“Completely Ridiculous Fear-Mongering”: Stop With The Zombie Lies: No, Social Security Is Not ‘Going Broke’
Even though last night’s Republican debate featured precious little discussion of the size of the candidates’ hands, there was plenty to be disappointed and angered by. The moment that perturbed me the most was when CNN’s Dana Bash, who ought to know better, said that “Social Security is projected to run out of money within 20 years.”
The discussion about America’s most successful and beloved social program had some interesting implications for the general election. But before we get to that, I need to say this slowly and clearly, so there’s no misunderstanding:
Social Security is not going to “run out of money.”
The idea that the program is going to “run out of money” or is “going broke” is a zombie lie, one that deserves to have its head lopped off with a quick slice of Michonne’s katana.
We’re going to have to get a little wonky for a bit, but I’ll try to make this as painless as possible. The short version: under the worst-case scenario, meaning that a poor economy in coming years deprives the system of money and no changes to the program’s financing are made, then Social Security recipients will find themselves getting smaller checks than they ought to. And that would be a bad thing — if you rely on Social Security as your main or only source of income, it would be terrible to get only 77 percent of what you should (I’ll reveal why I’m using that number in a moment).
But if the program were only able to deliver 77 percent of its benefits, it would not be “broke” or have “run out of money.” When the entitlement doomsayers use those words, they want everyone to believe that the program will be, well, broke, which would mean it would be able to pay nothing to the recipients. And that’s a lie.
Let’s remind ourselves how this program works. Workers pay Social Security taxes, which are then distributed to today’s recipients as benefits. But when the taxes (and the interest the program earns on the bonds it holds) exceed the benefits, what’s left over goes into a trust fund, commonly known as the “Social Security surplus.” According to the latest report from the Social Security Trustees, in 2014 the program took in $769 billion and paid out $714 billion. The extra $55 billion went into the trust fund, which at the end of that year contained $2.729 trillion.
We’re going to need the trust fund, because the very large Baby Boom generation has just started to retire, meaning more people are going to be drawing benefits. The Trustees’ projections say that starting in 2020, the program will take in less than it’s paying out, and the trust fund will be exhausted in 2035.
Now this is important: the whole point of the trust fund is to be there when that year’s taxes aren’t enough to pay that year’s benefits. When we take money out of the trust fund, it isn’t some kind of crisis, it’s the system working as it was intended.
But won’t the system be “broke” in 2035? No. Under these projections, in 2035 we’d only be paying out to recipients what we take in through taxes. At that point, recipients would get paid only 77 percent of their promised benefits.
As I said, this would be a very bad thing. But is it going to happen? It’s important to remember that the trustees make projections, so there’s a good deal of uncertainty around the numbers. It all depends on what kinds of assumptions you make about the future, particularly on what you think the economy will look like. If the economy is stronger, that means more tax revenue coming in, and the program can pay more benefits; if the economy is weaker, the program has more challenges.
Because of that uncertainty, the Trustees actually make three sets of projections, what they call high-cost, low-cost, and intermediate. It’s the intermediate one that everyone reports, and that’s where the date of 2035 and the figure of 77 percent of benefits come from. Without going too deeply into it, everything depends on how optimistic or pessimistic you want to be about America’s economic future, in terms of things like economic growth, productivity growth, and unemployment. Many people argue that the Trustees are unduly pessimistic about the future, and the most realistic projection is not the intermediate one but the one they call low-cost. And under that projection, the surplus never runs out, and we have plenty of funds to pay all benefits essentially forever, or at least for the next 75 years, which is how far out they attempt to project.
We aren’t going to settle that right now, but there’s an important piece of this to understand, which is that here in Washington, the opinion of Very Serious People is that Social Security is headed for disaster (along with Medicare, which is its own story), and the only thing to do is to either make people wait longer until they retire or cut their benefits. Indeed, proclaiming that you want to do one of those two things (or both) is in some circles how you demonstrate that you’re Very Serious about this issue. There is an entire mini-industry of think-tanks and advocates devoted to convincing lawmakers and the public that entitlements are a disaster in the making, so we need to cut them.
