Tom Frank: Bill Clinton was so not down with Thomas Piketty

[appal_jack]

So Bill Clinton, according to Thursday’s New York Times, says “he’s been fighting income inequality since his earliest years in Arkansas politics.” How does that square with your memory of the president who enacted the draconian ’90s welfare reform with Newt Gingrich, who overrode labor opposition to trade treaties, who helped deregulate Wall Street and the financial industry? And who, as Bob Woodward so famously reported, knew at the time: “I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?”

It’s actually worse than that. Alan Greenspan, who Clinton twice reappointed to chair the Federal Reserve Board, used to joke back in 2007 that “Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” That’s coming from a man who worked for some real Republicans—and who was also one of the greatest culprits in the housing bubble and the financial crisis, because he just didn’t feel like using his power to regulate the way mortgages were done.

The grand historical significance of the Clinton Administration, and of the DLC to a lesser degree, is that they are what cemented the neoliberal era. It’s that air of complete, ironclad consensus about matters economic. That sense that, there is only one way to run an economy and we know what it is. So you can have Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher making the big turn toward laissez-faire, but it’s not really “neoliberalism” until the other party capitulates, until you have the famous handshake between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, and until you have Clinton announcing “the era of big government is over.” In the 1990s they called this the “Washington Consensus,” but today we hip and cognizant people know to call it “neoliberalism.”

Of course it turned out to be a bubble, and it ended in disaster. As did the housing boom, which got its start in the late Nineties, and as will the next bubble to come down the pike. Neoliberalism may be heaven on earth for the people on top, but for the rest of us it means insecurity and lifelong debt and a constant struggle to hang on to what our parents took for granted. Nice going, Bill.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/02/tom_frank_bill_clinton_was_so_not_down_with_thomas_piketty/

My commentary - After the 2008 campaign for 'Hope & Change,' we Americans got too much of the same old neoliberalism. The screwing we got under Clinton via NAFTA and other neoliberal policies continues to this day with proposals for the TPP, tolls on US interstates, the end of net neutrality, drilling in the Gulf & fracking everywhere, NSA surveillance, and not one Wall St. Banker in jail following the greatest swindle in world history, a Cabinet that has been filled with Summers, Geithner, etc., etc.. Democratic candidates are free to campaign for or against these policies as they seek office, but I will not sit idly by while any simultaneously claim a progressive stance yet continue to push regressive policies.

-app

[pscot]

1. But the Clintons walked away with a cool hundred million

And it looks like Hillary might get another bite at the apple, so you can't say it was all bad..

[closeupready]

2. Yup. They sure did. Funny how that worked, huh.

K&R

[L0oniX]

48. No doubt Bill signed off on the repeal of Glass–Steagall making the 1% including the Clintons happy.

[colsohlibgal]

3. Time To Drop the "Neo" From Liberalism

Is Hillary the one to turn us back leftward, to - gasp - populism? I'm not seeing it, she's still getting paid tons to speak to the Goldman Sachs of the world.

As a woman I so think it's time for a female president but I'd rather it not be a moderate republican in democratic wrapping like Bubba and Barry.

[NCTraveler]

4. Who is Barry?

"As a woman I so think it's time for a female president but I'd rather it not be a moderate republican in democratic wrapping like Bubba and Barry."

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. You sure you are in the right site?

Bubba is a dismissive way to call President Clinton, and Barry is also a very dismissive RW talking point regarding President Obama.

[KoKo]

14. Agree..."Bubba and Barry" are not appropriate...no matter what some of

us Dems think about the Neo-Lib Policies...we disagree with...calling our two Dem Presidents those names smacks of RW Trashing on a Democratic Website.

[Ed Suspicious]

10. Neoliberalism is defined by a very specific

set of economic policies and even an ideological approach to combating world poverty. I do not subscribe to that approach, but do not see decoupling the neo from the liberal as an idea that makes much sense. Neoliberal policy find approval from both ends of the political spectrum as you will find many republicans as well as many third way Dems to have adopted neoliberalism wholeheartedly.

