Expectations for Obama

I think your criterion is far too one-dimensional. If Obama restores civil liberties and rule of law, prevents another depression, creates an alternative energy infrastructure, brings Iraq to as decent a conclusion as possible, brings the Bush administration to account for its misdeeds, defuses the Islamic terrorist threat whether or not this involves capturing or killing bin Laden, increases the median household income and security, works with other governments to lay the foundation for a solution to global warming, makes obsolete religious attacks on Darwinism, on gay rights, on abortion and eases racial tensions, he will have accomplished a great deal, much more than I expect of him or think I have a right to, but none of this necessarily means he will have increased the well-being of the bottom ten percent.

I would like to see more from Obama than Clinton too. I would like to see him further left on economic policy and foreign policy, and less conciliatory to the Republicans. His rhetoric is not encouraging, but to a degree circumstances may force his hand. Specifically:

1) Not pushing the “Washinton Consensus” on the world. Since that is no longer the consensus, I think this one is safe, but I’m not clear where Obama will go. I would like more Stiglitz and Reich, both of whom were suppressed under Clinton, and less Rubin and Volcker, but I don’t know if I will get it.

2) A more critical attitude towards free trade. I think this will only come if absolutely forced, but, for the time being, I think free trade is frozen: no major new agreements are coming, and none of the old ones will be substantially renegotiated.

3) Respect for Russia’s security interests and skepticism of reckless entanglements, which means not expanding NATO to their borders, or putting a missile shield in Ukraine. We didn’t accept nukes in Cuba. Not optimistic on this score because I don’t expect:

4) Willingness to confront the military. The military has just asked for another $450 billion, which seems to have no objective but to tie Obama’s hands into funding whatever they want. And he will give it: he can’t afford a fight with the military right off, and will only be able to afford it in the future if he is willing to undermine their prestige, a dangerous course.

5) Bringing the Bush admin to trial. One of the first things Clinton did was shut down ongoing investigations into the first Bush regime. Had he not done that, and knowing what we do now, a second Bush presidency would be almost unthinkable. If Congress leads on this, he may stay out of the way. He should realize that his first time will be associated with hard economic times, and he’s only going to keep the Republicans down if he is willing to rub the country’s nose in the Bush adminstration’s criminality.

6) Increase the capital gains tax. He says he will do this. It’s not just fairness. I suspect there is a correlation between a low capital gains tax and speculative bubbles.

7) Implement his health care plan. When push came to shove, Clinton was willing to toss health care under the bus to save GATT. It is not certain that he could have saved health care at that point anyway, but he could have force the Republicans to vote and put their “fingerprints” on it, which likely could have saved the Dem majority in Congress.

There’s more, but that’s enough for now.
There are others, but that’s enough.

As an achievement of Blair, I would count Peace in Northern Ireland, granting also that he stood on the shoulders of a long line of other dwarves.

Kossovo and the overthrow of Milosovic must count as a Clinton achievement. He is said to have reformed Welfare – maybe he prevented the butchery of the programme by Newt Gingrich and his cohorts.

I expect a bit more from Obama, and Martin Bento’s list looks good.

At least, Obama should be able to shift the Supreme Court centre-left from centre-right. I would like a Constitutional Amendment ruling the Unitary Executive theory of the Bush administation out of court forever. However, maybe Obama and Biden (both being Senators) can repair the rift between Legislature and Executive.

The way these wish lists are made up, it seems to me you folks in the West need a legalised corporatisation of your governance mechanisms. You, as voters, are demanding _shareholder’s rights_ from your governments. That’s downright impossible, if not fancy ridiculuous. Maybe an Executive Presidency is the pre-cursor to your Philosopher Kings whose sole purpose in life is to lead you and your fellow countrymen in the righteous path that winds left.

>> However, maybe Obama and Biden (both being Senators) can repair the rift between Legislature and Executive.

Just curious. I know only of JFK. Any other Senators who made it to the White House?

