DL Open Thread: Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023

Coco Gauff–A Star Is Born.  So easy to root for:

Gauff was identified as a potential future champion at the age of 15, and she hauled expectations around like a sack of rocks throughout her adolescence and deep into this season, which included a first-round loss at Wimbledon in July that only increased the burden. The exact weight of which became clear when she dropped to the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium, flat on her back with such palpable, utter relief. She got to her feet, only to bend double with sobs and then knelt, her shoulders heaving and her forehead leaning on the end of her racket.

Whatever Happened To The Progressive Ideals Spouted By Bill Clinton? And To Bill Clinton?  A must-read piece:

Although no one compared the 1992 Clinton victory to FDR’s election sixty years before, there seemed to be an ideological and generational coherence to the Clinton cadre that evoked a fresh set of hopes. Democrats once again controlled the White House and the Congress after nearly two decades of frustration, defeat, and economic dislocation under every president since Richard Nixon. Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect (who would soon become disenchanted with the Clinton White House) told the same assemblage: “Words fail me in describing what an extraordinary event this is…. This is a magical moment.”

The reforms explored at the Little Rock economic summit were tangible and within an ambitious grasp. It did not seem impossible for Clinton and his allies to make health insurance nearly universal, to stimulate not just economic growth in general but specific industries and occupations that were socially and ecologically important, to manage trade so as to preserve factories and jobs, to enact a welfare reform that did not repudiate a New Deal entitlement, and even to regulate Wall Street finance. Structural reforms of this sort promised to break with Reaganite laissez-faire and renew the allegiance of blue-collar voters to the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson.

Today, however, Clinton’s presidency wins little respect.

Few liberals want to return the Democratic Party to that era because so many see his presidency as a betrayal of the progressivism that was once the hallmark of the New Deal and the Great Society. Bill Clinton was the first Democratic president since FDR to win two consecutive terms, but that accomplishment seems merely a product of his accommodation to an ideology that privileged trade liberalization, financial deregulation, and privatization of government services, while tolerating the growth of class inequalities. Clinton’s 1996 declaration that “the era of big government is over” seemingly ratified Reaganite conservatism and in the process transformed Republican politics and policy into a hegemonic ethos that liberated global finance and eviscerated Keynesian liberalism.

If Clinton and like-minded Friends of Bill were hardly neoliberals when they first occupied the White House, they had moved far in that direction by the time they departed. But this shift in policy and rhetoric was not merely a product of defeat at the hands of corporate enemies and political foes. It was also bred by the set of seductive illusions.

The Clinton administration’s assumption that a new world of technology and markets would lay the basis for both an era of prosperity and progressive statecraft proved sorely mistaken. Instead, the financialized capitalism that Bill Clinton came to champion generated inequality and crisis, opening the door to retrograde forces they had barely imagined. The path toward the management of a capitalist polity would prove far more difficult than Clinton’s partisans could imagine.

Read the whole thing.  Neoliberalism isn’t dead in Delaware, but it can be. And soon.

I saw Danelo Cavalcante drinking a Moscow Mule at Two Stones Pub, and his hair was–different.

I think AI is now writing Blue Delaware.  Perhaps it could write something for the comments section.  So that there are some.  In the spirit of charitable giving (and presumably AI),  here are three comments they might be able to use:

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You’re welcome.

(Yes, I’m low on material today.)

No Jobs? No Problem. We’ll Give You Taxpayers’ Money Anyway.  The completely-unregulated Delaware Prosperity Partnership is generous.  Hey, it’s not their money:

That changed last week when state officials implemented a new funding mechanism that allows Delaware companies to receive taxpayer grants without the promise of creating jobs.

Up to $5 million of Delaware’s Strategic Fund, the state’s main pool of incentive money, previously earmarked for business attraction and job creation can now be used on companies that aren’t boosting jobs or salaries.

State officials believe the new program will benefit Delaware by making companies here more likely to invest in upgrading their existing facilities, especially if they operate in multiple states and are choosing between them. If a multistate business is contracting operations, perhaps they will stay in Delaware if they have improved facilities, they argued.

The state’s economic development has operated under an air of confidentiality since Gov. John Carney in 2017 introduced the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, a privately run organization, to lead the state’s efforts. It replaced a state office whose activities could be unveiled through the Freedom of Information Act.

Now, that’s neoliberalism.  Perhaps GreyFox will tell us how BHL feels about that.  I’ll take the responsibility for reaching out to Matt Meyer.  Seems like a fair distribution of labor…

What do you want to talk about?