation of how much money is in politics and where it comes from. Another part is that that same money affects the conventional wisdom. Whatever their personal inclinations, the Clintons and Obama have decided not to directly buck the conventional wisdom. Republicans, threatened by this incursion on their turf doubled down in the 1990s, under Newt Gingrich, and they have doubled down again under John Boehner (or is it really Eric Cantor – who leads the House GOP anyway?).
There is a reason that some folks in Arkansas did not like the Clintons, and it’s not that they were wheeler-dealers or that they were too liberal. They did not like the fact that the kinds of Southern Democrats that Clinton hung out with were intent on ending the legacy of segregation and willing to raise taxes to do it. That made them look “progressive”, especially as “progressive” in the South came to mean improving education and building roads in order to get businesses to relocate there. These “progressive” governors — James Byrnes, Fritz Hollings, Robert McNair, John West, Richard Riley of SC, Carter in GA, Luther Hodges, Terry Sanford, Jim Hunt of NC, Clinton in AR, and the last term of George Wallace of AL, forced the GOP for a while to try to be “progressive” conservatives — most notably Lamar Alexander in his terms as governor of TN (1979-1987). Al Gore got elected first to Congress and then as Senator from TN based on this same “progressive” platform.
There is and always was a large dose of corporatism in these “progressive” politicians from the South, more and more pronounced the further you got from 1900. Or by another measure, more pronounced the further you got from the New Deal.
It was Newt Gingrich’s objective to kill this sort of Southern “progressive”. He has succeeded. If Democrats are to re-establish themselves in the South, they must distance themselves from corporatism. The GOP now has a lock on that, the conservative Democrats of 1876 no longer exist. In fact the Southern GOP looks very much like U.S. Grant’s GOP–without the abolitionists.
I understand how Bill Clinton shifted from what he wanted to become, a Southern JFK, to what he became. If you’ve watched “idealistic dreams” “mature”, you know exactly what happened.
Fail:
http://www.frumforum.com/obama-calls-for-lopsided-negotiations
The Republicans still have to be the last ones to say “No” for Obama to win this fight. But they can’t say “Yes” without looking like they capitulated to Obama.
They either look like they are raising taxes or they are the ones responsible for blowing by the debt ceiling. Once they’ve “raised taxes”, they’re no longer tax virgins.