[HughBeaumont]

19. Unless you're a Punahou Alumnus in the late 1970s, "Barry" is a Birther slur.

Please edit your post. That ugly word is what the Von Mises Klan calls him.

[tularetom]

5. I don't understand how anybody can still defend Clinton's economic policies

The guy has spent an entire political career sucking up to the 1% (and becoming one of them in the process) while he did a masterful con job on the national media, convincing them that he was actually a progressive.

[1000words]

9. Remember when "The Big Dawg" was rock star untouchable?

Proof Democrats get suckered just as easily as Republicans.

[deutsey]

13. I remember in '91 or early '92

watching something on CSPAN (I think)...it was a live broadcast featuring all the Democratic contenders.

I tuned in because I liked Harkin at the time. He was unabashedly liberal and, at a time when many Democrats were quivering at Bush's high post-Gulf War I approval ratings, he was the only one who had literally called Bush's so-called invincibility "bullshit."

While the CSPAN camera remained focused on whichever Democratic candidate was speaking at the moment, I remember the press swarmed around Clinton when he walked into the room, completely ignoring the other candidates.

I was not impressed with Clinton before that moment, but the "rock star" treatment I saw him receiving made me dislike him even more. After four years of Bush (and eight miserable years of Reagan before him), I wanted a real liberal alternative to the Reagan era.

Although I voted for him in '92 (I vowed I would vote for whichever Democrat ran against Bush), my vote for him was not enthusiastic. It was even less so in '96.

[1000words]

21. Sums up my feelings, as well:

"Although I voted for him in '92 (I vowed I would vote for whichever Democrat ran against Bush), my vote for him was not enthusiastic. It was even less so in '96."

[appal_jack]

24. I voted for Clinton in '92 and '96 as well.

I voted for Clinton in '92 and '96 as well. For all of his many shortcomings, he was of course better than BFEE-41 (1992) or Blob Dough (1996).

-app

[deutsey]

26. Which is why I voted for him

He did some good, so I don't equate him with Reagan. But he also did some things (NAFTA, repealing Glass-Steagall, etc.) that I think has ended up undermining in the long run any good he did.

[appal_jack]

52. Yup.

Yup.clinton exemplifies the old adage "the large print giveth, and the fine print taketh away."

-app

[L0oniX]

49. Proof that people worship presidents like contestants on American Idol.

[antigop]

40. well, there is the Upton Sinclair quote....

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

www.brainyquote.com

[pampango]

7. No Great Divergence in "Democrat World". Huge divergence in "Republican World".

Summarizing Bartels's findings, journalist Timothy Noah referred to the administrations of Democratic presidents as "Democrat-world", and GOP administrations as "Republican-world":

In Democrat-world, pre-tax income increased 2.64% annually for the poor and lower-middle-class and 2.12% annually for the upper-middle-class and rich. There was no Great Divergence. Instead, the Great Compression – the egalitarian income trend that prevailed through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s – continued to the present, albeit with incomes converging less rapidly than before. In Republican-world, meanwhile, pre-tax income increased 0.43 percent annually for the poor and lower-middle-class and 1.90 percent for the upper-middle-class and rich. Not only did the Great Divergence occur; it was more greatly divergent. Also of note: In Democrat-world pre-tax income increased faster than in the real world not just for the 20th percentile but also for the 40th, 60th, and 80th. We were all richer and more equal! But in Republican-world, pre-tax income increased slower than in the real world not just for the 20th percentile but also for the 40th, 60th, and 80th. We were all poorer and less equal! Democrats also produced marginally faster income growth than Republicans at the 95th percentile, but the difference wasn't statistically significant.[210]

The pattern of distribution of growth appears to be the result of a whole host of policies,

including not only the distribution of taxes and benefits but also the government's stance toward unions, whether the minimum wage rises

