Good times last night. I wouldn't call Clinton a great speaker -- he pretty much winged a good bit of his talk -- but it was lively and interesting, and he again demonstrated he's hard to fluster, handling a few hecklers savagely...
Anyhow. He talked about a lot, but I thought I'd related some comments he made about health care reform, seeing as they're, you know, relevant here at this blog...and these are just based on notes I took last night...
Town Hall demonstrations are meant to terrify moderate and conservative Democrats: the GOP isn't strong or relevant enough to defeat bill...
Three hurdles for health care reform: (1) It's complex. Can't explain it easily to voters. (2) The CBO doesn't reckon long-term costs and savings, so the bill's been slammed by its estimates. (3) It's hard to budge the status quo. "People who already have something are certain what they'll lose. People who don't are uncertain about what they'll gain."
Health care reform is not only morally right, it's imperative, politically, for Democrats.
After a bill is signed, approval for the reform will go up because Americans are an optimistic people. After a year or so, when the effects are felt, approval will explode. Get something done.
In one of the more interesting turns in the talk was when Clinton addressed his own efforts at reform. He talked about how "the victors wrote the history" on his efforts, citing two aspects:
-- Claim: The bill was a 1,000-page-+ monstrosity. Complex and unwieldy. Reality: proposed bill was a simplification of existing code on health care, actually cut more than 400 pages from the original law.
--Claim: The effort failed b/c the administration dictated the bill, didn't allow Congress to write it. Reality: House committee chair (Hoyer?) asked the administration to write the bill, b/c he worried that Congressional reps didn't know enough about the issue, and that they'd be picked off one-by-one by lobbyists...
In short, if this effort fails, that's the kiss of death for reform. Those that defeated the bill will write the reasons why. (Right now, that's the Tea Bagger crowd. I imagine the media will say Americans don't want a government insurance solution...)
Some of my co-workers and I were out hitting people up for mail voting at the Bill Clinton speech this morning. With all the rain, it was like a scene from a Hemingway novel.
But mixing farce with whatever plotline we were in were two guys with giant signs telling people the Presidential nomination race is over and that Obama is the nominee -- in less polite terms.
I heard one Clinton supporter converse with them and it sounded to me like one of them said that they were actually Nader supporters when the woman told them that they weren't doing their candidate any favors.
There is something about operating in fundamentally bad faith in politics that really chaps my ass. And I know that probably makes me a hypocrite in some way that one of my conservative friends will be able to point out in no small time.
But, honestly -- how childish. And that goes for whether they're Nader or Obama supporters.
I suppose, at this time of revising history in the midst of a heated primary battle--as she retells the stories of flying into Bosnia, or not supporting NAFTA--Hillary Clinton could look back and find the possibly fatal flaw in her campaign: her decision to support her husband after he was impeached for his philandering and lying ways.
While many people applauded her for her dutiful and stoic support in the face of international disgrace, history, as unveiled by this campaign cycle, is beginning to paint a far different story. We can look to the problems of the first Clinton presidency and see how they are coming home to roost as they deploy a drogue chute around Hillary's campaign and drag it down. A drogue chute she would have been well served to jettison years ago.
From the lobbying style of chief strategist Mark Penn, to her husband's insistence to be in the thick of the fray, flinging parsed and nuanced word bombs to the media, one thing after another reminds people of why the Clinton legacy is gathering tarnish: it wasn't all peace and prosperity in the 90's. There was a real messy side to the Clintonian political machine--a messy side that is rearing its ugly head again
Unfortunately, Hillary would have us forget all the problems of her husband's presidency, and choose to run on experience gained at the salad bar of her husband's accomplishments, picking those most likely to enhance her candidacy, while tossing the rest to the compost. Running a campaign based much around her life as first lady, Hillary Clinton has opened a trove of questions and problems for her candidacy.
Bill Clinton's associations with numerous organizations at odds with his wife's stated policy goals--from Columbian trade groups to some of his Foundation's donors supporting China's repression of Tibet--whittle away at her support. Hillary is caught in the unenviable position of having a first-gentleman-to-be who has severe conflicts of interest with her own campaign. And a husband and political team who demand loyalty to political favors delivered years ago.
As Bill Richardson--recently branded "Judas" by Clinton strategist James Carville for not repaying Hillary with an endorsement due from his appointment by Bill as an ambassador and Energy Secretary--exclaimed, the Clinton campaign is "just too messy." And that his loyalty to Bill Clinton does not extend to Hillary. How many other people are in this boat? How loyal to Hillary will the people be who only are extending their support because of favors they owe to Bill?