But there are other ways you could solve the problem, if it indeed turns out to be a problem. You could increase the cap on Social Security taxes — right now you only pay them on the first $118,500 of your income, which means that someone earning below that pays 6.2 percent of their income in Social Security taxes, while a hedge fund manager making $11.8 million pays only .062 percent of his income. You could also increase the tax itself, say by a tenth of a percent per year over ten years, which people would find imperceptible. In other words, you could maintain (or even increase) benefits by bringing in more money.
In last night’s debate, Marco Rubio said: “Social Security will go bankrupt and it will bankrupt the country with it.” This is the kind of completely ridiculous fear-mongering that gets you rounds of applause from those who want to cut the program. He then explained that he wants to raise the retirement age from 66 to 70 and reduce benefits (but of course, he says these things will happen in the future and not affect current retirees, who vote in such high numbers and are rather protective of their benefits). Ted Cruz said that he wants to slow the rate of growth in benefits (they’re adjusted for the cost of living) and convert some part of them to stock market accounts. But it’s what Donald Trump said that’s genuinely interesting:
“The Democrats are doing nothing with Social Security. They’re leaving it the way it is. In fact, they want to increase it. They want to actually give more. And that’s what we’re up against. And whether we like it or not, that is what we’re up against.
“I will do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is; to make this country rich again; to bring back our jobs; to get rid of deficits; to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse, which is rampant in this country, rampant, totally rampant. And it’s my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age and to leave it as is.
“You have 22 years, you have a long time to go. It’s not long in terms of what we’re talking about, but it’s still a long time to go, and I want to leave Social Security as is, I want to make our country rich again so we can afford it.”
Strip away all the Trumpian bluster, and what you have is 1) a pledge not to cut benefits or raise the retirement age; and 2) the assurance that the program’s cost will be covered because the economy will perform well. Trump sounds an awful lot like…a liberal!
When Trump says, “that’s what we’re up against,” he seems to be saying that because the Democrats want to increase benefits, they’ll be able to present themselves as the program’s protectors and criticize Republicans for trying to undermine it (unless he’s the nominee). And about that, he’s right. Democrats will do that, because that’s what they almost always do. It’s usually an effective attack, both because Americans love Social Security, and because it’s true.
So how does Trump compare to the Democrats, and what is the debate on this issue in the general election going to look like? Bernie Sanders’ position is that benefits should be expanded, particularly since so many Americans lack retirement savings. He has proposed keeping the cap, but having the tax kick in again above $250,000, essentially inserting a “doughnut hole” in the tax; he has also suggested applying the tax to wealthy households’ investment income, and not just wages as it is now. Hillary Clinton has a similar, though less detailed, position: she rules out increasing the retirement age or cutting benefits, and wants to raise the cap to some unspecified level in order to increase some benefits.
Trump has broken with Republican orthodoxy in a few areas where Republican orthodoxy is deeply unpopular, and this is one of them. He probably has the political calculation right: it will be hard for Clinton or Sanders to go after him on Social Security when he’s pledging to protect it without any changes. They’re not going to move to his right on the issue, and while they’ve staked out a position somewhat to his left, he’ll be offering much the same result, without having to pay for it. A tax increase, he’ll say, won’t be necessary because when I’m president gold will practically fall from the sky.
Is that going to work? Frankly, I suspect it will, at least in taking Social Security off the table as an issue of contention between the two party nominees. But don’t worry — the Democrats will have plenty of other things to criticize him for.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, March 11, 2016
“Think Beyond The Moment”: What Sanders — And His Supporters — Must Remember Before November
Exactly one year before Election Day – on November 8, 2015 – Bernie Sanders was asked whether his agreement with Hillary Clinton on basic issues outweighed the conflicts that he proclaimed at every campaign appearance.
Speaking on television rather than on the stump, the Vermont senator conceded reluctantly that he and Clinton concur on some issues. But then he added an entirely gratuitous endorsement:
“And by the way, on her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and President than the Republican candidate on his bestday.”
That moment of reassuring reason is worth remembering as the debate becomes more rancorous. Clinton isn’t foreordained to win the Democratic nomination, so Sanders neither will nor should hesitate to emphasize their differences.
So far, in fact, his challenge has improved both her candidacy and the national discourse. It is healthy for Democrats to argue about the best ways to ensure more good jobs, higher wages, universal health care, affordable higher education, paid family leave, immigration reform, national security, and a clean energy future.
