POLITICS OCTOBER 1, 2011
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October 3rd marks the twentieth anniversary of Bill Clinton’s announcement of his candidacy for the presidency. The distance of time permits some perspective on what Clinton was attempting to do when he set out on his quest.
Since the end of World War II, every Democrat who has sought the presidency has attempted to update the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In announcing his candidacy Clinton called his reformed liberalism “a new covenant.” By this he meant a revitalized connection between government and the citizenry that rejected the Reagan Republican idea of laissez-faire, but that also reemphasized what Clinton called “the solid, middle-class virtues of hard work, individual responsibility, family, community, and faith.” The phrase “new covenant” did not stick, but the idea behind it would become the guiding light of the Clinton administration for the ensuing eight years. During that time, it offered Democrats and the nation at large a reopened path to the future that had been blocked since the distempers of the late 1960s and, in particular, since the tragedies of 1968.
Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of the civil rights movement in 1964, followed by the presidential candidacy of George Wallace four years later, had insured the movement of the great bulk of the white South into the Republican Party. And, in 1968, the Democratic Party’s crack-up over Vietnam and racial disorder opened what became a deep division between relatively affluent and highly-educated northern “new politics” liberals and the party’s traditional blue-collar and white rural liberal base. That division fed the growing impression that liberalism was an elitist conceit dedicated to draining the middle-class in favor of the poor—Reagan’s “welfare queen.”
Despite the Republicans’ crisis over Watergate and the brief liberal resurgence in 1974, the Democrats’ divisions remained. The party increasingly became identified with its “progressive” wing, devoted to expanding the rights of racial and sexual minorities as well as women, reflexively opposed to American military operations abroad, and skeptical about if not hostile to conventional cultural taboos. Traditional Democrats—more interested in lunch-pail economic issues than in identity politics—remained essential to the party’s success but felt increasingly distant from it. Jimmy Carter tried to combine elements of the new and the old, but shaped a technocratic, anti-political, anti-Washington frame of mind that undercut both his administration’s relations with the Democratic Congress and the public’s confidence in the White House’s competence. After 1980, Democratic liberalism remained directionless and the party as a whole lacked credibility.
In his announcement speech, Clinton offered a fresh political synthesis of liberal themes. He forthrightly endorsed the legacy of the civil rights movement and of the feminist victories of the 1970s, including, on the abortion issue, a woman’s individual right to choose. With a Southerner’s experience, he emphasized how divisions over race, still being inflamed by Republicans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, operated to reinforce privilege. That perception led directly to Clinton’s insistence that the interests of the ordinary middle-class ought no longer to be pitted against aspiring minorities. This false opposition, he said, had for too long been a key to conservative political domination. What he did not say—and did not need to—was that some elements of his own party still beheld Middle America with suspicion, if not contempt, as the caricatured “Reagan Democrats” embittered at the cultural impact of the 1960s and taking refuge in backward provincialism.
Clinton aimed to win back alienated traditional Democrats not by shifting to the right, as some pundits have claimed, but by retrieving basic political principles enunciated by FDR and those successful liberal Democrats who followed him. Nothing cost Clinton more political capital inside the left wing of his party than his advocacy of welfare reform. “We should expect people to move from welfare rolls to work rolls,” he proclaimed in his announcement speech. “We should give them the skills they need to succeed and then insist that they move into the workforce to become productive members of society.” These were fighting words to some liberal Democrats. Yet in 1936, in a rip-roaring attack on Republican callousness, FDR had defended those forced on the relief rolls while adding, “Of course we will provide useful work for the needy unemployed; we prefer useful work to the pauperism of a dole.” As a matter of policy, Clinton aimed to return liberalism to its basic ideas, not to forsake its ideals. And in doing so, he would help accomplish the crucial political task of removing from national politics one of the issues that had helped Republicans inflame the middle class against the poor, especially the minority poor, as well as against the Democratic Party.
In order to overcome the Reagan ascendency Democrats needed to advance the rights secured during the 1960s while returning to more traditional political bedrock. To a remarkable extent, Clinton delivered on that promise. In doing so, he made the nation comfortable once again with the idea that the well-being and future prospects of most Americans require strong and effective leadership by the federal government. It was a matter of common sense, Governor Clinton said in 1991: “Government’s responsibility is to create more opportunity for everybody, and our responsibility is to make the most of it.” These are Democratic ideas, and liberal ones. Bill Clinton reaffirmed, updated, and carried them forward into the twenty-first century.