From sharing a bank account with a man who takes nearly a million dollars for assisting an organization promoting trade agreements she opposes, to filing joint tax returns showing millions of dollars of income related to shady dealings with overseas investors, Hillary Clinton is saddled with problems she doesn't need.
Hillary Clinton is a capable and brilliant politician. After all, she worked out with one of the best for many years. But she should have left it at that. Once Bill had outlived his usefulness in a blue dress moment, she should have struck out on her own--if she had presidential aspirations at that time, which many suspect she had. She has what it takes to be the first woman to run for the presidency and win, without her alliance with Bill Clinton.
Stand Hillary Clinton up on her own, and divorce her from all the pain and troubles of the first Clinton presidency, and she becomes a much more attractive candidate. Take away all of the surrogate, back-stage dealings and whispers and Bill gaffs, and she becomes much more likable. Hillary Clinton doesn't need to be wrapped in a campaign run in the style of the 90's, and built on a Washington D.C. power base that brings the likes of Burson Marstellar along for the ride.
No, the best thing Hillary Clinton could have done for her presidential aspirations would have been to get as far away from the legacy of Bill Clinton as she could have. She could have portrayed herself for the woman and politician that she truly is, and she would have had widespread support for that.
She truly has what it would take to be this country's first woman president. Except that when you figure Bill into the equation, it all starts to slide away. She gambled in a moment of perhaps understandable self-doubt that the prospect of a two-fer was better than a solitary bid. But the blue-light-special package of Bill and Hill isn't a "take what you need and leave the rest" proposition. We get it all: you buy it, you like it. Except many of us don't.
If she does not win this nomination, and has aspirations for 2012, she might be well served to reflect on her ultimate question: whether loyalty to her husband and marriage, or drive to ascend to the presidency is her life's goal. Because it may just well be that one is exclusive of the other.
Buckle up, folks, we'll be hearing plenty about presidential politics and Montana in the next few days, what with the two leading presidential candidates and a former president in town.
Probably one of the best analyses of Montana politics I've read in a while came recently from Chris Cilliza, who appeared to have actually researched the state's political environment beyond fundraising and '04 voting numbers.
This is what he had to say about how Clinton could win Montana in June:
The wildcard in all of these calculations is the vote that will come out of the Native-American areas of the state. Native Americans make up 6 percent of the state's population, according to the 2000 Census, but are likely to vote at a proportionally higher level in a Democratic primary with estimates running from 10 percent of the primary electorate to as high as 17 percent. Former President Bill Clinton is a revered figure on the reservations, a status that should accrue to his wife's benefit, according to those who know the state well.
And then on Tuesday, the former president will stop in Havre.
Population 9,451.
Even in a race as tight as that between Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has it come to this?
Why Havre? Pundits opine it's because of its proximity to the Rocky Boy's, Fort Peck, Blackfeet, and Fort Belknap reservations.
Indian people have not forgotten Bill Clinton's visit to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1999, which made him the first sitting president to visit a reservation since Franklin Roosevelt. In that speech - nearly a decade before his wife became a presidential candidate - he specifically mentioned that Hillary Clinton had spent more time in Indian Country than any first lady in history.
"Indian people prospered more under his administration than any other," said state Rep. Margarett Campbell, D-Poplar....
"He has a lot of influence in those communities," said Campbell, of the Fort Peck Reservation. "His coming up there is a real reminder to Indian Country of what the Clintons are capable of in terms of understanding Indian Country and being willing to really look at some innovative and long-term systemic ways of making changes, both social and economic.
Kudos to the Clinton campaign for making this visit. Montana's Native Americans are going to enjoy a deserved and much-needed moment in the sun, and to hear a voice address concerns about health care, poverty, education, and voting rights on the country's reservations.
That's a good thing, no matter who wins the primary. And it'll be even better if Obama, too, makes a similar visit, and suddenly issues important to Native Americans become a crucial component of the 2008 presidential election.
Just before Super Tuesday, Obama circulated an attack mailer that held the Clintons responsible for net losses of Democratic seats during Bill's presidency:
In the mailer, Obama is pointing to Dem losses in the 1990s to bolster his core message that a Hillary candidacy would polarize the nation and cripple efforts to build a long-term progressive majority. Obama argues that he'll be less alienating than Hillary to independents and Republicans, due to the fact that he's unencumbered by the baggage of the 1990s.
Some are criticizing the mailer for being too negative - yet Hillary Clinton is often portrayed as being "tougher," because she's unafraid of using tough tactics, and Obama unable to mix it up with the GOP because he's too nice. Others actually liked the Clinton presidency:
As for attacking the only two-term [Democratic] presidency since F.D.R., no doubt Bill Clinton had his faults, especially on movement organization. But he left this country in great financial shape, which cannot be denied. This is just one reason Obama's losing lunch bucket Democrats to Clinton. What people remember is the impact the Clinton presidency had on their lives. In the end, that's all that matters to them.