But the overwrought reaction of some Sanders supporters – who already insist they cannot imagine voting for Clinton because of her campaign donors, her paid speeches, her vote on Iraq, or her support for some of her husband’s policies two decades ago – evokes bad memories of another, truly disastrous presidential campaign.
It is no accident, as they say, that those who “feel the Bern” today include prominent supporters of Ralph Nader’s independent presidential campaign in 2000. Their urge to overthrow the mundane, demand the utopian, reject grubby compromise, and assert moral purity is as powerful today as four cycles ago; and perhaps even more so, especially among those who feel somehow “disappointed” by President Obama. But political decisions based solely on such emotional considerations can prove terribly costly to our country and the world – as we discovered when George W. Bush usurped Al Gore.
Nader and his supporters were not responsible alone for the appalling outcome of the 2000 election but – along with the Supreme Court majority and Gore himself — they bear a substantial share of blame. Their defamatory descriptions of the Democratic nominee were echoed across the media by reporters, columnists, and commentators who knew better — from the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post to the cable networks.
Mocking Gore for his supposed personal flaws, such as an alleged propensity to exaggerate his achievements, was as fashionable in media and political circles then as it is to denigrate Hillary Clinton now. Clever people delighted in contrasting Nader’s — and even Bush’s! — “authenticity” with Gore’s stiff insincerity. (Indeed, many of the same pundits are still doing versions of the same stupid pundit tricks.)
Besides, according to the Naderites, there were no important differences between the Democratic nominee and his Republican opponent. Or at least none that merited as much concern as Gore’s earth-toned suits and the preppy character he did or didn’t inspire in a romance novel. A wave of such idiotic babble delivered America and the world into a catastrophic Bush presidency.
Fortunately, the parallels only go so far. Sanders chose a far more responsible route than Nader when he decided to run for the Democratic nomination rather than jump to a third-party line. He has focused on substantive issues and admirably dismissed fake scandals like Benghazi and Clinton’s emails. But by repeating his unfounded insinuation that Clinton’s paid speeches and Wall Street donors have somehow corrupted her, he is inflicting damage that will be very hard to mend.
Looking toward the likelihood that either Clinton or Sanders will face Donald Trump next fall, those corrosive tactics are shortsighted. Should Sanders win the nomination, he will want and need Clinton’s support. And should she defeat him, he will and should want her to win — if he believes what he said last November, and understands the exceptionally dangerous threat posed by a Trump presidency.
The next round of Democratic primaries could encourage still more destructive bashing, from either camp or both. The candidates and their supporters ought to think beyond the moment – and pay attention to filmmaker Michael Moore, an outspoken Sanders backer.
On the evening when his candidate won an upset victory in the Michigan primary, Moore tweeted this message: “A special congrats to Hillary for her victory in Mississippi on International Women’s Day. If you win the nomination, we will be there [with] you.”
Once a zealous backer of Nader, Moore eventually apologized for that tragic mistake. Evidently he would rather not feel that sorry again.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, The National Memo, March 11, 2016
“Media Not Doing Its Job”: Campaign Press Adopts The Trump Rules — They’re The Opposite Of The Clinton Rules
Switching back and forth between MSNBC and CNN last Thursday night as they aired competing, hour-long interviews with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, viewers ran the risk of whiplash. The threat lingered not just because Clinton and Trump were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but because the tone and tenor of the two events seemed dramatically different.
Here were some of the questions posed to Clinton from the MSNBC event’s co-moderators, NBC’s Chuck Todd and Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart:
- “What would you do to make possible that the [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival] students become permanent residents?”
- “Would you ever imagine raising the retirement age in the next 10 years?”
- “Do you foresee a time when the federal government would be able to include the undocumented [workers] in federal grants for education?”
- “Should people start paying Social Security taxes on income over $120,000?”
- “Is a presidential visit [to Cuba] a step too far? Would a President Clinton be going this quickly?”
By contrast, here were some of the questions posed to Trump from the CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper:
- “What do you eat when you roll up at a McDonald’s, what does – what does Donald Trump order?”
- “What’s your favorite kind of music?”
- “How many hours a night do you sleep?”
- “What kind of a parent are you?”
- “What is one thing you wish you didn’t do?”
