“Obama Legacy May Even Help Her”: Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Need To “Distance” Herself From Barack Obama
For a number of reasons, it has proven extremely difficult in recent history for a presidential candidate to win after eight years in which his party controlled the White House. Only one candidate has done it since 1948—George H.W. Bush in 1988. This fact would make a Hillary Clinton victory next year an unusual event, and there will be lots and lots of discussion between now and next November about how her candidacy is affected by the complex legacy of the Obama administration. The early form that discussion is taking seems to be that Clinton’s essential challenge is to “distance” herself from Barack Obama, which will be difficult because she served in his administration for four years. Comparisons are being made to John McCain, who was dragged down by George W. Bush in 2008 despite the fact that McCain hadn’t actually worked for Bush, but was just a senator (and a “maverick” at that, an idea that was essentially bogus but ubiquitous), as well as to Al Gore, who never found quite the right way to describe how his candidacy related to the administration in which he served.
This is a topic that I’m sure I’ll be returning to, because how the electorate thinks about Barack Obama and feels about the last eight years is going to be a central theme of the campaign. But my feeling right now is that it might not be as much of a problem for Clinton as so many people seem to think.
First, let’s dispense with the two main comparisons everyone is making: 2008 and 2000. Barack Obama’s popularity right now is pretty middling, in the high 40s. Would it be better for Clinton if it were higher? Sure. But it’s still worlds away from where George W. Bush was in 2008. In Gallup’s last poll before the 2008 election, Bush’s approval was at 25 percent. His administration was judged by Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans as an abysmal failure, because of both the disaster in Iraq and the financial cataclysm that had just hit. McCain was one of the war’s biggest supporters, and was offering essentially the same economic policies as Bush. That’s why it was easy for Obama to say that McCain offered more of the same, while he offered change—not only was there substance to the charge, but “more of the same” was something almost everyone agreed they wanted to avoid.
Today, people are less than satisfied with the way many things are going, but we aren’t in the throes of a disaster. The economy is recovering rather nicely, and attention has turned to long-standing problems like inequality and wage stagnation. Republicans can say that Obama didn’t fix these problems and Clinton won’t either, but they’ll have much more trouble saying that their remedy—essentially a return to George W. Bush’s economic policies—will produce something better.
As for 2000, the comparison is even less apt. Al Gore struggled to get out of Bill Clinton’s shadow and prove he was his own man, and because of the Lewinsky scandal he had a certain reluctance to embrace the successes of the administration. But nobody is going to plausibly say that Hillary Clinton isn’t her own woman or would just reproduce everything about the Obama years.
Nevertheless, in many ways, a Hillary Clinton presidency would probably look like a combination of her husband’s and the one she worked in. If you’re a Republican you think that sounds dreadful, if you’re a Democrat you think it sounds great, and if you’re an independent there are probably some things you’d like about it and some you wouldn’t. But it isn’t some nebulous mystery onto which Republicans can project a bunch of fears. A Hillary Clinton presidency is, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, a known known.
Things can change, of course—maybe there will be another recession, or some huge scandal that covers Obama in eternal shame. But if we proceed along as we’re going now, I doubt the Obama legacy is going to prove much of a problem for Clinton. It may even help her.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, April 13, 2015
“Rubio’s Blast From The Past”: More Like A Paean To The Gilded Age Than A Plan For The Future
Marco Rubio, 43, kicked off his campaign yesterday by telling voters that he is the future and Hillary Clinton is the past. He is young, she is old. He is 21st century, she is 20th century.
But there is one very basic and glaring flaw with his argument: His views fit well into the 1800s, while Clinton’s views are modern and look very much like the America of today and tomorrow. Age isn’t everything, Marco.
Let’s try equal pay for equal work. Rubio is against the Lilly Ledbetter Act, while Clinton co-sponsored it. He voted twice against the Paycheck Fairness Act. Clinton is a strong supporter and became the lead sponsor when Tom Daschle left the Senate.
How about equal rights for the LGBT community and support for gay marriage? Rubio is solidly against gay marriage and supported not only the recent Indiana law on “religious freedom,” but even the Arizona version in 2013. He is consistently out of step. Clinton, of course, supports gay marriage and equal rights.
On the minimum wage, Rubio is not only opposed to it being raised but has said, “I don’t think the minimum wage law works.” Clinton favors raising the minimum wage.
On tax policy, Rubio has consistently supported the late 19th century, Gilded Age tax policy that benefited the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Once again, his answer is to cut taxes for the wealthiest of Americans. According to the Washington Post, “If he wins his party’s nomination, though, Rubio will have to defend a tax plan that, while said to address the challenges of the middle class, includes a huge break that all-but bypasses the middle and greatly boosts the rich. It was a tax plan that was even too large for Romney himself to run on.” Rubio would eliminate all taxes on dividends and capital gains. That sounds like it was written by the robber barons of old to me. Clinton, of course, believes that kind of tax policy is the way of the past, not the wave of the future.