, the extent to which the government frets about inflation versus too-high interest rates, etc., etc.[171]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States#Post-1980_rise_in_inequality

Nice to see the statistics bear out that Democratic presidents are good for the 99% (well at least for the 80% since that it what this study showed). Under republican presidents the 80% were "poorer and less equal". Surprise! Surprise!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Average_US_Federal_Tax_Rates_1979_to_2013.png
Looks like the highest tax rates for the 1% was from about 1993 to 1997. They declined after that, particularly under Bush, until 2008 then increased in 2010. It looks like the 2013 rate will be comparable to that of the mid-1990's.

It's not surprise that Democrat World is better for most of us. Republican world is better for the 1%.

[cprise]

15. Look at that tax rate 'bubble' for the 1%...

You can see exactly when Newt's GOP came in ant they (along with media) began pistol-whipping Clinton.

Bill Clinton's second term was a catastrophe.

[Dragonfli]

8. I agree with both the article and your commentary

The illusion that the parties differ on economic issues although persistent, does not stand up to scrutiny. We desperately need a political left in this country.

Many are those that point to social issues claiming we do have a liberal party, while ignoring the fact that socially liberal does not necessarily equate to economic liberalism, the complete and total success of neoliberalism owes it's greatest victories to this misdirection.

Upon even further scrutiny, neoliberalism is not even as socially liberal as advertised, most glaringly regarding race equality, economic policies that punish minorities with poverty in astoundingly unequal numbers can hardly be called socially liberal.

In the early part of the twentieth century, our country was saved by economic liberalism, a forced marriage between socialism and capitalism that filled bellies, minds and souls with the hope of a new deal that could be said to have saved not only capitalism, but countless american lives as well. Having stripped both parties of the spirit of that endeavor is it any wonder capitalism has reverted back to its base nature heralding a new gilded age that is both cruel to the majority and dangerous to the overall health of the country?

I begin to wonder if the communists were correct in their belief that a compromise with capitalism would be short lived and inevitably doomed to fail as capitalism's true nature could not be held in check for long with regulation and redistribution chains imposed upon it.

The chains are broken, the forced marriage has been ended in a nasty divorce and the predatory nature of unfettered greed again drives our nation into deep poverty and the siphoning of nearly all the fruits of labor and resource to the select few has begun again in earnest.

It has become clear to me that if we can not contain the beast we must kill it in self defense.

First, let us try to apply yet again the restraints placed upon it that actually did work for a time creating the wealthiest middle class in our nations history, let us revive a liberal party from the asses that are left after the neoliberal take over, for if it does not work, the experiment will end in dismal failure and either neo-feudalism will become complete or revolution will fill the streets with blood and death as it has so many times in the past.

[KoKo]

17. This is becoming more apparent as time goes by..

And we can see the split here on this website, sadly.

Many are those that point to social issues claiming we do have a liberal party, while ignoring the fact that socially liberal does not necessarily equate to economic liberalism, the complete and total success of neoliberalism owes it's greatest victories to this misdirection.

[socialist_n_TN]

18. As one of those communists who WAS correct about "reforming capitalism".......

I have a little aphorism about that. You might have seen it as I post it EVERY TIME IT'S APPROPRIATE! And sometimes when it NOT appropriate. To wit:

Regulating capitalism is like riding a hungry tiger. It's VERY hard to do and you're always in danger of being eaten.

[Dragonfli]

25. I always liked you for that very reason

I have a little aphorism about that. You might have seen it as I post it EVERY TIME IT'S APPROPRIATE! And sometimes when it NOT appropriate.

I think the only reason I still desperately cling to the idea that we can try that forced marriage again is simply because very few in this country appear to understand either communism or capitalism and there were a great many more communists here at the dawn of the twentieth century than there are now. We are further away from an understanding of capitalism in the US than we have been in over a hundred years, the populace will not be ready for another system until they finally do understand the true nature of capitalism.