Obviously, those questions don’t reflect everything asked over the 60-minute programs. And I’m not suggesting Trump didn’t get any policy questions during his CNN sit-down. But the vibe from MSNBC’s Clinton event was definitely, Midterm Cram Session, while the vibe from CNN’s Trump event leaned towards, People Magazine Wants To Know. (One week later, Clinton sat for a CNN town hall where she did not receive any of the light, lifestyle questions that were asked to Trump.)
In a way, the interviews nicely captured the unfolding guidelines for the 2016 campaign season. With both Clinton and Trump enjoying big election wins last weekend and now apparently with inside tracks to their party’s nomination, we’re beginning to see signs about what the press coverage of a Clinton vs. Trump general election might look like.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have been in the public spotlight so long, and have been sparring with the Beltway press for so many years, that so-called Clinton Rules have been established. They outline the informal guidelines media follow when covering the Clintons.
The one-word distillation of the Clinton Rules? Negativity. Likely followed by distrust, snark, and condescension. Simple facts are considered optional and the Clintons are always, always held to a different, tougher standard than everyone else.
By contrast, Trump has only been in the campaign spotlight for eight months but I’d suggest the media’s Trump Rules have already come into focus: Intimidation, aggrandizement, and a lack of curiosity.
In other words, when you fly above the campaign season with a bird’s eye view, it seems inescapable that the press is being soft on the Republican, while at the same being hard on the Democrat.
Have reporters and pundits given Trump a complete pass? Absolutely not. (See more below.) Just as with the Clinton Rules, there are always exceptions to the coverage. But in terms of a vibe and a feel, it’s hard to claim that Trump is getting hit with the same relentlessly caustic (she’s doomed!) coverage that follows Clinton around everywhere she goes.
Can anyone even imagine what the relentless, almost hysterical, press coverage would look like if Clinton rallies were marred by violence, and if she denounced campaign reporters as disgusting liars? So far, neither of those phenomena from the Trump campaign have sparked crisis coverage from the press.
Some journalists are starting to concede the Trump Rules are in effect. The Washington Post just dubbed Trump a “unicorn” because he gets away with things no other candidate does. On Twitter, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith suggested “there’s obviously been a trade, mostly on TV, of laying off his dishonesty and bigotry on exchange for access.”
Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin bemoaned the hands-off vetting of Trump:
Do we know, at this point, about his modus operandi in business? Do we know how he treated his staff? Do we know what kind of leader he was when he was building his business? I mean, I don’t know the answers to these things. All I know is that, when I see him now, it’s like his past is not being used by the media to tell us who the guy really is.
And neither do I.
For instance, I don’t know much about Trump’s finances. Clinton last year released eight years of tax returns but Trump won’t yet give a firm answer regarding if and when he’ll do the same. So why hasn’t that been a pressing media pursuit?
Last week, veteran Time political scribe Joe Klein also teed off on his colleagues, while appearing on MSNBC’s Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell:
It’s the most — probably the most embarrassing coverage of a candidate that I’ve seen in my 11-God- help-me presidential campaigns. First of all, we’re aggrandizing him like crazy because he boosts ratings. Second of all, we’re not doing our job.
Days later, leaked audio from MSNBC’s infamous Trump town hall event seemed to confirm a central claim that excessive Trump coverage — and usually the fawning variety — is good for business and good for media careers. During a commercial break after Mika Brzezinski thanked Trump for participating in the town hall event, Trump said, “I’m doing this because you get great ratings and a raise — me, I get nothing.”
They don’t teach that at journalism school.
Note that the strange part of the larger Trump Rules phenomenon is that the candidate mouths so much constant nonsense on the campaign trail, you’d think he’d dread going on TV and answering pointed questions about his bullying campaign. But it’s quite the opposite. Because even when journalists raise thorny topics with him, they usually give Trump a pass.
For instance, on Sunday’s State of the Union, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump about the white supremacist supporters he had retweeted, which certainly constitutes a probing question that likely made Trump uncomfortable, right?
Not exactly. While the initial question from Tapper was good, when Trump responded with a rambling, 600-word non-answer, which concluded with him vowing to bring jobs back from India, Tapper simply moved on to the next topic instead of drilling down on the fact that the Republican frontrunner was retweeting white supremacists.
Or hit the Wayback Machine to last September when Trump appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and spun for host John Dickerson the fantastic tale about how 9/11 terrorists had tipped off their (mostly non-existent) wives about the pending terror attack, and had their (mostly non-existent) wives flown home days before hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center.
