The Tragedy of Hillary Clinton (and Her Generation)

02/12/2016 11:14 am ET | Updated 15 hours ago

• Charles Ferguson

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No matter who wins the Democratic nomination, it is now utterly clear that the Clinton team disastrously misjudged the American electorate. This is not an accident. It derives from the Clintons' gradual evolution from idealists to hardened insiders, America's decline into crony capitalism, and the Democratic establishment's betrayal of its base, over the last forty years. In the most recent debate Hillary tried to pivot, and she might just pull it off, in image though not in reality.

Hillary Clinton started her political life as a reformer in an era when one could still be an ethical insider, and when American banking, politics, and academia had not yet been completely deformed by money. Her life since has been a succession of brutally hard lessons, compromises, and eventually betrayals. Some were her own fault, some were her husband's, while others came from the pressures and incentives generated by the growing corruption of America's establishment over the last generation.

Hillary Clinton's first compromise was her choice of husband. Bill Clinton's brilliance, ambition, charm, and dishonesty showed early, and Hillary made many sacrifices for him - moving to Arkansas, becoming the lone female partner of the Rose law firm -- and joining Walmart's board of directors. She supported her family (Bill Clinton's salary as Arkansas governor was under $40,000), tolerated her husband's tasteless infidelities, and helped plan his ascent to the White House.

The White House was brutal to both of them. They had no money. The Secret Service agents charged with protecting their lives had served Republicans for the previous twelve years; some were openly disdainful, even to the media. The Clintons also made avoidable errors, antagonizing the press and Congress unnecessarily. The first term was rough; the second, horrific. A Republican House of Representatives, a disgusting pig of a Special Prosecutor trolling through their private lives, Monica Lewinsky, impeachment, the Asian financial crisis, Bosnia, failed Mideast peace talks. His legal expenses were huge -- lawsuits by Paula Jones, the Special Prosecutor's investigations, impeachment. When the Clintons left the White House, their net worth was something like negative $10 million.

One must feel enormous sympathy for Mrs. Clinton in these circumstances. However, one must also note several extremely disturbing trends dating from the same period -- trends which have intensified since. The Clinton Administration gave Wall Street everything it wanted, even when there were clear signs of danger. It repealed Glass-Steagall, stopped enforcing laws and regulations, pushed developing nations to open their financial markets to Wall Street, and banned the regulation of derivatives. Huge banking mergers went unchallenged, even when their legality was questionable and their economic benefits even more so. Capital gains taxes were sharply reduced.

Aggressive deregulation and lax enforcement continued even as abuses and crises mounted. Wall Street committed rampant fraud in promoting Internet stocks; nothing was done. The collapse of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund signaled that derivatives did need to be regulated, but Larry Summers and Robert Rubin arrogantly overruled the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Asian financial crisis signaled clearly that finance was running amok; but the Clinton administration resisted reform.

And then there was money. The Clintons left the White House determined never to be at anyone's mercy ever again. When Hillary Clinton ran for Senate in 2000, she made it clear that her husband's unqualified support was required. Aided by the President, Hillary Clinton raised more money than anyone ever had -- so much that Al Gore's Presidential campaign was infuriated by the diversion of resources, which some feel may have cost Gore the Presidency. In January 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned four criminals in a New York Hasidic enclave whose one thousand residents had voted nearly unanimously for Hillary.

After leaving office, Bill Clinton embraced money-making with a vengeance, making speeches to nearly anyone who would pay. After Hillary left the State Department, she did the same thing. Following the 2008 financial crisis, both Clintons remained remarkably silent about Wall Street deregulation, reregulation, and, especially, about the question of criminal prosecution. When pressed on these matters, Bill Clinton was thoroughly dishonest. Several years ago, I conversed with him about the subject. When I asked about his deregulation of derivatives, he lied beautifully, claiming that he was forced into it against his will. Neither Bill nor Hillary ever called for criminal prosecutions or for breaking up the banks.

The Clintons were accepting reality. American business was becoming concentrated and ultra-powerful, and its money was flooding politics and academia. In banking, defense, telecommunications, drugs, energy, industrial food, and airlines, unchallenged mergers led to consolidation and enormous profits - profits only possible through deregulation and, frequently, criminal behavior. The financial crisis of 2008 was the most spectacular result, but there are many others, including the prices that Americans pay for health care, air travel, and even Internet access.
The Clintons are insiders now, their personal wealth of over $50 million derived nearly entirely from the wealthy and powerful. And it shows. Hillary's gradualism in health care carefully protects health-related industries. Her proposals for financial regulation do not include putting executives in jail, or confiscating the wealth they obtained by theft. Ironically, Bernie Sanders apparently feels that he must tread carefully here, because being fully direct about this issue would require criticizing President Obama. So Mrs. Clinton might just get away with pretending to be the reformer she once was.

