I began doing these commentaries in 2005. In 2006, after the Democrats took control of Congress, I delivered a commentary noting that a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party was brewing. On the one hand there were a set of policies proposed and adopted by the “triangulator” Bill Clinton. (Triangulation referred to his ability to oppose most of his own party and the Republicans at the same time – first playing one then the other against his two adversaries.) These policies included NAFTA, which would not have passed without Republican support. They included so-called welfare reform, which Senator Daniel Moynihan correctly identified as abolition and not reform. During Clinton’s eight years there was no improvement in opportunities for workers to join unions. There was however, ridiculous focus on budget balance and what turned out to be disastrous financial deregulation? Despite record job growth and for a few years very low rates of unemployment, inequality actually increased during the entire 8 year period.
In my commentary, I called the attention of listeners to the populist approach of people such as the newly elected Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb Which approach would come to dominate within the Democratic Party.
Well, we know now, after 8 years of George W. Bush’s farcical re-run of Ronald Reagan’s policies and almost 8 years of very moderate efforts to ameliorate the situation under Obama, that it was the Clinton approach to policy that prevailed – if not within the rank and file then within the governing elite of the Democratic Party.
[Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? has just published Listen Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? (Metropolitan Books, 2016) in which he explains the Democratic Party’s retreat from its New Deal, pro-labor roots, to the anti-labor party of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Joel Rogers and Thomas Ferguson identified the same changes 30 years ago in Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics published in 1986. And of course, my book, Surrender, How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution sounded the same warning.]
For those who still believe President Obama came into office with a progressive, liberal agenda, we need only look at what he proposed and accomplished. Even in its initial proposal, the stimulus package was woefully inadequate. The Affordable Care Act abandoned the public option and the debate leading up to its creation never even considered the single-payer option. Obama gets praise for the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill but it was much too weak. Not only were the banker-crooks never punished, the large financial institutions have only gotten larger. Whatever efforts Obama made to reduce inequality were relatively ineffective except for certain taxes and subsidies built into Affordable Care Act. And – of course, Obama has doubled-down on trade deals in the spirit of NAFTA (though his preferred candidate (Hillary) Clinton opposes it.) In short --- Bill Clinton era policies seem to be what the Democratic Party’s elite wants.
Just to remind everyone of what I have reiterated a number of times in these commentaries. NAFTA and other so-called “free trade” deals are NOT in fact about freeing up trade. Most of these agreements actually strengthen patent and copyright monopolies. In the specific case of pharmaceuticals, these monopolies cost American consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars a year. For details see, for example, “NAFTA and free trade do not belong in the same sentence.” Dean Baker, April 17, 2012 available at http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentencehttp://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nafta-and-free-trade-do-not-belong-in-the-same-sentence
Enter Bernie Sanders. His campaign has posed an important dilemma for the Hillary Clinton campaign in particular and the Democratic Party establishment in general. How do they get the Sanders supporters on board to defeat Donald Trump while at the same time preserving their bona fides with the super-rich? There is no question that the Clinton campaign is tempted to reach out to those business leaders and Republicans who might be inclined to support her who are inclined to support her because they are afraid of a Trump presidency. How do they do that and at the same time persuade Sanders supporters, many of whom do not trust her at all, to rally around her to protect the nation from a Trump presidency?
Well guess what – they can’t do both and maintain any credibility. They’ve got to fish or cut bait.
This is where the platform issues at the Democratic Party convention come to the fore. Bernie Sanders and his supporters want a platform that reflects what the majority of Democrats, including the vast majority of Hillary Clinton supporters, believe in. They want a $15 an hour minimum wage. They support Sander’s proposals for Medicare for all and free college tuition. They want to break up the big banks. They want an end to trade deals like NAFTA.
[the polling data on all of these is clear]
Since the rank and file of Hillary supporters want what Sanders wants, it should be a no-brainer for the Democrats to AGREE on those proposals for the platform and then go ahead and RUN ON that platform. This would be the best way to get skeptical Sanders supporters to realize that a Hillary Clinton administration would not be a “back to the 90s” re-run of the policies of Bill Clinton’s administration.
But it cannot stop with the platform. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, he met with a number of prominent labor leaders, with whom he had worked as Governor of New York. They came with a variety of policy proposals. Roosevelt told them: "I agree with you. Now MAKE me do it." This quote is embedded in an article from 2009 that bespoke an optimism which was destroyed by the following 7 years – (See John Nichols --- How to Push Obama – The Progressive (January, 2009) http://www.progressive.org/mag/nichols0109.html)
Applying the force that FDR called for back in 1932 is what Sanders and Clinton supporters need to do AFTER crafting a progressive Democratic Party platform from which to challenge Donald Trump. They need to keep the energy and spirit and participation that Sanders has engendered organized for the long struggle to FORCE a President Hillary Clinton to implement policies that – quite frankly --- she would not be inclined to do if left to her own devices.
She might be tempted to reach out to so-called “moderate” Republicans and “responsible” business leaders to protect THEM from a Trump Presidency and adopt policies that throw the majority of rank and file democrats under the bus. The organized Sanders and rank and file Clinton supporters at the Democratic Convention and beyond must be prepared to FORCE her to DO THE RIGHT THING.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author (with Howard Sherman) of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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