Will the Debate Be Hillary Clinton's Moment of Economic Truth?
The story so far has been Clinton tacking left on economics to take on Sanders—but at the debate, she may have to sell the messy middle.
By Peter Coy
October 12, 2015 — 9:37 AM EDT
Hillary Clinton has drifted noticeably leftward on economics to fend off attacks from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who did not enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who did. On Oct. 7 she even came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade deal that her former boss, President Barack Obama, has made a centerpiece of his second term in office. That took away a potential bludgeon from Sanders, who had battered her fence-straddling on a trade pact that he says is “designed to protect the interests of the largest multinational corporations.”
“You can see or sense a shift left relative to when she was Senator Clinton,” says Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who is an outside economic adviser to the Clinton campaign. “It's not a huge shift but it's a shift.”
But Tuesday's candidate debate in Las Vegas is likely to show that when it comes to the economy, Clinton is no Sanders. She remains a mostly centrist Democrat with a detailed set of policy proposals, while Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist who speaks in broad strokes about taking on “the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class.” Those two poll-leading candidates for the Democratic nomination will get the most scrutiny in the debate, which will also feature Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee. (Vice President Joe Biden looms as a possible challenger as well.)
The two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination are “telling very different stories about what's going wrong and how to fix it,” says Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute in New York. “Bernie is talking about CEOs and the One Percent and big finance and big corporations. Hillary's trying to thread the needle with a story that's all about that but also about opportunity and growth.”
The most extreme candidates tend to attract attention in debates, but governing happens in the messy middle. Clinton is likely to make that point, implicitly or explicitly when she takes on Sanders in Tuesday's debate. “Plans for big, new government spending, even if we think they're right on the economics, aren't going to happen,” says Heather Boushey, executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. “What could the Democrats do in the absence of a majority in Congress, and in the absence of having a magic wand?”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-12/will-the-debate-be-hillary-clinton-s-moment-of-economic-truth-
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