Obama’s Bankrupt DLC Clintonism
I keep coming back to wondering what in the world Obama is thinking. Why does he not see the Republicans for what they are?
I still cant get a satisfying answer for that, but Digby gets a little traction.
When Bush came in and blew a hole in the hard won balanced budget by giving tax cuts to millionaires, it was finally irrefutable to even the die-hards that it had all been a fools game and that the DLC experiment (pragmatic triangulation) was a failure. It was clear that the Republicans had become ideologically bankrupt political terrorists and the Democrats had basically done their dirty work for them.
Barack Obama, however, has never agreed with that. Indeed, Sargent is right that he primarily sells himself as a conciliator and a bipartisan deal maker who is doing the best he can in a hostile situation. But then Clinton did too. In fact, all Democrats have thought that since the 1980s. The problem for Obama is that unlike Clinton, the experiment in “pragmatic, non-ideological” politics in the age of GOP nihilism has already been tried. And it failed. (They may have had a nice party for a while, but the hangover is one for the books.) He’s living in the past and liberals are trying to drag him into the present.
(snip)
His stimulus program was half tax cuts. His economic advisors are mostly centrists and he has seemed to place a huge amount of faith in business to take the lead in fixing the economy. He may think he’s “a pragmatic, non-ideological” politician but what he is in practice is a centrist. And the center is not where it used to be.
And that’s why liberals and progressives are so frustrated. It’s not just that they object to centrism on an ideological basis, which they do. It’s that in this age of GOP political terrorism, centrists are effectively allies of the right wing. They foolishly thought that in a time of major economic crisis, discredited centrist and conservative ideology, a large congressional majority and a Democrat in the White House you might see just a little bit more of a push for real liberal policies. And unlike the “pragmatic” activist base of the 1990s which was sort of watching from the sidelines to see if this New Democrat thing might work and give us liberal solutions without the “baggage” of government, today’s activist base has no such illusions.
Jason, go to town: http://www.borowitzreport.com/
I’m not alone in smelling the stench of re-election in Obama’s policy choices here: nytimes – White House Memo: To Win Re-election, Obama Needs Political Center http://nyti.ms/dRUKQL
And from Meyerson’s op-ed in the WNJ today:
With an assist from outgoing Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who thoughtfully tends to the interests of Sam Walton’s heirs, they propose a huge cut in the estate tax. Income tax levels on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans will not be restored to the higher levels enacted at the start of the Clinton presidency (during which 22 million net new jobs were created) but kept at the levels to which they were reduced at the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency (during which just 7 million net new jobs were created until the downturn, which wiped them out).
The top tax rates on capital gains will remain at 15 percent – meaning, income derived from investment will continue to be taxed at a lower level than most income from wages. But money invested in American companies these days is as likely to be spent abroad as in the United States. By 2008, 48 percent of the revenue of the Standard & Poor’s leading 500 companies came from abroad – up from 32 percent in 2001, according to Business Week. For many (nominally) American companies, production is even more offshored than sales. If you invest in Apple, you’re investing in a company that employs roughly 25,000 people in the United States, even as 250,000 employees of Foxconn, China’s leading manufacturer, make Apple’s products in Shenzhen province.
The other tax breaks for capital over labor make equally little sense. Business will be allowed to expense all of its investment in plants and equipment – which would be a fine idea if American corporations weren’t already sitting on more than $1.5 trillion in cash. They’re not hurting for funds. They’re hurting for domestic customers – small businesses in particular. Our big businesses may decide to expense new facilities in China and India – an interesting way to lessen their U.S. tax bills.
Proposals that would have created jobs in America seem to have fallen by the wayside in the new tax deal. The Build America Bonds program, which enabled local governments to construct schools and roads for lower costs, is not part of the package, nor is Sen. Mark Warner’s proposal to swap out the tax cut for the rich in favor of a job-creation tax credit. Even viewing this deal as the closest thing to a stimulus package that can emerge from a Congress in which Republicans routinely thwart spending on all but the rich, it still falls far short of the 2009 stimulus – which saved millions of jobs but was nonetheless too small to really restart the economy.
The best we can say of the deal is that it largely perpetuates, and only occasionally worsens, the status quo – in particular, the three-decade status quo in which the rich get richer at ordinary Americans’ expense.
In 2008, he campaigned on the theme of “hope and change.” What theme do you think he is going to campaign on in 2012?
Yes we can. If Jim deMint says okay.
“What theme do you think he is going to campaign on in 2012?”
“I’m the best you’re gonna get.”
“Here, have another tax cut.”
Clinton vetoed Newt’s capital gains tax cut in 1995. I wouldn’t mind a little of that kind of Clintonism from Obama.
(unfortunately Clinton caved on that same cut in 1998, which turned the tech boom into a bubble)