Sean Wilentz is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of Bob Dylan in America.
35 comments
Thank you Professor Wilentz. Please make sure Nancy Pelosi gets a copy...and Obama's OFA, which seems determined to win re-election based on identity politics. Such regression is destroying the Democratic Party.
- K2K
October 1, 2011 at 1:09am
Obama's "liberalism" is all about appeasing the Neanderthal left: racial rent seekers, public employee unions, feminists who won't take yes for an answer, open border extremists. Some of the Obamistas, such as Thomas Friedman, openly declare that the masses are too stupid to appreciate the wisdom of their New Yorker and New York Times reading superiors, and that we need to replace Constitutional government by a a ruling junta of enlightened liberals. The theory that "progressivism" is a form of fascism is being confirmed under Obama. Progressivism = df. rule by pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, who, whatever their academic credentials, don't have an ounce of common sense.
- bulbman1066
October 1, 2011 at 2:57am
There are several ways to interpret this article. One way, the negative way, is as a finger-wagging I told you so. I defended Wilentz when he continued openly to support Hillary, even as he attacked Obama in TNR and elsewhere, after Obama had secured the nomination. Who, I asked then, besides Wilentz, the author of the masterpiece on democracy in America, would know more about liberalism (in the classical sense) and how to promote it. And I have often stated in comments that progressives have much in common with the middle class, including those who have been drawn to the tea party in part because of the failure of Democrats to reach out to the middle class by addressing and emphasizing their concerns. I would be inconsistent if now I were to criticize Wilentz for essentially making the same case. Of course, he could have made the case without reminding readers of his past support for Hillary and criticism of Obama. But like I said, who besides Wilentz knows more about liberalism. So I interpret this article in a positive way, as excellent advice to Democrats as we approach the next election.
- rayward
October 1, 2011 at 8:22am
I guess the above commenters saw what they wanted to see in Wilentz's piece. I didn't find it all that useful. There's no actual political analysis of how Clinton won against Bush and Perot, what his coalition was, or how he related to a more diverse Democratic Congressional caucus. Thus, I find the essay a failure. I mean, if Clinton saving liberalism from itself was exemplified in an ending of welfare so that, whatever conservatives said, it was no longer a 2x4 that Republicans could use to bash Democrats over the head, why did he only do that in 1996, and why was it from a position of weakness? Looking back, it seems that Clinton tried to get some liberal priorities fresh out of the gate, wasn't very successful, and Democrats still lost the paradigmatic realignment election in 1994. A win on the 1993 budget and higher taxes, but a loss on health care reform and hasty retreat on gays in the military. I was a tyke then, so I am probably missing a host of middle-scale successes, but it seems to me that Clinton's leadership enduringly lost Congress for the Democrats, and that he lost Congress to Gingrich. Gingrich was not Dole, so there was no way Clinton could hope that a coalition of Democrats and liberal Republicans would pass his agenda. To a large extent, then, Clinton's Democratic legacy beyond winning two elections and presiding over an economic boom must be measured by his Democratic successes in 1993-1995 and his failure to complete the handover to Gore in 2000. The Democrats started from a position of strength in 1993, with commanding majorities in both House and Senate. The degree to which we lowered the bar with respect to Clinton's record is astounding, but not totally surprising, since until 2008 his years in office constituted 2/3 of the Democratic presidential terms since 1968.
- chaitless
October 1, 2011 at 8:45am
I wrote my post before I saw rayward's. I think one reasonable thing to take away from the piece is that Clinton won on his economic success. The only policy Wilentz mentions is welfare reform--Clinton was able to defuse this socioeconomic millstone with minimal damage to his base. But this makes sense: Clinton won by delivering the fruits of an economic rebound to the middle class, with leftovers accruing to the working class and working poor. Economically, Democrats are the party of 85% of the population (which, conveniently, is the SS tax cutoff); Republicans of about 2%, with the upper middle class able to shift allegiances if Republican tax cuts give them a disproportionate share. If Democrats were able to force Republicans onto this turf, Republicans would be shut out of the White House. To a large extent, their failure to succeed rests on coalitional breakdowns when social issues are introduced. This is why K2K's comment makes no sense. I guess DADT repeal and health care reform count as identity politics, but they were both pretty popular positions when proposed--and Republicans fiendishly sowed enmity among their base to reject a patchwork of plans hatched at the Heritage Foundation. You don't call appealing to majorities across party lines identity politics. In attacking these plans, Republicans engaged in identity politics, trying to whip up a frenzy among their base, which is a minority.
