Wednesday Open Thread [3.18.15]

Josh Marshall: “The relationship between the Clintons and the press and the political class generally is codependent, toxic and frankly ridiculous on both sides – with extreme self-protection and legalism on one hand [The Clinton’s] and hyperbole, nonsense and wolf-crying penalties on the other [the press and pundits]. Like any perennial and bad relationship it is exhausting to watch and generally impossible to pick apart where one part ends and other starts. Which is a reaction to the other, which is first? I have no idea anymore. It hardly matters.”

The public doesn’t care. Despite the controversy over her use of private email while Secretary of State, a new CNN/ORC poll finds 57% of Americans say Hillary Clinton is someone they’d be proud to have as their president.

Jonathan Ladd: “With the media feeding frenzy the past two weeks over Hillary Clinton maintaining a private e-mail account while she was secretary of state, the 1990s dysfunctional marriage between the Clintons and the DC press has come roaring back—no lessons learned or maturity built up on either side since Bill was president. On the Clinton side, there is a hostility and lack of openness to the press that is self-defeating. It provokes the negative coverage it intends to avoid. On the press side, the DC establishment media always seems to believe that the current scandal will be the one to bring down the Clintons, all evidence to the contrary.”

James Pindell says Jeb Bush may be the Zen Candidate. Kill me now. Right now.

“Typically these candidates fit into one of about four categories when they first visit. There are the eager and ambitious who want to wow you with a lot of fake energy. There are those who hope to charm you and pretend to learn the names of your children. There are the ones who are just going through the paces, aloof. And there are those who clearly have no idea what they are doing, though they would really like someone to tell them. Bush’s father was in the charm group. His brother was in the wow category. But Jeb is like nothing I have ever seen.

I have struggled to articulate what he is actually like as a candidate ever since I left Iowa last weekend. The best I can come up with is this: Jeb Bush is zen… He is confident, but not arrogant. He is aware, but understated. He is engaging and can charm, but he still has a bit of distance. He is not in a hurry, but he is constantly on the move.”

Personally I think a radish has more personality than Jeb Bush, but that is just me.

In thinking about how the First Clinton Presidency relates to the Obama Era, and how that might continue into the Second Clinton Presidency, Steven Waldman argues that the two political clans have been good for each other, and in fact Bill Clinton was the visionary who set the ambitious agenda while Obama the centrist technocrat accomplished the goals Clinton set out to accomplish.

Obama completed and expanded on the Clinton presidency in key ways. The most obvious is passing health care when Clinton couldn’t. That’s a big what-Joe-Biden-said. There’s more: Clinton started a modest-sized “direct lending” program that allowed college students to borrow straight from the government, bypassing banks; Obama got the banks out entirely, saving taxpayers billions in the process. Clinton proposed raising fuel efficiency standards for cars from 27.5 mph to 40. He failed. Obama has successfully raised them, with a target of 55 mph by 2015. Clinton moved the military from being actively hostile to gays to the milder-but-problematic policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; Obama allowed gays to openly serve.

It is an interesting take on the relationship between the two Democrats. The one huge difference though, is that while Clinton, to the end, attempted to work with the Majority Republicans, and even signed their bills on occasion; Obama has been much more confrontational. And I like that.

At WaPo’s Wonkblog Lydia DePillis and Jim Tankersley explain that “To Fix inequality, Democrats are Pushing Unions,” including Democratic economic moderates, like Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, as well as the more progressive wing. One or the more interesting quotes in the article: “Some of us have been saying for a while that the right wing has a much greater appreciation for what unions do than Democrats and progressives do,” says Steve Rosenthal, a progressive campaign consultant who served as political director of the AFL-CIO for seven years.

Mike Lillis reports at The Hill that “Nancy Pelosi, Democrats chart their own path for 2016,” which raises concerns about message fragmentation. All of the “big tent” constituencies have to find a way to articulate their concerns in the context of the mothership message, “Democrats are the party for working families. Republicans are for the rich elite.”