Dickerson’s response? He didn’t raise a single question about Trump’s concocted claims.
Print journalists seem to be doing a better job at fact-checking Trump. To his credit, Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post has called out some of Trump’s more outlandish claims. Kessler’s recent foray surrounded Trump’s “truly absurd claim he would save $300 billion a year on prescription drugs.”
Kessler’s conclusion? Trump is nuts. Or, more delicately:
Once again, we are confronted with a nonsense figure from the mouth of Donald Trump. He is either claiming to save four times the entire cost of the Medicare prescription drug system – or he is claiming to make prescription drugs free for every American.
Have occasional findings of fact like that changed the often-breezy tenor of Trump’s overall coverage? No they have not. Because two days after Kessler’s Medicare takedown, Trump was interviewed for an hour on CNN where the candidate wasn’t asked about his nutty prescription drug estimates. But he was asked what kind of music he likes and if he orders French fries at McDonald’s.
Welcome to the Trump Rules.
By: Eric Boehlert, Senior Fellow, Media Matters for America; The National Memo, February 25, 2016
“Secretly On The Ballot In November”: The Future Of The ‘Nuclear Option’ For Supreme Court Nominees
After the initial intense focus on President Obama’s determination to nominate a successor to Antonin Scalia and Senate Republicans’ determination to block him, it’s beginning to sink in that the struggle for control of the Supreme Court could be a complicated and drawn-out battle. As Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes of the Washington Post point out today, the next president could have more than one chance to appoint a justice, and both conservatives and liberals understand the stakes could be huge:
The Scalia vacancy technically gives Obama the chance to establish a liberal majority on the court for the first time in decades, but even if he manages to seat a new justice in the face of blanket GOP opposition, the victory could be fleeting …
Scalia’s death at age 79 shows the peril of making predictions about the Court’s future, but the age range among the current justices would suggest that a Republican successor to Obama could have greater impact on remaking the court than a Democrat, especially if Scalia’s seat stays vacant into the next administration. Simply put, the court’s liberal bloc is older and may offer more opportunities for replacement.
When the new president is inaugurated, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be almost 84. Anthony Kennedy will be 80 and Stephen Breyer, 78. Replacing Ginsburg and Breyer, both appointees of President Clinton, with conservatives would instantly shift the court’s balance for years, even if an Obama’s appointee were to replace Scalia. (The next oldest justice is Thomas, who was nominated by George H.W. Bush and will be 68 this summer.)
Many conservatives, of course, hate Kennedy, too; he was the swing vote in upholding Roe v. Wade in 1992, and played a key role in the Court’s marriage-equality decisions.
But more fundamentally, partisan polarization and gridlock in Congress has significantly elevated the importance of non-legislative entities, including the federal courts and executive-branch agencies whose power the courts might choose to expand or restrain. So control of the commanding heights of the Supreme Court is more important than ever.
What complicates the issue is the precedent set by Senate Democrats under Harry Reid in 2011 (Republicans had come close to taking the same action in 2005): the so-called “nuclear option,” removing the right to filibuster executive branch and non-SCOTUS judicial appointments. With both parties in the Senate steadily retreating from the ancient practice of deferring to the president’s choices for the High Court, and with the hot-button issues facing SCOTUS making “compromise” choices less feasible, the difference between having to muster 50 and 60 Senate votes to confirm a presidential nomination is increasingly momentous. And for that reason, if either party wins both the White House and the Senate this November, going “nuclear” on SCOTUS appointments by getting rid of the filibuster is a very high probability (and even if it doesn’t happen, the threat of “going nuclear” can and will be used to force the minority party to be reasonable).
But the converse situation is worth pondering, too. If, to cite a lively possibility, Democrats hang onto the White House while Republicans hang onto the Senate, there is no way the Senate invokes the “nuclear option.” Senate resistance to a progressive justice would likely stiffen in 2018, when Republicans will enjoy one of the most favorable Senate landscapes in memory. 25 of 33 Senate seats up that year are currently Democratic, including five in states Obama lost twice. Add in the recent GOP advantage in the kind of voters most likely to participate in midterm elections, and the ancient tendency of midterm voters to punish the party controlling the White House, and the odds of a Democratic president being able to impose her or his will on the Senate on crucial SCOTUS nominations between 2019 and 2021 is very slim.