But which she isn't anymore. She is imprisoned by the money, politics, husband, supporters, foundation, friends, privileges, and opportunities. It is hard to give up being an insider. The parties aren't as good, you don't fly on private jets, you can't meet absolutely anyone you want, and you don't always win. But America might just be entering a new era of real social and economic upheaval, with demands for reform on a scale not seen since the Depression. And despite all her brilliance and experience, Mrs. Clinton is now on the wrong side. Not nearly as far over on the wrong side as Trump, Cruz, and reactionary Republicans, but on the wrong side nonetheless. And this is, in fact, a real tragedy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/the-tragedy-of-hillary-cl_b_9218908.html

Joseph Palermo's Brilliant Analysis and Support for Bernie Sanders

"Bernie Sanders is calling for a new political realignment, not a continuation of the "bipartisan" compromises of the last 20 years that have screwed over the working class. The Bill Clinton and Barack Obama years have coincided with the consistent slide into economic ruin for a large chunk of the once sizable American middle class. After a pair of two-term Democratic presidents what do progressives really have to cheer about with regard to domestic policy other than Mitt Romney's health care reform?

"Hillary Clinton apparently believes that by promising to preside competently over this continuous downward slide of the middle class she can win just enough votes to get elected.

"Labor unions are weaker, the safety net is in tatters, the profiteers and asset strippers in our health care, prison, and education systems have become richer than ever. And more working people today are feeling economically insecure. We all know we've been ripped off and the economic "gains" we keep hearing about since the "recovery" haven't trickled down.

Has it ever occurred to the Democratic Party establishment that the wipeout midterm elections of 1994 and 2010 might have something to do with their standard bearer not being brave enough to go big and go bold even when the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress?

The movement that Bernie Sanders is working so hard to lead might finally give us the experiment we've been waiting for: let's find out if taking bold progressive stands can win the presidency and keep the Democratic base energized through the midterms of 2018 and offer the country a different result. We've got nothing to lose for trying.

Bernie is doing exactly what I hoped I would see one day: The Democratic primaries utilized to present a strong critique of the excesses of American capitalism. After the Great Recession destroyed the livelihoods of so many people it's not enough to point to job numbers and say that things have gotten better.

Things are better than they were during the height of the Great Recession. But we've also seen a qualitative shift away from good paying jobs with benefits to McJobs and the "gig" economy where workers earn "chump change." We also live in a period where Congress no longer responds to the will of the people and the Republican attack on the social safety net marches on.

Long ago the Koch brothers and Wall Street decided to wage class warfare against working people. It's time to fight back. We don't know if the "political revolution" that Bernie Sanders talks about will happen because nobody has tried it yet.

All we've had since Bill Clinton and his "New Democrats" are milquetoast leaders supping at the same trough of corporate money and willing to water down there own demands even before beginning to "negotiate" with the right-wing opposition.

Fifty percent of millennials believe the American dream is over. Yet they very quickly transformed the country's attitude toward gay marriage and marijuana. Maybe they can do the same with economic justice.

The cynicism of the Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings that Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans greeted with glee might have created an unpredictable backlash. There is widespread revulsion towards an activist Supreme Court that has turned the country over to a corporate oligarchy. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act added insult to injury.

Following two terms of the nation's first African-American president, it's impossible to gauge the effect on the Republicans' "Southern Strategy." In this first post-Obama presidential election all bets are off. The nation now might be ready to finish what Obama started, defy the political prognosticators, and realign our politics in a more progressive configuration.

When Bernie Sanders denounces the control of big money over our politics and the unwarranted power of the millionaire and billionaire class, he's not just speaking truth to power, he's mobilizing the "people with the pitchforks" that Obama said early on he was protecting the bankers against.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/the-movement-has-found-it_b_9215900.html

DEMOCRATIC DEBATE LAST NIGHT

Watch the debate last night? Hillary attacked Bernie's Single Payer plan as destroying Obamacare and starting all over. She said our medical system was established after WWII, with employers and insurance companies working together to provide health care, and we should build on that rather than have another big argument about single payer. 

BERNIE DID NOT POINT OUT THAT HILLARY'S MOTIVE IS PROTECTING THE PROFITS AND RELEVANCE OF THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY. THE STATUS QUO IS FUNDING HER CAMPAIGN.

Elizabeth Warren Defends Sanders Against Goldman Sachs' Blankfein Attack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM1FDhXrSPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM1FDhXrSPw

Bernie Sanders and Buddha--by Ed Conley

I watched the debate last night, and today I digest what I saw and today's reverberations. I'm reminded of the Buddha Dharma and the Four Noble Truths that summarize Buddhas whole teaching. First, you recognize there is suffering in the system, that America is suffering and all our attempts to avoid suffering has been futile. The system we have itself is suffering.

