lollardfish | (no subject)

Klien has been pretty consistently smart on these issues.

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Also this by Jeffrey Feldman.

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I'm ever dubious that Obama will be able to carry out his visions.

And I have a certain faith in Hillary's ability to play the very tricky game of politics with the other kids in the sandbox.

I think we need more then a visionary when it comes down to it.

And drawing comparison and commonality with Reagan inspires only fear in me.

Ok.

But I think you are profoundly mis-reading what Obama said about Reagan.

based on the fact that that scares me?

Well, I guess I don't understand how the fact that Obama acknowledges Reagan's ability to transform American politics ... without espousing any of Reagan's ideas ... could possibly be scary.

Reagan did transform American politics. I hope someone can learn from what Reagan did to transform it back again. Does that scare you? Because that's basically what Obama says.

Or am I misreading it?

No, you're not.

Sorry, let me try again. I clearly am being annoying when I talk about politics and will shortly create a filter.

Why does Obama's invocation of Reagan's methods scare you?

Because it reinforces my concern that Obama is more conservative then I'm comfortable with. I like to think he comes across more conservative more as a political move but this tells me otherwise.

How does it tell you otherwise? Because he uses the "R"-word? (Reagan)? I guess I just don't see how speaking a fundamental truth about recent American political history is indicative one way or the other about his views.

He may well be more conservative than he appears, but so is Clinton.

How is Clinton more conservative then she appears?

Well, she's a war hawk. And since she's running on her experience as the First Lady and is going to hire the Clinton economic team again, we can look at what the Clinton economic team did - which enact, effectively, was a moderate to conservative pro-business (not pro-worker) agenda.

And if you're going to use positive observations of Reagan as a measure of one's conservative status, Clinton fails by the same measure she used on Obama. Can't remember which book, but there was a passage in there that clearly praised Reagan.

Ya I don't really understand her stance on the war stuff. I wish it was clear why she supported it in the beginning and why she want's to stir up the dust in Iran.

And just for the record I'm not trying to be argumentative, so much as share ideas, positives and negatives about both candidates because really it's now moot and we will get one or the other. And there are clearly good and bad things about each of them.

Really all this natter makes me all the sadder Edwards didn't fair better. Somehow I think he inhabited some of the best qualities of both Clinton and Obama.

What specifically did the Clinton team do that made them a pro-business agenda?

I'm not sure I can answer that without further research, other than their dismantling of the welfare program. My perspective on "welfare to work" is that it forced poor people to take low-paying jobs instead of going to school/training, didn't help them out of poverty, didn't provide childcare to people being forced out of welfare, and otherwise just moved the poverty around to "working" poverty. The old welfare system sucked. The new system didn't solve anything, but made Clinton look better and took "welfare moms" out of the lexicon of the Right's attack machine.

I can tell you more clearly what they didn't do: They didn't fix corporate tax loopholes. They didn't find ways to take the insane prosperity of the mid-90s and invest that money towards education (they put in the current loan system though. It works to get people through school, but still hurts on the back end, as you and I know). They didn't speak out about CEO greed. They didn't improve schools or the urban arena (I don't know that they could do this, but they certainly didn't).

Instead, they aligned the Dems with business and reaped the fundraising advantage. It worked pretty well, but I also think that they neutered the progressive voices and that made it harder to retake the House.

For me it's a question of emphasis not of major differences. Bush's economic plan was the real pro-corporate crony plan (scheme maybe is a better word than plan). But it's not the emphasis I wanted. This is what I think Clinton's time on the WalMart board shows - not that she's an evil corporate schemer, but that she believes you can co-opt the corporate agenda and make it work for you. It has worked for her. It's just not where I'd like the emphasis to be.

As for the war - my guess is that she's a political creature and feels, probably rightly, that a woman has to be tougher than her male rivals on national security. So she's tougher. Tougher means more willing to bomb people.

I don't find focussing on what they didn't do particularly useful.

Why not? A president sets agenda. They focus on some things. If they ignore HUGE MASSIVE PROBLEMS because they are inconvenient or hard, isn't that just as significant?

It's easy to poke at all the things an administration didn't do. And I imagine it is damn hard to get done what they do. Look at how damned hard they worked to get everyone health care. And they failed after years of good effort. It's hard to say it's just as significant when you don't know why they chose not to address those HUGE MASSIVE PROBLEMS.

I think their agenda was pretty clear in all ways: Go get more money for the Democratic party. Ride the wave of prosperity and try to achieve incremental change. I think you absolutely can judge politicians by both their actions and their inactions.

Bill Clinton, "The era of big government is over." That's Ronald Reagan talking.

Hopefully H. Clinton will be different, but there's no real reason to trust that she will. Faith that she will, belief and hope that she will, sure. But her past doesn't show that to me.

So what did the administration do that you liked?

The Clintons have always been pretty much aligned economically with the pro-business, anti-union Democratic Leadership Council.

But... Hillary has chosen Barney Frank as her economic advisor, and he's always struck me as a good egg. So maybe that's a good sign.

That would be nice to think. It's interesting, a lot of people are cynical about Obama because he's vague, and they say that the beautiful rhetoric cannot be real. I am cynical in exactly the other way about Clinton who is specific, but looking at the track record, I find it highly unlikely that much of the agenda will be followed.

That said, I'm sure she'd be fine.

Perhaps not so much tells but raises the concern.

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of so-called "liberal"* people in politics end up being more conservative than they appear, because the logistics of politicking are a lot harder to navigate and influence than the ideals they're trying to uphold.

People can genuinely want change; it doesn't mean they will be able to effect it.

(* I say so-called "liberal" not because I don't believe they have liberal values, but because I dislike the label, what it's come to represent in American culture, and how it misinterprets the real meaning of liberal)

Progressive is the new liberal.

I had taken to using progressive, but this post by Matthew Yglesias and this article by Eric Alterman have me reconsidering it. News outlets will continue to use liberal. Conservatives have a lot invested in their smear campaign against the word, so they'll keep using it as a weapon. The trick is to make it an ineffective weapon. I think that can only be done by owning the word, stating proudly and clearly the core values of liberalism (which are closer to what most people believe than I think they realize). It took a deliberate long-term campaign for the conservatives to tarnish the term. It'll take just as much care and effort to shine it up again. But it can and should be done.

I'd love to see it happen. My cynicism says that it won't.

That's true and something I think about a lot.

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Ezra Klein

Clinton vs. Obama

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profoundly mis-reading

Re: profoundly mis-reading

Re: profoundly mis-reading

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logistics of politicking.....