If I can go back to not being shit-scared of American foreign policy, that will be a positive outcome for me. Regarding the least well off, Obama is likely to have the will, competence and political capital to give America something resembling a half-decent healthcare system, which will in itself benefit that section of society. As for the problems depicted in The Wire, I don’t see them being resolved without the legalisation of drugs, and it is vanishingly unlikely that anyone who could be elected US President at the moment would take that step.

I was neither surprised nor disappointed by Tony Blair’s government, because I had been paying attention to him in the years before 1997, in particular his strategy of outflanking Michael Howard on the right when he was Shadow Home Secretary. I was perplexed by the left-wingers who thought it was all just a ruse to get into power in order to promote a left agenda, rather than an expression of his genuine politics. I was even more astonished when it happened all over again with Gordon Brown, though at least in his case the disillusionment was a bit more prompt.

Obama is different: he is, however modestly, challenging the prevailing right-wing consensus rather than pandering to it. I don’t expect revolutionary changes under his presidency, but I do anticipate moves in the right direction, and a shift in the centre of gravity of US politics.

With more political capital than Clinton, Obama can at least make substantive changes in areas where Clinton tried and failed – healthcare being a major example. With fewer illicit blowjobs, Obama can continue to be the rock that the right-wing noise machine dashes itself futilely against.

Of course, I wish Mr Obama all the entirely legitimate and above-board blowjobs he can cram into his busy schedule.

Tony Blair biggest achievement by far has been the Northern Ireland peace process which has had a very real effect on the people of NI as well as the rest of the UK and Ireland – imagine how much fun the “War on Terror” would be if you had the IRA still planting the odd bomb in London and shooting soldiers in Belfast. That alone was a huge and (hopefully) lasting achievement.
(Credit of course must also go to John Major who managed to advance the peace process while dealing with an internal Tory revolt AND relying on Ulster Unionists to hold his government together )

Another thing to list for the Blair government is turning the idea of an independant Scotland from implausible to something which quite a lot of members of the political establishment* talk fairly seriously of. Not yet clear whether this is good or bad overall, but it’s certainly good for students and the elderly in Scotland.

* That is, MSPs

I think that outside of foreign policy, people are vastly overestimating the amount of influence the US president has. Pretty much by definition, while Obama was one of the most left-leaning senators, he’s unlikely to be able to pass policy that is substantially to the left of the median senator.

Remember, this is a system that, even when the senators do agree with your legislation, you generally have to bribe your own senators with all sorts of irrelevant earmarks if you want to get your laws passed.

Outside of foreign policy and the few other elements under executive control, his most effective role is to act as a pulpit to change general social attitudes. In that aspect, I think that he’s likely to be fairly successful.

I am enthusiastically supporting Obama as the lesser evil.

I agree with most of the negative assessments of the Clinton administration above. And my expectation is that Obama = (Clinton – extramarital blowjobs).* That will not be good for the country or the world. But Bush has been much worse and a McCain administration would be a continuation of the Bush years.

The Supreme Court is a fine microcosm of the problem. The likely retirees in the next four years are the Court’s two most liberal members, Souter and Stevens (both Republican appointees, fwiw). My expectation is that Obama will replace them with Breyer-like justices just slightly to their right, but still on what passes as the “left” of this court. McCain would replace them with far-right ideologues like Alito and Scalia, thus tipping the court’s balance decisively to the far right. I don’t want either of these options, but it’s clear which is less bad and it’s important that we get the lesser evil.

___________________________________________

* Incidentally, there’s a good case to be made that extramarital blowjobs saved Social Security. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton would have almost certainly worked together to privatize Social Security during the last two years of the Clinton administration had Gingrich not decided to put his chips on impeachment instead. So it’s even possible that (Clinton – extramarital blowjobs) < Clinton.

(Where’d my preview go? I loved having it back!)