On one of the most critical issues of our time, climate change, Rubio again has his head in the sand, along with most of the other Republican candidates for president. Last May, he told ABC News that “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. And I do not believe that laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy.” Clinton, as we all know, supports efforts to combat climate change, such as the president’s Clean Power Plan.
So, who really has a vision for the future – on equal rights, on equal pay, on tax policy, on the environment – on where this country should be headed? And who does not learn the lessons of history, but seems condemned to repeat them, as if he were back in the 1800s?
If Rubio truly believes his views are appealing, maybe his slogan should actually be “Back to the Future.”
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, April 14, 2015
“The Distracting Game Of Mirrors”: How To Survive The Hillary Hype; Liberal Dreams And The Media’s Big Elizabeth Warren Trap
Hillary Clinton is reportedly set to end the biggest non-mystery in American politics today by announcing her presidential candidacy. But even as we learn that she’s running, along with when and how she’ll make the announcement (via social media and video, we’re told, on Sunday afternoon), it seems the only actual mystery about the race will remain unsolved: How does Clinton propose to restart the engines of American opportunity that built a broad middle class after World War II, which began to sputter and fail over the last 30 years?
With neither a grand thematic backdrop for an announcement – Seneca Falls? Ferguson? McAllen, Tex.? Outside a small-city McDonald’s during a fast food workers’ strike? – nor a big address to outline the themes of her campaign, Clinton will leave defining what she stands for to the media for a little while, at least, and that’s risky. So far, journalists only seem able to define Clinton in contrast to a past or future opponent, asking whether she’ll attack President Obama (it’s a dumb media given that she has to), distance herself from her husband, the popular former president, or push back against the economic populism of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, even without Warren in the race.
If that limbo is risky for Clinton, it’s even more dangerous for progressives. As we wait to find out how Clinton will respond to the increasingly populist pulse of her party’s base, we’re beset by substitute, over-personalized storylines, heavy on drama but light on issues: Will Clinton co-opt the Warren wing of the party, or will she stand up to it? Is she going to rebuke Wall Street, a la Warren, or offer succor?
We’ve even got a surrogate battle of Ivy League economists: Is she closer to Harvard’s Raj Chetty, whose studies of upward mobility focus on how to restore it (which is said to be a more optimistic, plutocrat-friendly analysis), or Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz, who recently wrote, in an essay shared with the Clinton team, that an effective economic policy must go beyond incremental policies like raising the minimum wage and improving education, to include “redistribution” of income – a once-routine assumption of public policy that now sounds like communism to a lot of business-oriented Democrats. (For the record, Clinton has met with both men.)
Without a Clinton challenger – and specifically, without Warren – most of the media struggle to explain what will matter to Democrats in the race. Witness this bizarre exchange between CBS’s Charlie Rose and Warren herself last week. Exasperated at Warren’s failure either to declare her own candidacy or critique Clinton’s, the respected interviewer – the “Charlie Rose” brand has long stood for substance, at least – began to badger the senator for more “specifics” about her agenda – after she’d already talked about reducing student loan interest rates and hiking the minimum wage.
ROSE: It’s hard to get to you be more specific. You talk about the Democratic Party’s a fluid thing and is going here and there and it’s always changing. But we want you to really-
WARREN: I’m sorry, what was nonspecific about let’s reduce the interest rate on student loans to 3.89%?
ROSE: You’ve been saying that in a lot of different–
WARREN: I’m there.
ROSE: I know. You’ve been saying that in a lot of different places and that’s a very specific position.
WARREN: And I have supported our efforts to try to get the minimum wage—
ROSE: And you say, well—
WARREN: I’ve supported it at $10.10. I would support it at a higher number. And I’m willing to sit down and negotiate with those who are willing to raise the minimum wage.
ROSE: What we’re trying to understand is that you represent — you really have become the voice of a wing of the Democratic Party, and maybe all of the party. What we want to know is where does Elizabeth Warren want to see this party go?
WARREN: Oh golly, how could you not know?
ROSE: In terms of minimum wage. In terms of income inequality. In terms of a whole range of things.
WARREN: I’m ready.
ROSE: You’re ready to tell them where you are and where you think the country…And where you differ from former Secretary of State Clinton. Why can’t you tell us that? Why isn’t that interest in the interest of a full debate about the future of the country, the future of the Democratic Party and who the nominee ought to be?
WARREN: Charlie, I’ll tell you where I stand on all of the key issues. It’s up to others to say whether they stand there as well or they stand in some different place. I’ll tell you where I stand on minimum wage. I’ll tell you where I stand on equal pay for equal work. I’ll tell you where I stand on expanding—
ROSE: Name me one thing you would like to see — name me one thing that you would like to see Hillary Clinton do and say and commit to that she has not committed to?
