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| Guest/Oped |
This mornings commentary hits home David M. Shribman is the former political editor of the Salem Evening News a local paper back in my home state of Massachusetts who hails from a town called Swampscott, Massachusetts. Just as scary Mr.Shribman is currently the executive editor of the left wing crap paper here in Pittsburgh, Pa the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Well the New York Times tapped him to write his filth in an OPED this morning entitled "How to Save Clintonism" to be completely honest I don't even think Democrats want Clintonism saved whatever that is lol.
Shribman starts "Pittsburgh — SINCE their premiere on the national stage a quarter-century ago, Hillary and Bill Clinton have been the closest of partners in politics. Through some rocky times they have turned to each other on vital projects, as in 1993, when Mr. Clinton asked his wife to lead an ultimately failed effort to establish universal health care. And then last week, Mrs. Clinton, her campaign straining to build momentum, said that her husband would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy” in a second Clinton White House.
With that announcement, Mrs. Clinton underscored that the couple had partnered in another joint venture: trying to refurbish Clintonism, the political creed that defined his two terms as president.
Celebrated by its supporters as a synonym for peace, prosperity and a common-sense centrism, Clintonism was — and is still — derided by its detractors on the left as corporatism and on the right as a shorthand for scandal and impeachable offenses. As Mrs. Clinton tries to unite her fractious party and turn her focus to Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, she is also looking to what can be salvaged and what must be discarded from her husband’s legacy.
God help us the Clinton political creed and common sense centrism what is Shribman smoking LMAO.
It goes on "What, then, might Clintonism 2.0 look like?
In its original form, Clintonism was an effort to pull the Democratic Party — which had lost five of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 — back into political relevance. Forged out of Mr. Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas, it involved more than just tweaking Democratic orthodoxy. Mr. Clinton wanted to help big corporations thrive, favored trade policies that unions loathed and spoke of reining in welfare and fighting crime.
The approach brought him victory over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and then helped him navigate a hostile, Republican-controlled Congress after 1994. His health care agenda was blocked, but he managed to “triangulate” between Republicans and Democrats well enough to enact other major parts of his agenda, from a trade deal with Mexico and Canada to welfare reform to a crime bill.
But Clintonism 1.0, designed to carve out a middle ground, may prove obsolete in 2016, when the center might not hold. Senator Bernie Sanders is trying to push Mrs. Clinton left on the issues of income disparity, student loan debt and health care costs. And even as Mr. Trump assails the liberal goal of immigration reform, he has also voiced the frustration of white working-class voters who, like liberal Sanders partisans, are angry about stagnating wages and trade.
Bernie doesn't have to try and push Hillary to the left they both are already there.
It ends "So even as Mrs. Clinton anoints the former president as her partner on economic issues, she is moving unmistakably away from some of his major policies.
Mr. Clinton was an ardent supporter of international trade agreements and regarded the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta, as one of the signature achievements of his two terms. In signing the pact at a 1993 ceremony he called it “a force for social progress as well as economic growth.”
But both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump assert that free trade has destroyed American jobs. As a result of their criticism, Mrs. Clinton, who once described the Trans-Pacific Partisanship negotiated by Mr. Obama as the “gold standard” of international trade pacts, has withdrawn her support for it.
Mrs. Clinton is also on the defensive about her ties to Wall Street and about the high-paid speeches she delivered to Goldman Sachs. Two decades ago, those ties were symbols of the party’s openness to business interests. But now Mr. Sanders is attacking them as tarnished emblems of the party’s drift from its New Deal heritage and its roots in the working and middle classes of American life. And Mr. Trump has jumped on her Goldman speeches as evidence of hypocrisy and secretiveness.
Clintonism 1.0 also has created concerns about Mrs. Clinton’s ability to energize core Democratic voters. Faced with criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement, she has called for ending “the era of mass incarceration” of black and Latino youths that was created in part by the 1994 crime bill that her husband signed and that she supported as first lady. Even so, Mrs. Clinton seems to have won the black vote handily throughout the primaries, according to exit poll data.
Young voters in particular seem unmoved by the moderate promise of Clintonism — Mrs. Clinton won only 17 percent of voters 18 to 29 in last month’s primary in the swing state of Pennsylvania. And while she was in the vanguard of the last phase of feminism, she seems less relevant to the new generation of young women who are critical to a new Clinton electoral coalition.
The results of the Kentucky primary last week — where Mrs. Clinton barely squeaked out a victory over Mr. Sanders after having prevailed there by 35 percentage points over Barack Obama in 2008 — underscore just how much she is struggling to consolidate the party’s base. The persistent disenchantment with her campaign among Sanders voters raises questions about whether Mrs. Clinton might look to expand her vote by reaching out to moderate Republicans and independents who are uncomfortable with Mr. Trump.
It does not help that Mrs. Clinton lacks her husband’s panache, one of their many stylistic differences.
“He relishes campaigning, and she does it because she has to,” said Edward G. Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a longtime ally. But he insists that the two have the same outlook and ideology. “They are similar in their values,” Mr. Rendell said in a recent interview, “and they are similar in what they care about.”
Those shared values are in many ways at the core of Clintonism 1.0 and 2.0. Both Clintons are animated not just by a center-left approach to campaigning and governing, but also a devout faith in expertise, particularly of the academic sort, and in the power of policy. And both are dedicated globalists: As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton holds the record for number of countries visited in office, 112, while her husband made twice as many international trips as Ronald Reagan and three times as many as Richard Nixon.
It is in that global outlook that Clintonism might benefit Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. At a time when Mr. Trump is vowing to restrict immigration and trade, and also reduce support for NATO and other international organizations that have been bulwarks of American foreign policy, Mrs. Clinton may find support among moderate Republicans and business interests for her vision of a more open, internationalist America.
Will that be enough to overcome weariness with the very idea of another Clinton White House?
If there was “Adams fatigue” for John Quincy Adams in 1824 because his father had been president, it didn’t prevent his election. Neither did “Bush fatigue” stop George W. Bush from winning a hair-thin victory in 2000 — though it might have helped vanquish his brother Jeb in the primaries this year.
But for Mrs. Clinton the challenge is probably greater because, unlike the children of presidents, she was there by her husband’s side, his partner, during two turbulent terms. So while she can share in much of the credit for the achievements of Clintonism, she must also bear the weight of its mistakes.
“The brand has been badgered,” said L. Sandy Maisel, a Colby College political scientist. “The people who have been saying terrible things about the Clintons have been saying them for 24 years now.So even as Mrs. Clinton anoints the former president as her partner on economic issues, she is moving unmistakably away from some of his major policies.
I don't know about everyone else but Ive had enough of both of these used car salesman meaning the Clintons
I don't know about everyone else but Ive had enough of both of these used car salesman meaning the Clintons
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