- chaitless
October 1, 2011 at 9:07am
"I guess the above commenters saw what they wanted to see in Wilentz's piece." They see what they want to see in pretty much everything. That's how they arrived at such ridiculous worldviews, by not having at least one foot on the ground. You point out a good example with the "identity politics" mislabel and we don't even have to parse the Frankenstein's monster of right-wing talking points that is bulb's post to know that he's just regurgitating what he's previously read or heard from his favorite misanthropes. Concerning things of actual substance, I never thought welfare-to-work was a bad idea but came to this conclusion well after the fact since, like chaitless, I was too young to pay attention, politically, to the Clinton years. The only thing that ever concerned me about the change was the potential that there may not be jobs to move to once welfare ran out. It was mostly all fine and dandy when Clinton was president and the job market was more or less booming with opportunity but what of today's job market? A better idea, in my mind, was to include a trigger where if the unemployment rate rose to above a certain level (say, 7%) the "-to-work" part would disappear until the rate dropped below the trigger. After all, can we really expect someone to get a job that doesn't exist? Naturally, this would spur howls of protest from the reactionaries who would no doubt claim that it would slow or eliminate any potential recovery from high unemployment by encouraging people not to work indefinitely. They say this even now, despite the reasonable changes Clinton signed into law. Many people seem to have the idea in their heads that welfare provides truly enough sustenance to live comfortably, even well. Witness reality: http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/indicators08/apa.shtml#ftanf2 The average per-recipient monthly benefits (each member of the family in question) for 2006 was $154. That means for a family of four, they would live on an income of $616 a month or $154 a week. You tell me how far that will go at the grocery store with two or three kids to feed. Even at its height in 1987-88, the average benefits were only the equivalent of $238 per month, probably enough to keep you afloat but only if you ate ramen and skipped meals. Also note the caption below that graph where it says that benefits have not increased to keep pace with inflation and that this is largely the source of the decline. Things are getting harder and harder for someone who is out of work and the reactionaries only get more and more angry about it. I suppose the idea that they are not their brother's keeper becomes stronger with each repetition.
- tealeaves
October 1, 2011 at 11:13am
I'd be really interested to see how many individuals were moved from welfare to SSI: from a personal perspective it seems Clinton/Gingrich's major accomplishment turned out to be an exercise in cost shifting within the federal budget. I see it as a failure based on the model that training versus education was the ticket to self sufficiency and, like many other functions of government, was "privatized" to contractors. Tealeaves' comments bring an important perspective as well; the SSI level for most states is set at $674 in 2011, a number equating to 75% of the Federal Poverty limit.
- sevenfiftyfour
October 1, 2011 at 12:00pm
I will forever be highly suspicious view of this guy's intellectual honesty because of his shockingly dishonest behavior during the 2008 Democratic primary - but OK. Bad memories can be left back there somewhere and I too love ill Clinton. I too think he's one of the the best Presidents America has ever had, certainly in my lifetime. What surprises me about this article is the gaping hole Wilenz left in the middle of his argument. By far, Bill Clinton's biggest accomplishment in changing the Democratic party was in transforming (in perception and in actuality) us in to the party of economic prosperity and fiscal responsibilty. This started with his brutally fought for, historic Deficit Reduction Bill of 1991 (passed with not one Republican vote, natch), which led the way for the consequent Clinton Boom. He started thinking of his economic plan when he was still Governor and contributed to a terrific book defining it called "The Plan," by Bob Woodward. Bill Clinton paid off the deficit created and built up by his fiscally irresponsible Republican predecessors and despite what happened next, left office with a 60% approval rating due to the economy he made possible. We know what happened next... Welfare reform is small potatoes compared to that.
- WandreyCer
October 1, 2011 at 12:19pm
I'll never forget his SOTU speeches, so often begun with "My friends, the state of our Union is strong..." Sigh, I was not too young to be aware during the Clinton years - I lived in DC for a big chunk of them, what an era. The Republicans went barmy then, really rancid, and they've only gone downhill from there.
- WandreyCer
October 1, 2011 at 12:24pm
I haven't even read this article yet, but the pop-ups on this website are getting more and more offensive and intrusive. If things are really that bad, why don't you just raise the subscription price?