In fact, Warren has laid out her agenda in an eight-point plan to restore the middle class, which includes a minimum wage hike, protecting and expanding Social Security, strengthening labor laws, restoring a more progressive tax code, and building infrastructure. Similar ideas are in the “Ready for Boldness” statement the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is organizing around (Senators Harry Reid and Al Franken are among 5,000 Democrats who’ve signed their names to the statement), trying to “incentivize” Clinton to move to the left. PCCC leaders recently met with members of Clinton’s campaign team.
But if journalists can’t frame these ideas in terms of someone “attacking” Hillary Clinton, they’re not interested, and they’ll insist there’s no progressive agenda.
Meanwhile, frustrated in their efforts to gin up a fight between two popular Democratic women, some will find surrogates elsewhere that let them frame the narrative in terms of “centrist” Clinton facing down and “taming” progressive critics – or being tamed by them. Politico gave us an example this week with “Rahm shows Hillary how to tame the left.”
As Elias Isquith explained, however, the piece took itself apart, as it argued that Emanuel won because he co-opted progressive ideas, not because he ran away from them. Still, it was framed as a “lesson” for Clinton to thumb her nose at the party’s base. Let’s hope she’s not listening.
There are real divisions among Democrats – and maybe even within the Clinton camp – over both tone and substance when it comes to economic policy. Personally, I’m with Joseph Stiglitz, who wrote in an essay shared with the Clinton campaign:
The increase in inequality and the decrease in equality of opportunity have reached the point where minor fixes — such as modest increases in the minimum wage and continuing to strive to improve education and educational opportunity — will not suffice. A far more comprehensive approach to the problem is required, entailing redistribution and doing what one can to improve the market distribution of income and to prevent the unfair transmission of advantage across generations.
But we have no evidence that Clinton herself disagrees, and progressives should ignore the distracting game of mirrors the media will continue to play with the Democratic frontrunner and her base. Personally, I’m not seeing Sunday as the kick-off to Clinton’s campaign (though there are reports that her announcement tweets will deal with issues). That will come when she begins to outline her own substantive agenda for closing the widening income and opportunity divide.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 12, 2015
“Follow The Money Is A Game Everybody Can Play”: Funny Business; The Financial ‘Shenanigans’ Of Ron Paul And Company
Obsessed as he is with Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul comments almost constantly on her family finances, often snarking about the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation — as he did to Politico‘s Mike Allen within minutes of announcing his own presidential candidacy on Tuesday. Suggesting dishonesty or worse, he barks about “thinly disguised bribery,” “shenanigans,” and a “trail of money” that will “shake the confidence” of American voters.
While there is nothing wrong with vetting Clinton — or consulting the publicly available foundation records that exceed IRS requirements for transparency — the Kentucky senator should remember that “follow the money” is a game everybody can play. And since he believes that any funds raised or spent by Bill Clinton are fair game, shouldn’t the same rule apply to all the financial “shenanigans” that surround his millionaire father, Ron Paul?
When he ran for president in the Republican primary three years ago, the Texas Republican drew the attention of Washington reporters and ethical watchdogs bemused by his habit of using campaign funds and congressional expense reimbursements to enrich himself and his family. In 2012, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington examined every congressional campaign filing – and Paul had paid more of his relatives with campaign funds than any other member. His re-election committee paid salaries to his daughter, his grandson, his daughter’s mother-in-law, his granddaughter, and his grandson-in-law — namely Jesse Benton, who just took charge of Rand Paul’s SuperPAC.
Total payments to Paul and his family in that cycle were nearly $400,000 — and this dubious practice, illegal in some states, has continued.
During the first few months of 2012, Roll Call published a series of stories citing credit card records that showed Ron Paul billed travel expenses to both his congressional office account — that is, to the taxpayers — and several political organizations that were controlled by him and his family. When one of those committees came under independent management, the new leadership noted the discrepancies and complained that he had “double-billed” at least $20,000 and possibly much more. (According to the ubiquitous and scandal-tinged Benton, married to Rand Paul’s niece and Ron Paul’s sometime employee, those were all mere bookkeeping errors.)
But the nagging, never-answered question about the Paul family business is how much of Ron’s millions were the fruit of Ron Paul & Associates — corporate purveyors of the racist, anti-Semitic, gay-baiting, conspiracy-addled newsletters that raked in millions over two decades from their dim ultra-right subscribers.
The Washington Post reported in January 2012 that under his supervision, Paul’s company “pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas…” In other words, he sought to profit from the bigotry of his supporters.
No doubt Rand Paul will soon demand to see even more records than Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have released already — every email, every canceled check, maybe every dry-cleaning bill. As of 2008, the last time either of them ran for elected office, Bill and Hillary Clinton had released 30 years of income tax returns (in addition to her Senate disclosures, the foundation’s IRS returns, and the additional information provided by the foundation since her appointment as Secretary of State).