Frankly, I’ll be shocked if Obama even manages (or tries) to undo the damage he’s already done before even taking office: e.g. repealing the 4th Amendment, cheerleading for genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, promising the same soon for Iran in front of AIPAC…

Has any Presidential candidate in history (other than US Army generals like Andrew Jackson and Dwight Eisenhower) been responsible for so much tragedy before even becoming President?

This is one reason why Senators make bad Presidents. They come in on day one having sold their souls a thousand times over.

For what it’s worth Matthew Yglesias has a pretty good reply to part of this post showing how, while not ideal, those whom we might reasonably think of as the “worst off” in the US improved by a significant margin under Clinton as opposed to Bush I, and lost much of that improvement under Bush II.

Clinton did significantly improve the lot of the poor. In 1992-3, we hit a peak in the number of people in poverty and the poverty rate and at 15%. It declined steadily throughout his term to 12% and dropped from almost 39 million and 31 million. (It has since climbed under George Bush.) Clinton brought the poverty rate down to the levels it had been in the middle 70’s after the Great Society.

It’s a little harder to tell what is going on in the UK.

This post reveals a shocking ignorance about how the American political system works. Unlike the Prime Minister, the President cannot introduce legislation, nor does he have a guaranteed majority to vote for the passage of the legislation he favors. Congress is an independent body. Britains seem to have a hard time getting this concept straight. Without a working majority, no President can get legislation enacted. Comparisons between Blair and Clinton are simply inane. Chris also questions whether Clinton’s policies actually did anything to help the poor. The answer to that is an unambiguous yes. Follow this link to see th actual figures http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/10/life_at_the_bottom.php

The results are clear and dramatic.

if Obama can’t do just a bit better, then we had better just stop all those seminars on theories of justice and “realistic utopias” and so forth

You could hold some on social movements instead, then. Advisor to the crown isn’t the *only* role a political philosopher can aspire to…

Well, there’s no doubt that life improved a bit for people in the bottom 1/3rd during the second half of the Clinton years. Do Clinton’s policies have much to do with this? Not at all clear; why, for example, attribute to him responsibility for the economic upturn that began before he won the election in 1992? If Paul Gottlieb is right about how American politics works (which he is, as CB well knows — the attribution of “shocking ignorance” is bemusing) then why not give credit for the brief improvement in the lot of the least advantaged after 1994 to the Republicans who really ran the show?

One thing that we will find out in the recession/depression we are entering is whether TANF has benefitted or harmed the poor. My guess is that it will harm them (though I hope not), and Clinton can take lots of responsibility for that; Bush I would not have abolished welfare as we know it because i) he didn’t want to and ii) he would have faced an opposition from 1994 that would have stopped him even if he’d wanted to.

Now if Obama will just win!

Congress is an independent body.

In theory. Draft legislation does, however, emerge from the executive branch and land on the desk of the relevant members of Congress.

Britains seem to have a hard time getting this concept straight.

Britons seem to make judgements on such things based upon how they work in practice.

On topic: if you could judge Blair on the first term only, I think the assessment would be different: minimum wage, devolution, Lords reform, NI. Helped by circumstances, yes, which means you can’t make excuses for the years spent sucking up to Bush. Though you wonder whether the authoritarian tendencies of post-2001 Labour would have been as manifest in an alternate universe in which Gore was president. Probably to some extent: the ASBO would have come regardless.

On that note, my gut feeling is that Obama will need to have his small-c social conservatism challenged on the left. I can certainly see the same potential tendency for moral scolding.

Somewhere in the Clinton hall of shame, you need the DMCA.

On the good side, FMLA is important, although it does very little for the bottom 10%.

I would rate welfare reform a big success, and one that long-term will have considerable benefits for the bottom 10%. Changing to a “support upward mobility” model from the old “support stability” model is a slow change, but the results so far are encouraging.

I’m not certain that South Wales (or East Tennessee, or West Virginia) really can be helped much. Once the economic rationale (coal-mining) is gone, there’s just no way of making the economics work. And I’ll second Iain Coleman that decriminalizing drugs would have a larger effect than anything else.