- mlottman
October 1, 2011 at 1:17pm
thank you mlottman - not a single pop-up at the moment. I thought that Shell Oil pop-up was going to devour TNR :) My comment about today's Dems relying on identity politics has nothing to do with policies - only the way they are trying to get re-elected.
- K2K
October 1, 2011 at 1:30pm
K2K - examples?
- WandreyCer
October 1, 2011 at 1:47pm
Willenz is much better when he's sticking to history (as he is here). Still - he's completely wrong. Bill Clinton saved liberalism (or didn't, depending on who you ask) because he's a charismatic speaker. He connected with people viscerally. He was talented. Now - he only passed one major piece of legislation, and it was Welfare Reform (something I support, but something that is in direct opposition with liberalism). That being said, shouldn't he admit that he is a long time family friend of the Clintons? I'll go ahead and admit my bias: I despise Sean Willenz. He's a hack who predicted that Obama wouldn't win in 2008. The guy is a self-proclaimed liberal, but right before Obama was officially nominated, he wrote an article in Newsweek bemoaning that the media hadn't focused on Obama's connections to William Ayers. This guy is another bitter Clintonite-hack who can't get over 2008. And I'm here to point it out, once again.
- Virginia Centrist
October 1, 2011 at 4:10pm
"Governor Clinton said in 1991: “Government’s responsibility is to create more opportunity for everybody, and our responsibility is to make the most of it.” These are Democratic ideas, and liberal ones. Bill Clinton reaffirmed, updated, and carried them forward into the twenty-first century." No, he didn't. His personal behavior, which can only be described as outrageous, (getting a blow job in the Oval office? mindboggling, how could have done that without dozens of people being aware, it is not like someone can just slip into the Oval office) led directly to the election of George Bush and the economic cataclysm that we are now living under. He was like a Doctor who cured America's cold, but on his way out gave us AIDS (Bush). Don't get me wrong, I also blame America as much, but Wilentz refuses to acknowledge the central, ruinous aspect of Clinton, ignoring it completely. (I mean, Welfare reform??? Yeah, what was that like, 1% of the budget) Wilentz will never get it, I suspect Bill does (and man alive I am sure Hillary and Gore get it)
- blackton
October 1, 2011 at 6:30pm
Wandrey writes: "By far, Bill Clinton's biggest accomplishment in changing the Democratic party was in transforming (in perception and in actuality) us in to the party of economic prosperity and fiscal responsibilty." Indeed. It was a time where those that were making craploads of money didn't have to apologize for it. The top 5% did EXTREMELY well under Clinton. Yes, the bottom 80% did well too (though not nearly as well). Clinton minted more millionaires than any other president. Ever. He slashed the crap out of cap gains taxes, increased effective rates by a few %, and then focused the government on fiscal responsibility and let the markets reap the benefits. Today's dems are so focused on the the false god of equality above all else, and in the process of ensuring some pain for the top 5%, they've delivered disproportionate pain for the bottom 80%. Check that. Not disproportionate. Unprecedented is a better word. What happened under Clinton could only be done under a democrat president. Had the same thing happened under a republican, it'd be remembered as a time of massive greed and disproportionate growth for the upper few %. Ditto on the welfare reform.
- seattleeng
October 1, 2011 at 11:21pm
What the essay missed is that the parameters of debate are entirely the product of the right. Whatever success Clinton had or Obama will have is likely tactical. So we have today's reality in which it is taken as a given that Medicare and SS at the nat'l level and Medicaid and the pensions of cops/firemen/teachers at the state level are "unafordable" or "unsustainable." Here is the (rhetorical) $64k question - in order to win among traditional Democrats (i.e. working & middle class whites) why should the party have to kick people off welfare rolls? In other words, if I am a white guy earning in the 30-70 range, non-college, living in a comfortable working class suburb or small town why should I care about "welfare queens" in an urban enviornment? I fully realize the answer to this question is cultural. This archetype shouldn't care, but as long as he does when it comes to working class white votes the Dems are in a race to beg for the votes of whomever apparently hates poor people the least. I worry this not only may be a lost cause but sadly may have been lost the minute the Dems' populist mandate was broken by the split over civil rights. The dream of uniting working and middle class families of all backgrounds - black, white, urban, rural - under a progressive banner appears as impossible today as it was in the 90s or 60s. Of course, the changing demographics of this country may make the point moot. Still, it's sad commentary on the state of the Dems and the success of 40+ years of GOP disinformation.