Which seems willfully naïve. If anything, Clinton's trade policies hurt "lunch bucket Democrats" (NAFTA?), and is no doubt one of the contributing factors in the loss of so many Democratic gubernatorial and Congressional seats. Certainly NAFTA is a dirty word 'round these parts. I have no idea why blue-collar Democrats are trending to Clinton. I'd love to read an analysis; but I don't think it's because of Bill Clinton's economic policies.
And then there's Steven Suh's baffling condemnation of Obama's mailer - that he's buying into the conservative mystique of the Clintons. Suh claims that, with this mailer, Obama is "running away from Clinton and the Democratic party."
Now I'd argue that the Obama mailer is accurate. Clinton's politics did blunt the liberal political movement. Remember all the triangulation Clinton did? He legitimized conservative rhetoric. He legitimized the conservative world-view. He showed why triangulation doesn't work. If you adopt conservative issues, you don't win the center, you push the electorate into the conservative camp. And the Democratic party's namby-pamby, tepid view of its own values, and the disdain for its base, stems from the Clinton years.
But then any interpretation of Obama's mailer hinges on the mailer's intent. If Obama is arguing that Bill Clinton hurt the Democratic party because he was too liberal...well...then we've got another triangulator on our hands. But, if, on the other hand, Obama's arguing that progressive ideas are extremely popular across the country, and that Hillary Clinton - like Bill did during his presidency - would alienate potential Democrats by abandoning popular lefty ideas, then I'm aboard.
Damn. Last night was big. To some extent, it was the first real win of the primary season on the Democratic side. The rest were basically ties or narrow wins. Last night, South Carolina went overwhelming for the Man from Audacity.
The news gets worse for the Clintons. Even though Hillary is still in the pole position, Ted Kennedy is endorsing Barack Obama. In Democratic politics, there are fewer bigger names.
Right-wingers will no doubt chortle that Ted Kennedy's endorsement could mean anything. Even as modern Republicans occasionally try to claim Jack Kennedy as one of theirs (a bizarre postmortem baptism if ever there was one), they treat his surviving brother as a devil. Strange, one would think, that the third brother of a highly political family would have such different core values than those of his brethren.
Now, I'm not going to claim that Ted Kennedy is an angel. Few of us are. But he is one of the strongest voices of American liberalism and he has been one of its most effective during his time in the U.S. Senate.
Just as noteworthy is why he is endorsing. Long story short: he's pissed at the Clintons' attempts at racial divisiveness. He's not just lending his name, either. He's hitting the road, talking to union members and Hispanic voters in a number of February 5th states. In Massachusetts, which votes on 2/5, this could be game-changing, especially when wedded to the endorsements of Deval Patrick and John Kerry. In California, this will play well (and it comes on top of the endorsement of the highest-ranking Latino in the U.S. House -- Xavier Bacerra).
Long story short, this race is on completely. As I wrote at AOL, I thought Hillary Clinton made a big mistake refusing to offer a real concession last night. The momentum in this race has often gone to the high-road sympathetic figure.
Her "calvinball" approach to whether Florida and Michigan's delegates ought to count ain't helping much either. Rules are only rules and heaven knows they can change, but changing the rules based on the outcome is an awful way to operate.
Update -- And Kathleen Sebelius? Damn. That's quite a pick-up. Kansas also votes on Super Fat Tuesday, so this won't hurt. Plus, Sebelius and Napolitano (and, I suppose, Claire McCaskill) are among the Democratic Party's leading new female faces. For them to endorse Obama is a big statement (think if Deval Patrick had endorsed Hillary Clinton).
James Galbraith takes a look at where income inequality gaps grew over the last decade and a half. The numbers that come out are interesting. Income inequality did expand under Clinton, but as Galbraith notes, the skyrocketing incomes were located basically in high tech counties (in California and Washington) and Manhattan.
Where is the recent "Bush boom" occuring?
In fact, there was one group of counties that did exceptionally well in the first four Bush years. Guess what? They're concentrated around Washington, D.C. Of the top 10 gainers from 2000 to 2004, three are Washington neighbors (Fairfax, Montgomery, and Baltimore), and one is D.C. itself. Among the top 35 gainers, there are five more counties in the immediate vicinity.
This may explain why the D.C. Republicans have remained so convinced of the robust economy -- record growth rates in the military-industrial complex have D.C. booming.
The rest of the country isn't doing so hot.
Interesting, though, isn't it -- it was true private sector enterprise that flourished under the Dems and it's now the beneficiaries of corporate welfare who are leading the boom.