Some things that are happening in south america fill me with a certain degree of hope, perhaps one day we can try something sane, until then I hope quixotically to at least stem some of the bleeding with what is admittedly a very temporary and partial repair of an inherently broken system.

Only a blind or insane person would deny that Marx had capitalism pegged and accurately predicted it's inevitable path with a precision usually only found in a physicists math formula.

Keep teaching the masses, perhaps someday they will learn

[TBF]

29. I think the masses are ready -

The powers in charge may not be ready for the masses but something is going to give because people are on to the con. They know they're being screwed.

[Dragonfli]

33. I sincerely hope you are right

They know they are being screwed, but they do not necessarily know why, or by whom. Also there is the small matter of our being able to elect representatives, but without any means of assuring they just won't get on the screw the masses gravy train, which, regardless of campaign rhetoric, they seem to do nearly every time.

[MannyGoldstein]

43. Dead on.

They know they're getting screwed, but what's the way out? Show them something that works, and they'll vote for that for decades. FDR actually fixed stuff, and Democrats owned DC for the next 40 years.

[appal_jack]

46. Yes, we need viable alternatives and concrete steps forward.

Yes, we need viable alternatives and concrete steps forward. A nation in crisis will seek alternatives, and if the right wing is the only side putting forward a (pseudo-) populist program, then too many citizens will embrace proto-fascism in populist's clothing.

I don't expect my representatives to be saints. During the New Deal, I am sure many Congressmen did quite well for themselves. But they ALSO passed worthwhile legislation that improved the whole country. That's what is far too lacking in the modern Democratic paradigm - the follow-through on at least some of the big campaign promises. Six+ years into the Obama administration, we should be basking in the glow of a national health plan with a robust public option, a new and strengthened Glass-Steagal Act, a renegotiation of NAFTA to truly protect wages and the environment, fracking subject to the Clean Water Act and NEPA (or banned entirely), cannabis rescheduled to V (or decriminalized entirely), and significant investments in rebuilding public infrastructure. Instead, we got corporate health insurance, a watered-down Dodd Frank Bill, and otherwise, the continued corporatist-led hollowing out of our nation, environment, middle class, and safety net.

As Manny said above, with real New Deal reforms, Democrats basically owned Washington for decades. Is partial reform to tame the worst excesses of capitalism really so impossible now?

-app

[antigop]

41. a good sign is the number of speaking engagements R.D. Wolff is getting. nt

[Whisp]

22. The parties Are very different. Please!

Take a step back and think about that. Would there be SS or the many, many benefits to the people at large if it were not for Democrats. I really don't like to hear this false meme that they are both the same. Leave that saying to Anderson Cooper as he owns it he has used it so much.

What made the divide between the two parties fuzzier is it was messed up with Clinton being in the middle of both parties in the time line and in his ideology (altho I think he is far more to the right than he is to the left). He was the Goldilocks that picked juuuuust the right bowl of porridge, for himself. Not too Democratic and not too Republican. He worked both ends, for his own ends.

[Dragonfli]

27. You do realize that SS and those many benefits did not come from neoliberalism

but rather the compromise that is the economic liberalism that I advocated a return to in the very post you replied to don't you?

Try a second and third read so that you can answer what was actually written.
Clinton did not give us SS, he gave us deregulation, free trade and an attack on the safety nets you appear to wish to give the new Democrats credit for.

[Whisp]

32. I never suggested Clinton gave us SS.

or anything worthwhile at all.

[Dragonfli]

34. True, but you did seam to imply the modern Democrats

should be given credit for past ones, when they, as pointed out in the OP actually damage the fruits of that legacy and with those anti-liberal actions the legacy itself.

I love the party that brought us those things as I think you do, but we need a return to those values if we are to earn the right to reclaim our legacy. Don't you agree?

