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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Hillary Clinton, the Scooby Bus, and Certain Liberal Pundits

     Last night Chris Hayes was acting scornful about her first campaign events in Iowa as being glorified photo ops I guess. He seems to want her to give an in depth power point presentation on every issue in the world on her first day. 

    Look, I too am policy guy, but Hayes needs to get it that this is a political campaign and that the election is not for 19 months. There will be plenty of time to get into the weeds on every important issue. Can she be allowed to announce her candidacy first? Right away there;s this complaint about no policy specifics as if that's the only thing she's allowed to do-be a kind of policy specific automaton. 

   You got to understand what a political debate is. Guys like Hayes-or me for that matter-like policy specifics, we like wonkery. Yet, campaigns are kind of like Monday Night Football-meant for the casual fan as well as the wonks who do nothing but pore over stats and numbers. 

   As everyone from Greg Sargent to Paul Krugman have pointed out, any Democratic candidate is going to agree on the basic essentials with most others-ditto for any Republican candidates.

    In any case, there has never been a time in American history when the alleged personal traits of candidates mattered less. As we head into 2016, each party is quite unified on major policy issues — and these unified positions are very far from each other. The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins.


    So Hillary Clinton is officially running, to nobody’s surprise. And you know what’s coming: endless attempts to psychoanalyze the candidate, endless attempts to read significance into what she says or doesn't say about President Obama, endless thumb-sucking about her “positioning” on this or that issue.

Please pay no attention. Personality-based political analysis is always a dubious venture — in my experience, pundits are terrible judges of character. Those old enough to remember the 2000 election may also remember how we were assured that George W. Bush was a nice, affable fellow who would pursue moderate, bipartisan policies.

    For example, any Democrat would, if elected, seek to maintain the basic U.S. social insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — in essentially their current form, while also preserving and extending the Affordable Care Act. Any Republican would seek to destroy Obamacare, make deep cuts in Medicaid, and probably try to convert Medicare into avoucher system.

Any Democrat would retain the tax hikes on high-income Americans that went into effect in 2013, and possibly seek more. Any Republican would try to cut taxes on the wealthy — House Republicans plan to vote next week to repeal the estate tax — while slashing programs that aid low-income families.

   Any Democrat would try to preserve the 2010 financial reform, which has recently been looking much more effective than critics suggested. Any Republican would seek to roll it back, eliminating both consumer protection and the extra regulation applied to large, “systemically important” financial institutions.

    And any Democrat would try to move forward on climate policy, through executive action if necessary, while any Republican — whether or not he is an outright climate-science denialist — would block efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.


   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/opinion/it-takes-a-party.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=1

   Krugman nails it here-it really does take a party. As I've said a number of times recently, what we need is not a civil war among Democratic candidates were we can under some extra strength microscope figure out who is the real progressive, but rather we need to elect as many Democrats as possible. 

    Listen, I know some people make a fetish out of electoral uncertainty. 

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-paul-waldmans-fetish-for-electoral.html

    In 2016 I don't think things are very uncertain. The Democrats are pretty clear on what they want to do and the Republicans are pretty clear on what they want to do. The Democrats will run Hillary and the Republicans will run Jeb. 

    Krugman's right that in today's polarized parties, Jeb will be to the Right of Hillary on every issue. Who will win this election? I think it's pretty clear it will be Hillary. The Dems have pretty much figured out how to win Presidential elections-it's the others they have problems with. 

    The best case for Jeb is

     1. In modern American Presidential politics, it's very rare that a party holds the White House more than 8 years-since the FDR years-which of course were total outliers-only once-Bush Sr. in 1988-has a party held onto power to as long as 12 years. 

    2. The economy takes a major turn for the worse. 

    Even so, even with 2 I don't know that she can't win anyway-Obama won even though everyone thought that all Mitt Romney had to say was '4 straight years of over 8% unemployment' and he said that a lot but it didn't work. True it dipped under 8% like the last month which led to all those great conspiracy theories at the BLS. 

   Number 1 is an interesting tidbit but so what? All kinds of things have never been done until they are done. Winning after 8 years has been done though not that much. Still, the fact is it's very tough for the GOP to win a national election these days. The Dems have like 257 guaranteed electoral votes-and that number is going to increase with the continued growth of the Latino vote. 

    In addition, the current polls show her with just as big a lead over Jeb as any of the other GOP candidates, and I really don't think the name 'Bush' is going to be nearly as easy to transcend as some are claiming right now. There's a reason why no GOP politicians still in office want to be pictured with Bush-to say nothing of Cheney-Bush wasn't even welcome at the 2012 GOP convention. 

   Overall, 2016 won't be a year of great uncertainty at the Presidential level at least. Now in the Congressional races that may be different. 

    Here is one more pet peeve. Paul Waldman is thinking that the liberal groundswell is going to force Hillary to support raising he minimum wage. I'm sorry but what does he base the idea that she's opposed to raising it on?

    "Around the country today, protests will take place demanding a $15 minimum wage. That would more than double the current federal minimum of $7.25."

   "And guess what: A push for higher wages is beginning to look like a real movement, with all the possible political effects that entails."
    "Here in the nation’s capital, a new campaign is starting to put a measure on the ballot to raise the city’s minimum to $15, which would have Washington join Seattle and San Francisco, other cities that recently voted to raise their minimums to that level in stages over the next few years."
    "The more attention it gets, the more Democratic politicians will need to take a stance on this, and it seems pretty obvious which position they’re most likely to take. It’s particularly important what Hillary Clinton does, since she is very close to being the de facto leader of the Democratic Party. As Noam Scheiber explains, the $15 campaign puts pressure on Clinton to come up with a number for what she would like the minimum wage to be. President Obama has proposed raising it to $10.10, which in the face of a campaign for $15 may sound too tentative."
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/04/15/the-push-for-higher-wages-is-starting-to-look-like-a-real-movement/
     The idea that $10.10 is 'too tenative' is just silly. Waldman admits that Congress is run by a party deadset against any rise in the MW. A rise to $10.10 would be a major move-fully 50%. Ok, you can pass a $15 MW with no fuss and no muss in SF, DC or Seattle but it's a lot different trying to do such a thing overnight nationally where there is so much opposition even in going to $10.10. 
    Anyway, even these places that raised it to $15 did it incrementally which is an acknowledgment that it is possible to raise the MW too far, too fast. What would stop us from raising it to $10 today and trying to raise it to $15 later?
    This all or nothing attitude makes no sense. So what if the GOP House were willing to accept $10.10 you'd do what exactly? Say 'Hell no' and stay at $7.25. Just as there is such a thing as campaigning there is such a thing as being strategic-as some liberal pundits. forget. 
    P.S. And in all seriousness while those who know me know I'm no fan of conservative economists, it does seem that raising the MW by more than 100% conceivably could if done overnight, cost jobs. I don't think employment would be significantly hurt if the MW goes to $10.10 tomorrow, but am not so sure about $15. 
    P.S.S. Don't get me wrong, asking for more than you can realistically get may make sense sometimes-maybe in this case it does. Still, to criticize Obama for not demanding $15 is just silly. Understand that he plays a different stakes kind of game. 

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