J Thomas-

A lot more people (like me) would bother reading your comments if you imposed a 250-word limit on them. (Actually, this might not be a bad policy for CT in general.)

I think someone mentioned it above but pumping up the Earned Income Tax Credit, as Clinton did fairly early on in his first term, was both useful for poverty relief and, I think, plausibly thought to be something that changes “social arrangements” in that it’s the closest thing that we’re likely to have in the US to a guaranteed basic income for the near future. (It’s clearly not one, since someone in the household must work to get it, and it’s not very big, but we should also not underestimate the difference that more income can have on the poor. Even Van Parijs thinks GBI ought, for practical reasons, start out small.) Additionally, during the Clinton years, the IRS had a policy of looking at tax returns that might qualify for the EITC and notifying the person if they didn’t apply for it, sometimes even just awarding it if the person didn’t apply. (This actually happened to me one year.) The policy switched heavily under Bush II, whose IRS made “EITC fraud” a priority in audits, spending dollars to save pennies under the best interpretation possible. None of this should be taken to imply that I think Clinton was a very good president for the least well off. I don’t. Rather, these are just some examples.

The income gains to the poorest during the Clinton years have been eroded, but they have not been reversed, even after eight years of Bush. It seems a weirdly procedural requirement that gains to the material welfare of the poor are only meaningful if they come about through alterations to “social arrangements,” whatever that signifies. It seems like a formula for redescribing any policy choice you disagree with as trivial, however much the lives of actual people get better.

Its not at all clear that EITC has produced substantial benefits to the worse off, at least directly. It may well have just functioned to subsidise low-wage employers, especially in the period during which there was a jobs boom. I don’t know any careful analyses of this, I’d be glad to be pointed to them.

Harry, (46) I can’t vouch for this site (I only have a few minutes to google now) but it matches what I’ve read many other places and have seen said by progressive economists:
“The EITC is the largest poverty-reduction program in the U.S. and is responsible for lifting more children out of poverty than any other federal program, including 2.2 million in 2005.”
That seems like a substantial benefit to me, even if we can completely reasonably think much, much more can be done. That’s from here:
http://www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=359

A discussion from economists at UC Davis (It’s a PP Slide presentation or I’d link to it, too) also suggest that the evidence is that the EITC is a significant reducer of poverty and does not merely subsidse low-wage work. (And even if so, so what? Isn’t that also what, say, a Guaranteed Basic Income like that favored by many egalitarians would do, and be designed to do?) So, I think you’re off point on that. If you have any good evidence otherwise (or reason to think that even if what it did was subsidize low-wage work that would be a particularly bad thing) I’d be interested to see it, since it certainly goes strongly against the consensus.

J Thomas-

A lot more people (like me) would bother reading your comments if you imposed a 250-word limit on them.

I’ll try. It takes so much longer to write short posts, and then they’re so much fuzzier. It’s real hard to get a meaning clear unless you say it at least twice at different levels of abstraction.

Before Keynes, people liked to think of governments as economic actors like other economic actors. A government needed to balance its books, avoid bankruptcy. Keynes noticed that the government is not like other businesses and it can afford to regulate the economy by doing things that other businesses cannot. In theory the government cannot owe more money to bankers etc than it can afford to pay — if that happened it could tax the banks etc and get the money. Or tax whoever. The government is more like a referee to the game than a player.

But in the global economy that’s not true. If the US government owes money to foreigners it can’t just tax them. (Though it can freeze their accounts if it goes to war with their nations.) If the US government is too bad for US businesses they can relocate. Shop around for the government they want. Capital goes where it wants. Business goes where it wants. Goods go where they want. Only labor is mostly stuck. The US government is now only a player. It can’t do what it used to do, when Keynes was right.

When the government was treated like a business nobody was in control. With Keynes the government had a lot of control and could act to regulate the economy. Now nobody’s in control again.