[Whisp]

36. I think I do agree.

I also think the party is returning to it's rightful duties under this administration, contrary to all the criticism thrown around. It's a long hard road what with all the damage that has been done (and a lot of that damage done during the Clinton admin).

Let us hope 2016 doesn't go back to the Clintons.

[Dragonfli]

37. I'll drink virtually to that

No Clintons or Bushs in 2016

[passiveporcupine]

11. Never liked Bill Clinton

Even though I held my nose and voted for him. I don't want to see Hillary in that spot either, because I think they think alike on economic policy.

[adirondacker]

61. Same here.

I had an uncle politician (local) that had the same condescending bullshit demeanor. They tell lies often enough that they themselves believe them.

[Romulox]

12. Between deregulation, "free" trade, and MFN China, we live in the world Bill Clinton made.

[cprise]

16. Here is an org that might actually change politics...

http://mayone.us

Its an anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC started by a highly-regarded corruption expert, Lawrence Lessig.

[appal_jack]

30. Looks promising! nt

[cprise]

38. You can see his TED speech here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=189787

[betterdemsonly]

20. Hopefully good friend Tina Brown's letter

is an indication Bill and Hillary know the neoliberal ship has left the harbor and are preparing for retirement.

[Enthusiast]

23. K&R

[antigop]

28. careful...you'll be called a "hater" or a "basher" nt

[L0oniX]

47. I had a post hidden for insulting the Clintons ...and those kinds of jurors make DU suck.

F*cking worshippers.

[cantbeserious]

31. Bill Clinton - The Best Rebulican Lite Presdsident Of The Modern Era

eom

[Warpy]

35. Those are all reasons not to want Clinton II

Business as usual is killing us.

[nashville_brook]

45. +1

[woo me with science]

54. +10000 And to vet our candidates carefully

to exclude any more corporate warmongers, Trojan horses, and Republicans in Democrat suits.

[antigop]

39. thanks for nothing, Bill. nt

[progressoid]

42. “Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

I don't disagree, but I wonder how Greenspan qualifies that.

[99Forever]

44. I will vote my principles.

My principles do not include the name Clinton or any of their corporate cronies.

[woo me with science]

62. [phone]

[woo me with science]

50. K&R Excellent callout of the hypocrisy, lies, and Orwellian messaging

that comprises so much of corporate politics today.

Excellent, excellent post.

[TBF]

51. NAFTA -

NAFTA at 20: One Million U.S. Jobs Lost, Higher Income Inequality

My New Year's celebrations this year were haunted by memories of January 1, 1994 -- the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. I remember crying that day, thinking about the proud men and women in union halls across America, the Mexican campesinos and the inspiring Canadian activists I had met during the fight against NAFTA, and hoping desperately that our dire predictions would be proved wrong.

They were not. In short order, the damage started. And, we started to document it.

For NAFTA's unhappy 20th anniversary, Public Citizen has published a report that details the wreckage. Not only did promises made by NAFTA's proponents not materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite ...

Much more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one-million-u_b_4550207.html

[woo me with science]

53. Have to kick again.

For reality and the necessary smashing of delusions and Third Way propaganda.

Nothing changes until we are honest about what this party has become under corporate purchase.

[antigop]

57. you are correct, woo. Things will not improve until people recognize the damage the DLC

and the Third Way have caused.

[Octafish]

55. UBS proves it's buy-partisanship, loving both Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton.

Since the repeal of Glass-Steagal, they've specialized in all kinds of Wealth Management:

http://financialservicesinc.ubs.com/revitalizingamerica/SenatorPhilGramm.html

[woo me with science]

56. +1

[appal_jack]

59. Being wealthy enough to buy both parties opens up options. nt.

[woo me with science]

58. kick

[2banon]

60. Excellent OP, Excellent Discussion..

When I see Op like this responded with intelligent responses, it gives me hope. I need me some hope these days, especially around here! Thank you one and all! I wish i can kick everyone's posts!