No Obama is no Radical Leftist

Daniel Henniger shows that one rule holds in American politics: the Right is almost always dead wrong. His piece in the Wall Street Journal completely misconstrues who President Obama as the Right has done for 7 years.

Those who insisted that Obama was a leftist radical and 'socialist' ought to have pause now that we are seeing some stirrings of the real thing. David Brooks has perhaps begun to rethink things and recently said that he 'misses President Obama.'

Indeed, what this election primary has shown us is that we can do much worse than the affable, 'professorial Obama.'

"It is true that the Brussels bombings raise questions about whetherDonald Trump, John Kasich, Ted Cruz or yes, Hillary Clinton, would best be able to lead the world against Islamic terror. But the effect of the bombing on the presidential race has no meaning without first addressing our man in Havana and America’s twice-elected president, Barack Obama."

"Unless the campus left succeeds in its effort to tell its professors what they are allowed to think, future historians will have to account for the rise of Islamic State—in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and its future bomb sites—during the years Barack Obama held office. Either there is some connection, or it has been mere coincidence."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/antiterrorism-after-obama-1458775620

Is he really unfamiliar with the economists who tell us that correlation doesn't prove causation? If you want to know why we are where we are with ISIS today start with George W Bush's Iraq war.

But note how Hennessy tries to juxtapose two things that have nothing to do with each other: the rise of what is called not mere political correctness but the new campus 'emphatic correctness' with Obama. Is he unaware that Obama has been very critical of the this phenomenon?
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9326965/obama-political-correctness

Liberals have been very critical of the some of the excesses of emphatic correctness. While I do think there are some legitimate complains from college students I do think that a lot of it is overkill as well.

I totally agree with Jonathan Chait as well and Van Jones has said the same. You may hate everything that Trump says but the idea that you should stop him from being allowed to freely assemble is deeply disquieting.

"Reminder: Liberalism Is Working, and Marxism Has Always Failed"

"Yesterday, President Obama visited Cuba at a moment when his presidency is at an apogee, and international communism is mired in a long, terminal decline. Obama has revived the liberal project, implementing center-left reforms to end the Great Recession, reduce carbon emissions, regulate financial markets, and expand access to health insurance (health care notably having long been perhaps Cuba’s only conceivable advantage relative to the U.S.). Yet, in the United States, liberalism faces greater pressure from the left than at any time since the 1960s, when a domestic liberal presidency was destroyed by the Vietnam War."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/reminder-liberalism-is-working-marxism-failed.html

Chait is right about this as well. Indeed, Scott Sumner has now gotten pessimistic:

"Unfortunately, while France is moving away from these polices, the US is like to move some distance in their direction. Of course there are differences. Our minimum wage is still lower than in France, and our top income tax rate is closer to 50% in states like California and New York. But all the momentum is with the socialists, who are especially numerous among the younger voters."

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2016/03/socialism_is_ha.html

Of course, Sumner is a conservative or 'libertarian'-either way, he's on the Right. What he calls socialism and what liberals call socialism is a little different.

We have a very low minimum wage which certainly needs to rise. France has many of the things that American liberals would like-much longer paid vacations, a stronger safety net.

On the other hand, France has a serious strait jacket that we don't: the euro monetary system.

Sumner and liberals like me, Chait or Krugman disagree on what socialism is. This has always been the case. Liberals are for the free market but they believe it must be regulated adequately with worker protections. Or: you get the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

What will the future look like? It depends first and foremost on one thing: wages. Median wages need to go up or we will see our politics get more and more dysfunctional. Hillary has a good plan to raise wages in the Uber economy.

But it needs to be a real focus of her Administration if in the early years she may not have a Congress to work with her.