Fiscal and monetary policies are no longer the answer. They interact in complex ways with the policies of other governments. They are now part of the problem.

It seems like some people are holding Bill Clinton up to heroic standards. No he didn’t implement another “New Deal” neither did anyone else besides FD fucking R. Did Clinton ever have as massive a partisan advantage as FDR or LBJ? Was the climate for liberalism much less the continued ascendancy of a radical conservatism more amicable in his administration compared to the other two. You’re right, Clinton was not FDR or Clement Atlee, much less in a political climate much more hostile to the New Deal itself and with a partisan minority in both houses of congress. It seems if we continue to hold our elected leaders to such standards, we will be contonually disappointed.

And no Clinton didn’t implement welfare reform, he signed it….after he had vetoed the thing twice and it was brought to him yet a third time. Anti Clinton partisans, in a fit of intellectual dishonesty like to pretend that Clinton’s parsed political speech promising to end welfare had anything to do with the bill that eventually came out of the Republican congress. Read the literature on the proposed Clinton welfare reform legislation pre-1994. It was basically smoke & mirrors effort to dissolve welfae as a hot button political issue rather than to significantly alter the program.

In these discussions I’m rarely disabused of the suspicion that the majority participants always assume they would be a better President than whoever was in office, This conceit is especially shallow when the large body of them liken the ability to achieve something in politics to the way The Green Lantern overcomes his foes.

DRR-

Who are you responding to on this thread, exactly?

If you don’t think the conversion of AFDC to TANF did not “significantly alter the program,” then you just don’t know anything at all about welfare policy.

Except that isn’t what I said.

Anti Clinton partisans, in a fit of intellectual dishonesty like to pretend that Clinton’s parsed political speech promising to end welfare had anything to do with the bill that eventually came out of the Republican congress. Read the literature on the proposed Clinton welfare reform legislation pre-1994. It was basically smoke & mirrors effort to dissolve welfae as a hot button political issue rather than to significantly alter the program.

Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” a politically parsed phrase if there ever was one, and he proposed a welfare reform package that did little to alter the program and was essentially a smoke & mirrors effort to neutralize a hot button issue for the Democrats. It was most similar to the 1988 Moynihan vehicle that was also supposed to have ended welfare as we knew but was more politics than policy. TANF, a much more draconian program was a baby of the 1994 republican revolutionaries. It was not something drafted and then pushed by the administration. The Republicans pushed it in his face, he vetoed it, they pushed it in his face again and he vetoed it again, even as several members of his own party (sans Moynihan and Bradley) were actively engaging in the bipartisan process to make it slightly less brutal and also giving it legitimacy. They pushed it in his face a third time and he capitulated. There was major support for the bill and like any calculating politician he tried to act as if he was an active facillitator rather than a reluctant latecomer. He talked about the things he liked about the bill as well as the many things he didn’t like about the bill and I believe the administration even altered it slightly to dull the sharper edges of it. It helped him get reelected then the economy got hot during his second term and everyone was proclaiming welfare reform a resounding success. That’s the story of welfare reform. I’m not pretending that Clinton was a stalwart defender of the poor, but the issue was a lot more nuanced than the dishonest smear that “Bill Clinton destroyed welfare.”

Well, DR, you come across as a native speaker of English so I assumed you used the phrase X rather than Y the way most of us do, to say that the thing in question is not Y.

But now I see the key word was “intended” — Clinton didn’t intend to destroy welfare but he did anyway — he “capitulated” and signed a very bad bill. (Because if he’d vetoed it a third time….) This just isn’t a defense of Clinton; you’re actually arguing for the side you’re trying to argue against.

(And never mind how theat Republican majority came about — Clinton’s decision to pass his first major bill — NAFTA –with majority Republican support and aliente & demoralize the msotimportant instituional supporters of his own party surely had somethign to do with it.)

It actually is perfectly possible to make a moderately progressive case for Clintism as having significant accomplishments — his stewardship of the federal bureaucracy really was praiseworthy — under severe constraints. But you can’t do it by just mindlessly defending every single thing he did.