Second Truth is that there is a cause. This is Bernie's Dharma: the cause is the imbalance in wealth and the corruption of money. Chasing other problems without addressing this fundamental cause of suffering will be to no avail. If we remove this cause, the effects of this cause will be removed.

The Third Truth is that there is balance, and Sanders points to what all other developed nations have done to achieve social justice.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the path to create a revolution, a intention, a movement in the people that will move towards activating the first three truths: recognize the true cause, and by addressing the true cause remove the effect of that cause, which is the third truth of social balance.

The whole thrust of Sander's message is to keep focused on the true cause of America's social suffering. The forces that have invested in this imbalance of wealth and power, consciously or unconsciously, want us to chase false causes.

The tactic of conservatism is a fragmentation of causes, which divides the power of the people into value tribes each chasing one of the fragments. Divided, the people have no power. But united and focusing on the true cause of their suffering, the people can evoke great change suddenly.

This is the Dharma of the Buddha. See the true cause of your suffering and the cause is removed. The cause of our suffering is the misperception of the cause of our suffering. Seeing is liberating action. Seeing is not incremental. Seeing sees the whole at once. Seeing is awareness of the totality. Seeing does not see fragments; Seeing itself is whole.

The message of Sanders is not to incrementally manage change but to See the cause of our inability to change. Life is change. Life is progressive. Life, human life, is Seeing. America has lost touch with its life—which is the people. Sanders is the voice crying in the wilderness of false causes: See the true cause and we will be free.

Sanders is not a person or a candidate, a fix to our problems. Sanders is an Idea that is going viral. When conditions are right for a truth, all the institutional defense mechanisms begin to shake and tremble. For a nation that has been deceived for decades, seeing the truth, finally, is like getting cured of cancer.

This election is helping us the people see our American patterns, our American Karma. Our Ground Hog Day. All the candidates except Sanders are awakening in the morning and hearing "I've got you Babe." Each one is going to escape the cycle. 

Sanders is not even in the cycle. He sees the karmic pattern that entraps us into prolonged value trench war. Sanders just says we can bypass the dysfunction.I'm beginning to catch a glimmer of the mythic power behind Sanders; it's the people vs the savior mythology. The ancient Hebrews were a people. God acted through the people. Christianity came along and changed the paradigm so that the people need a savior, a mediator between God and the people. 

The GOP picks up this myth and makes the GOP president the savior. Sanders is flipping the pyramid and removing the mediator. This is a Reformation, to be sure. The Savior has become corrupted in our system. He has been bought. Religion/God is held hostage by our politics.

The idea of a Political Reformation, just like the Protestant Reformation when the catholic church was removed as mediator between the people and  God, or the source of life and power of grace. The question is when Grace stop flowing, how do you get it started again? This is a spiritual question,not a political one. All politics are spiritual. 

Of course, this has been the driving question of the Religious Right, but the God they want grace from is not the people's God, which is inclusive, but the Christian God that is exclusive. Grace cannot flow when the river of the people is damned.

Ed Conley

Social Democracy

Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, measures for income redistribution, and a commitment torepresentative democracy.^[1][2][3] 

Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater egalitarian, democratic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Western and Northern Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.^[4][5][6]

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated a peaceful, evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism.^[7] However, in the post-war era, contemporary social democracy separated from the socialist movement altogether and emerged as a distinct political identity that advocated reforming rather than replacing capitalism.^[8] In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning the prior goal of abolishing the capitalist system (private property, factor markets and wage labour)^[4].

Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbinginequality, poverty, and the oppression of underprivileged groups;^[12] including support for universally-accessible public services like education, health care, workers' compensation,child care and care for the elderly.^[13] 

The social democratic movement also has strong connections with trade unions and the labour movement, and is supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend democratic decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders.^[14][15] 

The Third Way, which ostensibly aims to fuse right-wing economics with social democratic welfare policies, is a major ideology that developed in the 1990s and is sometimes associated with social democratic parties, but some analysts have instead characterized the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement.^[16]

Washington Post Article on Clinton Donors

Clinton blasts Wall Street, but still draws millions in contributio

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Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has now drawn more support for her races from Wall Street than her husband, former president Bill Clinton, did for his campaigns. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

By Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Anu Narayanswamy February 4 at 6:00 AM    

Even as Hillary Clinton has stepped up her rhetorical assault on Wall Street, her campaign and allied super PACs have continued to rake in millions from the financial sector, a sign of her deep and lasting relationships with banking and investment titans.