- saxeadam
October 1, 2011 at 11:39pm
saxeadam writes: "In other words, if I am a white guy earning in the 30-70 range, non-college, living in a comfortable working class suburb or small town why should I care about "welfare queens" in an urban enviornment?" Because they are paying for it. Some round numbers: * Roughly $1T of our economy is welfare in some way shape or form. That is about 25-30% the size of the government * A $60K earner is paying an effective tax rate of around 14%, so the $60K earner is paying around $8.4K to Uncle Sam. * With 25% of the $8.4K being welfare, that means the $60K earner is paying about $2100 to keep the welfare queen afloat. Do you remember recently the able-bodied 29 year old that enjoyed wearing a diaper and being fed by his mother from a bottle? "Baby Stanley" was a capable furniture designer, and also ran an internet support group. And he was a welfare recipient. And he promised to commit suicide if his SS payments stopped. That is what your $60K earner is paying for. And yet you believe this is just cultural? You really are happy a working class couple are paying $2K a year so that a long line of able-bodied folks with their hands out don't have to work?
- seattleeng
October 2, 2011 at 1:00am
Seattle - the reason Clinton paid off the Deficit was that he also raised taxes, with every Republican in the country becoming hysterical, as usual. All Obama wants to do is go back to Clinton rates, when the economy flourished, and this President is suddenly Karl Marx for it - so dumb. Bush slashed taxes on the rich and the country tanked, but then ideolouges are impervious to facts. This is why the deficit will never be dealt with in a mature manner with a Repulican in office, let alone a growing economy.
- WandreyCer
October 2, 2011 at 10:08am
Welfare reform took welfare somewhat off the table in terms of a target for conservative resentment mongering -- but they just shifted the target to the working poor. All those "lucky duckies" who earn top little and don't (as a result of Republican policies (Earned Income Credit) that were initiated to counter demand for increases in the minimum wage, and W's increase in the dependent child exemption) pay income taxes. As bulbman and others demonstrate, "conservatives" will always find targets for their resentment. And always blame the Democrats, even for policies initiated by Republicans. That's because resentment, not patriotism, not problem solving, not social conscience, not a sense of civic responsibility and duty, etc., is the only thing that excites their interest in politics.
- esmense
October 2, 2011 at 10:16am
amen esmense.
- WandreyCer
October 2, 2011 at 11:02am
Esmense - totally right. Oddly enough, when we eliminated minorities/the poor as the dumb white people's scapegoat, they simply moved on to teachers.
- Virginia Centrist
October 2, 2011 at 12:33pm
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/the-race-card-president-130931858.html in response to 10/01/2011 - 1:47pm EDT | WandreyCer : "K2K - examples?" The end, for me.
- K2K
October 2, 2011 at 12:54pm
K2K - what a ridiculous article, it proves nothing but that conservatives stand for little except bitter, self-pitying, petty resentment. Some random guy (a seriously rotten writer with the maturity of a petulant 12 year old) reading over a reporters shoulder at a Tea Party rally proves something about Obama how again? What an idiot! Quoting the one time in his entire life of public service Obama dared to even mention anything about his race proves what again? How many hundreds of Democrats have run for office in the last few years and you find the one time one extreme person representing COMPTON says something and it proves what? It proves your biases, just like the "reporter" you link. I'm afraid this article proves only how obsessed with Obama's race you are K2K, how quick you are to peg him with your biases. By any objective measure, Obama was utter silenced with this sort of bullying on race long ago, that any mention at all equals victimology. Why. I suppose Rubio is pegged for the VP slot because of his dazzling smile. Yeah right.
- WandreyCer
October 2, 2011 at 1:24pm
Except, of course - this beautiful example of Obama's leadership, his historic speech on race, which I'm sure you'll find fault with. It doesn't matter. Race exists - ignoring it or attacking anyone who mentions it is weird, unnatural. If anyone plays the victim ins this country, conservatives of any race wrote the book and continue to daily. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU
- WandreyCer
October 2, 2011 at 1:29pm
Wandrey writes: "Seattle - the reason Clinton paid off the Deficit was that he also raised taxes" No, not true at all. Clinton effective tax rates on the wealthy were only 2% higher than today. Do you really think that is all that is standing between total financial ruin and nirvana? Is the dichotomy really that simple in your mind? You think if the wealthy paid just 2% more all this would fixed? You are ignoring the fact that government receipts SKYROCKETED at the end of the 90's. Far in excess of what the CBO ever predicted in 1994 and 1995. This was the tech bubble. And it reinforces what I've said before: Lay a foundation for the wealthy to do well, and everyone else will benefit (including the government). Clinton did just that. Obama is not doing that. Even if Obama put the taxes back to Clinton's rates we'd still be the exact same (and probably worse) boat. Of course, don't take my word for it. Obama himself decided not to raise taxes on the wealthy for fear of further tanking the economy.