And never mind how theat Republican majority came about—Clinton’s decision to pass his first major bill—NAFTA —with majority Republican support and aliente & demoralize the msotimportant instituional supporters of his own party surely had somethign to do with it.)

I think we’ve completed the circle, as the idea that Clinton somehow caused, thru NAFTA or whatever the Republican revolution in 1994 is the all time hackish thing said by anti Clinton hacks from the left. And unlike the many other things such people say about him, good faith or not, this one also demonstrates that the person bringing the charge is obtuse to, refuses to deal with or is completely unable to deal actual existing politics.

Martin Bento/

Monetization of the debt has been the defacto policy for several administrations it seems to me. In this the gold-bugs seem to have a point, doncha think?

63> “After all, it’s not just us; all the developed economies need stimulus, and since falls in currency are relative, a fall in all is a fall in none.”

Rare are currency falls all equal, but even if they were, the true ‘test’ is if they hold or climb back at the same rate.

the idea that Clinton somehow caused, thru NAFTA or whatever the Republican revolution in 1994 is the all time hackish thing said by anti Clinton hacks from the left. And unlike the many other things such people say about him, good faith or not, this one also demonstrates that the person bringing the charge is obtuse to, refuses to deal with or is completely unable to deal actual existing politics.

Let’s see, I rought up NAFTA (not “or whatever”) to note that (1) it was Clinton’s first major piece of legiislation, (2) it was supported by a mjaority of Congressional Republicans and opposed by a majority of Republicans, and (3) it was violently opposed by organized labor, which is (and was even more then) the biggest source of organized mass support for the Democratic party. I suggested that these facts might have some consequences.

To which DRR offers the brilliant rebuttal above — that some unnamed leftists said this so it’s obviosuly false, that it proves I’m a hack or obtuse. Tell me, do these count as winning arguemnts where you’re from?

And for your information, I’ve worked (as in paid work) on 8 or 10 Democratic campaigns, drafted legislation introduced by Democratic legislators, etc. I know plenty about practical politics. If you really think that welfare reform was harmless or unavoidable (you’ve wavered back and forth between the two positions without bothering to provide evidence for either) or that passing NAFTA had no political consequences, you are going to have to offer some actual arguemnts, not just turn up the volume.

I can’t believe I missed a thread where I was namechecked for “Clintonista apologetics”, along with the extra-contemptuous “by the likes of”!

Anyway, Clinton definitely did much to directly improve the lot of the poor. In terms of total new income transferred to the poor the EITC expansions and the Medicaid expansions that occurred under Clinton were the biggest welfare state expansions since probably the 1960s (the Carter CETA expansions were eliminated quickly, and I’m not counting increases in Medicaid spending due to normal health cost inflation). The elimination of AFDC subtracted much less $ than these policies added.

But the most important issue with Clinton is that he was governing at a time of right-wing ideological dominance. He had very little real freedom of action; in 1992-94 he put all his chips on health care reform, a major left initiative, and was almost bowled over by the political backlash.

It’s quite true that he — along with most of the Democratic party — was to a degree pulled in by right wing ideology, on NAFTA and also on financial market regulation. After 2000, the extent to which the Democrats had allowed the center to shift ideologically became very evident and eventually had very negative consequences, particularly on foreign policy. But we’ve since seen what real right-wing governance looked like, with Bush, and Clinton’s resistance to those currents is quite evident. As I said in the other thread, if 1000 votes had shifted in Florida (or if he hadn’t allowed himself to be entrapped sexually by Starr) Clinton’s political strategy would have paid off massively for America and the world.

I can understand disagreeing with Clinton, but I can’t understand demonizing him. The utopian alternative where we have a True Left president throughout the 1990s doesn’t exist in the real world, and it’s unfair to blame the Clintons for that reality.

The utopian alternative where we have a True Left president throughout the 1990s doesn’t exist in the real world, and it’s unfair to blame the Clintons for that reality.