If Democrats want to shape the Court’s future, they’d do well not only to win the White House but to take back the Senate this November, and get rid of the SCOTUS filibuster in hopes that restoring it will be too controversial for Republicans even if they reconquer the Senate in 2018. By then, of course, Senate Republicans may be looking forward to their own ability to shape the Court after 2020 if they win back the presidency then. It’s going to be a chess game with big and continuing arguments over the rules.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, February 29, 2016
“A Phony GOP Parody”: Why The Democratic Candidates Need To Get Obama’s Record Straight
There is an imbalance in the argument at the heart of the 2016 presidential campaign that threatens to undercut the Democrats’ chances of holding the White House.
You might think otherwise. The divisions among Republicans are as sharp as they have been since 1964. Donald Trump may be building on the politics of resentment the GOP has pursued throughout President Obama’s term. But Trump’s mix of nationalism, xenophobia, a dash of economic populism and a searing critique of George W. Bush’s foreign policy offers a philosophical smorgasbord that leaves the party’s traditional ideology behind.
Jeb Bush, the candidate who represents the greatest degree of continuity with the Republican past, is floundering. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both Cuban Americans, are competing fiercely over who is toughest on immigration. So much for the party opening its doors to new Americans. As for the less incendiary John Kasich, he probably won’t be relevant to the race again until the primaries hit the Midwest.
Add to this the GOP’s demographic weakness — young Americans are profoundly alienated from the party, and nonwhites will only be further turned off by the spectacle created by Trump, Cruz & Co. — and the likelihood of a third consecutive Democratic presidential victory is in view.
But then comes the imbalance: If there is a common element in the rhetoric of all the Republican candidates, it is that Obama’s presidency is an utter disaster, and he is trying to turn us, as Rubio keeps saying, into “a different kind of country.” You’d imagine from hearing the Republicans speak (Kasich is a partial exception) that we were in the midst of a new Great Depression, had just been defeated in a war, had lost our moral compass entirely, had no religious liberty and were on the verge of a dictatorship established by a slew of illegal executive orders.
Oh, yes, and the president who brought about all these horrors has lost the authority to name a Supreme Court justice, no matter what the Constitution — which should otherwise be strictly interpreted — says.
You can laugh or cry over this, but it is a consistent message, carried every day by the media whenever they cover the Republican contest.
The Democrats offer, well, a more nuanced approach. True, Hillary Clinton has embraced Obama more and more, seeing him as a life raft against Bernie Sanders’s formidable challenge. In particular, she knows that African American voters deeply resent the way Obama has been treated by Republicans. (No other president, after all, has ever been told that any nomination he makes to the Supreme Court will be ignored.) Tying herself to Obama is a wise way of shoring up her up-to-now strong support among voters of color.
Nonetheless, because so many Americans have been hurt by rising inequality and the economic changes of the past several decades, neither Democratic presidential candidate can quite say what hopefuls representing the incumbent party usually shout from the rooftops: Our stewardship has been a smashing success and we should get another term.
Sanders, in fact, represents a wholesale rebellion against the status quo. He tries to say positive things about Obama and how the president dealt with the economic catastrophe that struck at the end of George W. Bush’s term. But the democratic socialist from Vermont is not shy about insisting that much more should have been done to break up the banks, rein in the power of the wealthy, and provide far more sweeping health insurance and education benefits.
A good case can be made — and has been made by progressives throughout Obama’s term — that if Democrats said that everything was peachy, voters who were still hurting would write off the party entirely.
But ambivalence does not win elections. Running to succeed Ronald Reagan in 1988, George H.W. Bush triumphed by proposing adjustments in Reagan’s environmental and education policies but otherwise touting what enough voters decided were Reagan’s successes.
Democrats need to insist that while much work remains to be done, the United States is in far better shape economically than most other countries in the world. The nation is better off for the reforms in health care, financial regulation and environmental protection enacted during Obama’s term and should be proud of its energetic, entrepreneurial and diverse citizenry.
If Clinton, Sanders and their party don’t provide a forceful response to the wildly inaccurate and ridiculously bleak characterization of Obama’s presidency that the Republicans are offering, nobody will. And if this parody is allowed to stand as reality, the Democrats will lose.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 19, 2016
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