- seattleeng
October 2, 2011 at 3:31pm
It wasn't just the tech bubble. It was also historic growth rates for several years, independent of that bubble--3.5 percent or so from the mid-90s. The rich pay only a slightly lower rate now because their incomes have grown, pushing them into a higher bracket. The top rate, where rich people have much or most of their money (it starts at 379, 150) is now 35 percent. Under Clinton's rates, it'd be 39.6 percent (and there's the second highest bracket, too, which also changed, as well as capital gains, which changed much more drastically). I'm guessing that, without the Bush cuts, the effective rates would be more than 3 or 3.5 percent higher. But you don't have to go by that. It's easy to calculate how much money the Bush Tax Cuts would cost the treasury this decade, and I've never seen a number under 2 trillion.
- Curran1
October 2, 2011 at 4:48pm
Current writes: "I'm guessing that, without the Bush cuts, the effective rates would be more than 3 or 3.5 percent higher" No, you can see the effective tax rates in the CBO data for high earners. The top 0.01% paid 31.5% in 2005, 32% in 2000, 40.9% in 1995, 31.4% in 1990, 29.2% in 1985. Yes, after Bush's tax cut, the top 0.01% paid 0.5% less. And yes, the top 0.01% saw their tax rate slide from 40.9% in 1995 to 32% in 2000. www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/98xx/doc9884/12-23-EffectiveTaxRates_Letter.pdf In the link above, you are looking for table 1. Now, how many here knew that the average rates on the top 0.01% dropped so much UNDER Clinton? And how many here new that the average rates on the top 0.01% were effectively same between Clinton's last year and AFTER Bush's tax cut on the wealth? This is why you all need me here. How else do you learn all this stuff? :) Curran, the tax cuts on the wealthy are $70B in any one year, and the tax cuts on "everyone else" is around $220B. So, yes, you can add them up in to a scary number over a long time. But at the end of the day, the tax cuts on the wealthy just aren't a big reason for our problems right now. They are $70B out of nearly $4T. Just a few %. If you want to look over a decade, the tax cuts on the wealthy are around $700B in revenue, but that pales next to a $40T total gov spend. Again, it's just a few %.
- seattleeng
October 2, 2011 at 5:38pm
I don't know for sure what Wilentz is getting at here, but Obama not only became the Democratic candidate but won the presidential election too, netting states that nobody could have believed possible. You don't do that by courting minorities. Perhaps that Obama success was in itself an indirect consequence of Clinton defusing the identity politics bomb that the Dems had been carrying around during the '70s and '80s -- I'd have no argument with that analysis, and Obama has, if anything, been more distant to minority constituencies than Clinton was. Looking at it in a comparative context, however, Obama has done pretty well in the face of a contracting rather than an expanding economy. Clinton was/is very good at connecting with people but all in all he was luckier in his period of history.
- ironyroad
October 2, 2011 at 6:42pm
Seattle, this is ridiculous. See http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-caused-dot-com-bubble-to-begin-and.html The top effective rates went down because capital gains were slashed in 1997. In retrospect, that was not a very good idea: the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 effectively helped turn the dot-com boom into a bubble (rich people with lots more money plowed it into investments that were riding high, and this pushed the Nasdaq above 5000) and sowed the seeds for the housing bubble (it exempted homes from capital gains up to $500K, making flipping more lucrative). In any case, your arguments on the Bush tax cuts don't pass muster. Bush wanted to cut taxes, mainly for rich people and corporations in his coalition. The tax cuts for everyone else were only included to make the plan palatable to some Democrats in Congress and the American people in general. And even then, they still weren't very excited about the tax cuts. The needle of public opinion didn't move that much for all the hype of his press tour to sell them. (See http://books.google.com/books?id=VnVVHr6kys4C&pg=PA120&lpg=PA121&ots=gVkANKscMx&dq=bush+hardhat+tax+cuts+the+big+con , going from page 120 to as far you want to read). The tax cuts aren't supposed to be there, and the least justifiable ones are those for the wealthy. They should go first.
