Dems Rebuild

[zoogs]

What was so good about opposing the TPP, though?

[RedDenver]

What was so good about opposing the TPP, though?

That's a different question. I'm not making a judgment on her position, but rather a comment on her economic message. Here's the part of the post above I was responding to:

People simply don't believe them when they put up someone like Clinton to deliver an economic message, even if it is heavily populist and favors the people

[Danny Bateman]

Clinton had fiscal policies, but you had to either pay attention or do some digging to find them, things that most people were wont to do when it came to Hillary Clinton.

 

She altered her healthcare platform to give a large increase to spending on Rural Health Centers. While not Bernie's Medicare for All, that pushed her further left. She also bent to adopt his free tuition pledge, which I thought was more of a populist idea, even if lots of us hated it. She had a policy that anyone from a family making under $125K could qualify for free state school tuition. Also, she had a rather distinct Wall Street message aimed at strengthening Dodd-Frank and trying to eliminate "dark money," up to and including picking a SC justice who opposed Citizens United. She flipped to being anti-TPP and talked about making sure trade worked for everyone.

 

There as some baked-in perceptions of Dems and Clinton herself that could lead folks to doubting these policies. But I sure as heck preferred her economic platform to Trump's "TPP sucks, NAFTA sucks, we're getting killed in trade, we need to bring back jobs."

That rang true for a lot of folks because they'd lived it and they believed him. I don't believe a word the guy says. And now he's finding out fixing those problems is harder than just railing against them in a rally. He's significantly backed away from key promises (leaving NAFTA, calling out China) and job creation sucked last month.

 

And of course, he's done nothing but capitulate to the desires of the ultra-wealthy so far.

 

I think the interesting point is that specific policies matter less than the public perception of the person delivering them.

[knapplc]

You had to go digging for any actual platform information last election because the airwaves were flooded with Trump nonsense, BENGHAZI!!!! and emails.

[BigRedBuster]

She altered her healthcare platform to give a large increase to spending on Rural Health Centers. Not an economic policy....it's a healthcare policy.

She also bent to adopt his free tuition pledge. Not an economic policy....it's an education policy.

She had a policy that anyone from a family making under $125K could qualify for free state school tuition. Not an economic policy....it's an education policy.

Also, she had a rather distinct Wall Street message aimed at strengthening Dodd-Frank and trying to eliminate "dark money," up to and including picking a SC justice who opposed Citizens United. You're getting closer to being an economic policy...but...still not something that gets people back to work if they don't have a job.

She flipped to being anti-TPP and talked about making sure trade worked for everyone. Clearly her closest stance that looks like an economic policy. But....she was forced into it.

[BigRedBuster]

You had to go digging for any actual platform information last election because the airwaves were flooded with Trump nonsense, BENGHAZI!!!! and emails.

Very true....everyone was focused on the loud mouthed obnoxious idiot instead of actually talking about issues.

[knapplc]

 

You had to go digging for any actual platform information last election because the airwaves were flooded with Trump nonsense, BENGHAZI!!!! and emails.

Very true....everyone was focused on the loud mouthed obnoxious idiot instead of actually talking about issues.

 

Or his swooning, cranky-sounding opponent.

 

Truly they were two of the most unlikable candidates in American history.

[RedDenver]

You had to go digging for any actual platform information last election because the airwaves were flooded with Trump nonsense, BENGHAZI!!!! and emails.

I can think of economic policies for both Bernie and Trump, so they were getting their message out.

 

I think you could put this into a similar argument that Clinton and/or her campaign wasn't good at messaging in general. What was her campaign message? As far as I remember, she stood for being the first woman president and not being Trump.

 

On more of a pet peeve level, "I'm With Her" is a terrible campaign motto. At least turn it around to "She's With Us".

[Danny Bateman]

But all of those policies directly affect the pocketbooks and bottom lines of real Americans. They're not macroeconomic policies, no, but they'd drastically change life on the individual and family level.

 

There's plenty more. She wanted a $275B infrastructure package, further transition towards more renewable energy - including that retraining for coal workers that she got killed for in WVa --, investments in companies that utilize profit-sharing, cutting taxes for small businesses, etc. etc. There's a LOT.

If you want, you can still go to her website and do some light reading. They created very extensive fact sheets detailing almost every policy they want done. This is a stark contrast to Trump's 1-page bullet point list of tax reform goals. Everything Clinton wanted to implement was visible on her website the whole time.

 

However, she/they got bogged down in the weeds trying to sell their message. There may have been too much. Trump certainly didn't care a lick about details, but his message struck a chord with his voters just fine.