If and when Hillary Clinton is asked to release her tax returns again sometime this year, you can bet she won’t give the cute answer offered by Ron Paul when asked to release his tax returns at a debate in 2012:
“I don’t have any intention of releasing it – but for a different reason. I’d probably be embarrassed to put my financial statements next to [the other candidates’] income and I don’t want to be embarrassed because I don’t have a greater income.”
Does anyone really believe that’s why the former proprietor of Ron Paul’s Survival Report refused to release his returns?
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, April 9, 2015
“Let Her Socialist Freak Flag Fly?”: Why Republicans Won’t Convince The Electorate That Hillary Clinton Is A Radical
One of the persistent conservative narratives about Hillary Clinton is that her identity as a supposedly moderate Democrat is a ruse, meant to conceal her radical leftist intents. If and when she reaches her long-held goal of becoming president, the mask will be removed and the true horror of her socialist scheme will be revealed.
That is, of course, assuming we reach January 2017 with Barack Obama having failed in his own plan to turn America into a dungeon of Stalinist oppression and misery. But the idea that Clinton is, like her husband, a moderate Democrat, is something that many conservatives have trouble abiding, particularly when the prospect of her becoming president becomes more salient.
So lest Republicans become complacent about the prospects for a second Clinton presidency (a real danger, no doubt), Liz Mair argues in the Daily Beast that Republicans shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that the former secretary of state is much like the first President Clinton:
…tying Hillary Clinton to her husband is an act of political malpractice that ignores the fact that on economic issues, she was—during his presidency, during her 2008 campaign, and still today—significantly to the left of him.
For whatever else one may say about him, Bill Clinton was and is a centrist. His presidency is remembered for the taming of the deficit, his advocacy for free trade, his signature of welfare reform, his legislation cutting the long-term capital gains tax rate, and perhaps most famously, his declaration that “the era of big government is over.”
That would not have been true if Hillary had had it her way. And if she has her way now—and if she makes it to the White House—a very un-Bill-like big government will remain in the cards for some time.
Even if her bill of particulars is pretty weak, Mair is right insofar as Hillary Clinton is running in 2016 and Bill Clinton left office in 2001. In the time since, the Democratic Party has itself moved to the left in some ways, and a party’s nominee is always going to reflect the party’s consensus (with some small variation). If Bill Clinton were running now, he wouldn’t be the same candidate he was then. It isn’t that Hillary has been waiting for two decades to let her socialist freak flag fly, as I’m sure many conservatives believe; it’s that her party has evolved, and she’s evolved along with it. For instance, to be a Democrat now means to believe in full marriage equality and to question the War on Drugs, which wasn’t true in 1992. At that time there was a comprehensive debate about the party’s ideological direction, which Bill Clinton led; now there’s a remarkable degree of ideological unity.
There are still ways in which Hillary Clinton is to the right of the median Democrat; she certainly retains more hawkish instincts in foreign affairs, and I don’t know if she has abandoned her previous support of the death penalty (though that’s something presidents don’t do anything about). However you might judge her, we sometimes forget when we try to make such an assessment that it isn’t necessary for a president to be an ideological radical for him or her to be a disaster in office. Richard Nixon was something of a moderate, but that made him no less corrupt. There are ways in which George W. Bush was less than a right-wing ideologue; that mitigates the disaster he wrought at home and abroad not at all.
The real things conservatives dislike about Hillary Clinton have little to do with ideology. They think she’s a power-hungry, dishonest, overly secretive conniver who has no scruples. Someone could be all those things, and believe almost anything about policy.
This is something both liberals and conservatives will argue about when it comes to the Republican candidates, too. I tend to think that the actual policy differences between those candidates are tiny, and it’s the attitudinal differences that are significant. If you actually went down a list of every issue you could come up with, you’d find that Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz disagree on only a couple of things, but Cruz presents himself as a proud far-right ideologue, while Bush doesn’t.
Many conservatives believe that Bush is actually some kind of liberal simply because he talks about immigrants as though they were human beings and supports Common Core (which many other Republicans used to like before they decided it’s some kind of communist indoctrination program). My guess is that Bush looked closely at Mitt Romney’s ham-handed attempts to convince primary voters that he was actually a doctrinaire right-winger (“I was a severely conservative Republican governor“) and concluded that the best course is to not fight too strongly against the notion that he’s a moderate, despite what little truth there may be to it.
In any case, this kind of ideological name-calling is a feature of nearly every presidential campaign: each candidate says, “I’m mainstream, and my opponent is a radical.” Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it isn’t, but I suspect Republicans are going to have a hard time convincing the electorate that Hillary Clinton is an ideological extremist, whatever they tell themselves.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, April 7, 2015
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