Through the end of December, donors at hedge funds, banks, insurance companies and other financial-services firms had given at least $21.4 million to support Clinton’s 2016 presidential run — more than one of every 10 dollars of the $157.8 million contributed to back her bid, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by The Washington Post.

The contributions helped Clinton reach a fundraising milestone: By the end of 2015, she had brought in more money from the financial sector during her four federal campaigns than her husband did during his quarter-century political career.

Campaign 2016  Email Updates

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In all, donors from Wall Street and other financial-services firms have given $44.1 million to support Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and allied super PACs, compared with $39.7 million in backing that former president Bill Clinton received from the industry, according to campaign-finance records dating back to 1974 that have been compiled by The Post.

Nearly half of the financial-sector donations made to support Hillary Clinton’s current presidential run have come from just two wealthy financiers: billionaire investor George Soros, who gave $7 million last year to the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action; and hedge-fund manager S. Donald Sussman, who gave the group $2.5 million.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blasts-wall-street-but-still-draws-millions-in-contributions/2016/02/04/05e1be00-c9c2-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab993f_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_clintonwallst-7am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/2/watch_bernie_sanders_says_iowa_is

Reich on Huffingtonpost

It Takes a Movement

 02/02/2016 11:28 am ET | Updated 1 hour ago

• Robert ReichChancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; author, 'Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few''

PAUL TAYLOR VIA GETTY IMAGES

In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, derided him.

"The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect," shesaid, sarcastically, adding "I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be.

Fast forward eight years. "I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, 'We shall do this, and we shall do that,'" Clintonsaid recently in response to Bernie Sanders's proposals. "That ain't the real world we're living in."

So what's possible in "the real world we're living in?"

There are two dominant views about how presidents accomplish fundamental change.

The first might be called the "deal-maker-in-chief," by which presidents threaten or buy off powerful opponents.

Barack Obama got the Affordable Care Act this way - gaining the support of the pharmaceutical industry, for example, by promising them far more business and guaranteeing that Medicare wouldn't use its vast bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices.

But such deals can be expensive to the public (the tab for the pharmaceutical exemption is about $16 billion a year), and they don't really change the allocation of power. They just allow powerful interests to cash in.

The costs of such deals in "the world we're living in" are likely to be even higher now. Powerful interests are more powerful than ever thanks to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision opening the floodgates to big money.

Which takes us to the second view about how presidents accomplish big things that powerful interests don't want: by mobilizing the public to demand them and penalize politicians who don't heed those demands.

Teddy Roosevelt got a progressive income tax, limits on corporate campaign contributions, regulation of foods and drugs, and the dissolution of giant trusts - not because he was a great dealmaker but because he added fuel to growing public demands for such changes.

It was at a point in American history similar to our own. Giant corporations and a handful of wealthy people dominated American democracy. The lackeys of the "robber barons" literally placed sacks of cash on the desks of pliant legislators.

The American public was angry and frustrated. Roosevelt channeled that anger and frustration into support of initiatives that altered the structure of power in America. He used the office of the president - his "bully pulpit," as he called it - to galvanize political action.

Could Hillary Clinton do the same? Could Bernie Sanders?

Clinton fashions her prospective presidency as a continuation of Obama's. Surely Obama understood the importance of mobilizing the public against the moneyed interests. After all, he had once been a community organizer.

After the 2008 election he even turned his election campaign into a new organization called "Organizing for America" (now dubbed "Organizing for Action"), explicitly designed to harness his grassroots support.

So why did Obama end up relying more on deal-making than public mobilization? Because he thought he needed big money for his 2012 campaign.

Despite OFA's public claims (in mailings, it promised to secure the "future of the progressive movement"), it morphed into a top-down campaign organization to raise big money.

In the interim, Citizens United had freed "independent" groups like OFA to raise almost unlimited funds, but retained limits on the size of contributions to formal political parties.

That's the heart of problem. No candidate or president can mobilize the public against the dominance of the moneyed interests while being dependent on their money. And no candidate or president can hope to break the connection between wealth and power without mobilizing the public.

(A personal note: A few years ago OFA wanted to screen around America the movie Jake Kornbluth and I did about widening inequality, called "Inequality for All" - but only on condition we delete two minutes identifying big Democratic donors. We refused. They wouldn't show it.)

In short, "the real world we're living in" right now won't allow fundamental change of the sort we need. It takes a movement.

Such a movement is at the heart of the Sanders campaign. The passion that's fueling it isn't really about Bernie Sanders. Had Elizabeth Warren run, the same passion would be there for her.

It's about standing up to the moneyed interests and restoring our democracy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/it-takes-a-movement_1_b_9136086.html