- chaitless
October 2, 2011 at 8:16pm
Chaitless, you are aware that the dollar value of the Bush tax cuts went 70% of the bottom 90%, and just 10% to the top 10%. Right? That is why Obama couldn't bring himself to let them expire. If he did, it would have been a massive increase on the bottom 90%. And you are reading what I've written about cap gains under Clinton. Good. Now, can you please explain to Wandrey et al that it ROCKED to be rich under Clinton? That the ultra wealthy saw their effective tax rate go WAY down? And that the well to do only saw a few % more in taxes? The top 0.01% under Clinton saw enormous tax cuts. Much greater than what they saw under Bush. Now can we put this meme to bed that Clinton balanced the budgets by raising taxes? He did not. It was a white hot economy, fueled by massive cuts to cap gains.
- seattleeng
October 2, 2011 at 8:43pm
irony writes: "You don't do that by courting minorities" No, you do it by letting every group believe that you will take up their cause, and back that up with a media that will not ask a question any harder than "How does it feel to be so awesome..." As I've said before, the anti-war, I-hate-global-warming, screw-the-rich, Bush-is-Hitler, don't-wire-tap-me, no-more-torture crowd will not turn out with such enthusiasm again. They all feel screwed.
- seattleeng
October 2, 2011 at 8:51pm
Firstly, you are aware that 70% is less than 90%, right? That's why your numbers don't add up. In reality, about 80% went to the bottom 98% and 20% went to the top 2%. This is why Republicans sell it as a tax rise on "all Americans" or nothing. It's patently unfair that a tax cut that was supposed to put money in everyone's pockets put a lot more money in rich people's pockets than everyone else's. We can't separate the $700B that goes only to the top 2% from the $3000B that goes to everyone? That makes no sense. Rich people will still get the effects of tax cuts under the top bracket, so it's not even as if they are being completely reverted to the Clinton income rates. In other news, the TRA of 1997 was a terrible bill. Clinton effectively balanced the budget by refusing to lower taxes as much as Republicans wanted. They clamoured for tax cuts day-in and day-out and got some in 1997. They still pushed for more once the surplus began to materialize. The capital gains tax cuts helped along the dot-com bubble (although the deficit would have disappeared without them) and the eventual recession at its bust was the wallpaper for Bush's tax cuts, which killed any hope of structural budget balance, did little effective economic stimulus, and were part and parcel with a deregulatory regime that culminated in the worst recession since the Great Depression. Of course, all that history is probably just going to cause you to double down and say that tax cuts for the rich were the sole reason that the economy didn't go into a Great Depression from 1995 to the present.
- chaitless
October 2, 2011 at 9:04pm
"As I've said before, the anti-war, I-hate-global-warming, screw-the-rich, Bush-is-Hitler, don't-wire-tap-me, no-more-torture crowd will not turn out with such enthusiasm again." You are in favor of torture, seattle, as well as wire-tapping and war? Useful to know. In any case, they will turn out, believe me, because they will have either Perry to think about, or whatever screaming nutbag Romney takes as his running mate. Now that will get people off their asses.
- ironyroad
October 2, 2011 at 11:07pm
We hope.
- Sophia
October 3, 2011 at 2:36am
With all due respect to the mostly reputable comments, Wilentz is correct in his assertion if a bit stingy with the supporting argument. Clinton is sold short here, drastically so in the comments. Leaving aside semantic problems with "liberal" as a synonym for "leftist", Clinton saved a lot more than "liberalism". He probably saved a half-million lives in Haiti and the Former Yugoslavia, simultaneously burying the deadly political perception that Dems couldn't do anything right when it came to the use of force in foreign policy. His effect on the perception that government was incapable of handling our fiscal affairs properly, and that its efforts to help the poor had produced a nightmare scenario of unintended consequences, was similarly profound. His ability to work with a Congress that was most of the time out to get him skillfully enough to produce meaningful achievements was another testamonial to the art of the possible. Treating conservative ideas not as heresy, but as the honest opinions of many thoughtful Americans deserving of a fair hearing and support if there was a good pragmatic reason for doing so, made Clinton the most successful President since FDR. He may not have saved "liberalism", but he sure as Hell saved the Democrats, and such thinking could do so again.
- Robert Powell
October 3, 2011 at 9:05am