[zoogs]

I can think of economic policies for both Bernie and Trump, so they were getting their message out.

That's unfortunate, because the Clinton campaign probably had the most credible economic advisers signing on. But you don't get brand visibility pushing moderate center-left policy. Especially if you...sound cranky, I guess.

 

You get it by shouting revolution and takin' it to Wall Street. Strategically, that's what she probably should have done, get in on that game. Of course she'd probably be seen as a pandering, cold, calculating...etc.

[commando]

judging from this past election.....dems need to find someone immature and get out there and start some rebel rousing if they want to get back in power.

[RedDenver]

 

I can think of economic policies for both Bernie and Trump, so they were getting their message out.

That's unfortunate, because the Clinton campaign probably had the most credible economic advisers signing on. But you don't get brand visibility pushing moderate center-left policy. Especially if you...sound cranky, I guess.

 

You get it by shouting revolution and takin' it to Wall Street. Strategically, that's what she probably should have done, get in on that game. Of course she'd probably be seen as a pandering, cold, calculating...etc.

 

The bold is a matter of some debate that depends greatly on how you view neo-liberal economics.

 

Regardless of economic leanings, doesn't that mean she should have been working even harder on her economic message if it was so difficult to get visibility?

[zoogs]

I don't know if I'd even call them neo-liberal. What's neo-liberal? This isn't the 90s era of Bill Clinton.

 

I'd call it "center-left non-voodoo" as in, policy not built around fantasy expectations of growth buttering up the numbers. Sadly, it's more than could be said for Bernie's policy. There were some defenses for it. I don't know.

 

Could she have run a better campaign? Probably. Given the result, it certainly seems so To take it away from Hillary a bit, though, what I'm concerned about is how viable well grounded, non-fantasy policy will ever be when it clearly gets such low visibility compared to populist rabble-rousing. I'm as sympathetic to outright socialism as anybody but I equally wouldn't dismiss everything short of that as corrupt/establishment/elite or however else Sanders or Warren in their different ways like to promote their own agenda as the only virtuous and legitimate one.

[BigRedBuster]

But all of those policies directly affect the pocketbooks and bottom lines of real Americans. They're not macroeconomic policies, no, but they'd drastically change life on the individual and family level.

 

There's plenty more. She wanted a $275B infrastructure package, further transition towards more renewable energy - including that retraining for coal workers that she got killed for in WVa --, investments in companies that utilize profit-sharing, cutting taxes for small businesses, etc. etc. There's a LOT.

 

If you want, you can still go to her website and do some light reading. They created very extensive fact sheets detailing almost every policy they want done. This is a stark contrast to Trump's 1-page bullet point list of tax reform goals. Everything Clinton wanted to implement was visible on her website the whole time.

 

However, she/they got bogged down in the weeds trying to sell their message. There may have been too much. Trump certainly didn't care a lick about details, but his message struck a chord with his voters just fine.

 

 

Maybe you're starting to point out why the Dems lost to a guy who promoted growing the economy, opening back up factories and bringing jobs back.

[RedDenver]

I don't know if I'd even call them neo-liberal. What's neo-liberal? This isn't the 90s era of Bill Clinton.

 

I'd call it "center-left non-voodoo" as in, policy not built around fantasy expectations of growth buttering up the numbers. Sadly, it's more than could be said for Bernie's policy. There were some defenses for it. I don't know.

 

Could she have run a better campaign? Probably. Given the result, it certainly seems so To take it away from Hillary a bit, though, what I'm concerned about is how viable well grounded, non-fantasy policy will ever be when it clearly gets such low visibility compared to populist rabble-rousing. I'm as sympathetic to outright socialism as anybody but I equally wouldn't dismiss everything short of that as corrupt/establishment/elite or however else Sanders or Warren in their different ways like to promote their own agenda as the only virtuous and legitimate one.

Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of neoliberalism: "Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism)[1] refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[2]:7 These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980.[10][11]"

 

If you're really interested in an analysis of the current political and economic situation, Professor Mark Blyth has some good discussions about globalism, neoliberalism, and what he calls Trumpism that can be found on youtube (but some of the clips are pretty long, but here's a good one from right after Trump got elected). This article summarizes Blyth's main points.

 

As for Bernie's economic policies, they are closely tied to Keynesian capitalism and FDR's New Deal, which dominated the US and much of the world economies for about 50 years. We can argue over whether those are good or effective policies in the 21st century but dismissing them as fantasy isn't convincing.