Was Hillary presidenting at that point?

Yes, it’s unfair to blame Clinton for what he could not control. He could, however, control his pen. {I know…}

Just that it goes too far.

What does? Some criticism of Clinton does go too far, but on the other hand, some doesn’t go far enough. So it would help if you could point to something specific in this comments thread, or the original post, taht you object to.

the flaws in neoliberalism have come quite clear, but I think projecting that back to the choices the party faced in 92 is anachronistic.

You really don’t think there were any credible objectiosn to liberalism in 1992? Really?

I also think that although NAFTA (and the whole globalization regime) was flawed, the impact of NAFTA itself on the U.S. labor market has been somewhat oversold.

You are probably right on this point, but it’s irrelevant. The issue is that by beginning his preisdency by *joining with Republians* against his own party on an issue that was a top priority for a lot of the Dem base, he did lot to create the unfavorable political climate of the later 90s.

I watched Clinton and Obama rally together a few days ago in Tampa, FL, and they did a great job playing back and forth against each other. Of course, I miss Bill’s big-hearted looseness (as cool as Barack Obama is, he never really seems loose), but I agree that Obama could accomplish nearly as much, if not more.

It’s hard, though, to portray Clinton’s support of NAFTA as an unexpected betrayal of the unions, since it was a position that was clearly advertised during his campaign (and, by bringing Ross Perot into the race to syphon off nativist and protectionist votes from both parties, contributed to his getting elected in the first place.) The time to have abandoned him would have been in the general election, not after. (Or, for that matter, during the primaries…)

Worth noting that back in the late 1940s and 1950s there were plenty of lefties who thought much the same about Attlee (and I think also Truman) as Chris does about Blair and Clinton – that they had wasted much of their time in power, pursued a wrong-headed foreign policy, and their achievements weren’t that big a deal.

Charles S at comment 11 had a list of what he hoped President Obama would do:

‘a massive increase in the minimum wage (with the minimum wage finally tied to inflation), something vaguely approaching universal health coverage, massive increases in funding to early childhood education, massive increases in support to non-profit community groups, a shift towards independence from fossil fuels, and refundable tax credits for payroll taxes for lower income workers, etc.’

Give or take a little, those are all things which New Labour have done in the UK since 1997.

I think one big challenge for Obama and the Democrats if they win will be keeping their supporters and activists energised and involved.

The NAFTA Clinton ran on and Gore defended in debate had enforceable side agreements defending labor and environmental interests. The NAFTA that passed did not. In fact, the NAFTA that passed permits business to have hearings in secret courts if they feel government rules may have reduced their profits, and overturn national laws. Stiglitz, who was head of the economic advisors at the time, has said that provisions were quietly added at the last minute by lobbyists, and that they were not publicly debated and should have been. He seems to suggest that he himself did not entirely know what was in the agreement. Certainly, Clinton should have known if he did not; the President has to be responsible for knowing what he is passing.

Grossly exaggerated and frankly downright indefensible remarks such as Picador’s remind me why optimistic American liberals such as myself, who have contributed hard work and money to elect Obama and defeat McCain and the legacy of Reagan and Bush, cannot count on the support of “enlightened intellectuals,” if that is indeed what you aspire to be. If you don’t see the stark differences between Obama and Clinton, let alone Obama and McCain, if you are going to tar someone who *opposed* the (illegal, awful but nongenocidal) invasion of Iraq with cheerleading it because he didn’t lead a foolish charge to yank every American out of there instantaneously, and spit on Obama’s genuine progressive ambitions before he’s had a single day in office, you really do deserve to live under the alternative. Please attempt to accept the good within reach over the impossible perfect, or if you just can’t, stay the hell off my side.

Nobody who gets their ideas about the social problems in United States cities from television shows should express opinions about the consequences for them of Democratic versus Republican administrations. The differences are enormous, and this stretches back at least 50 years. In my , poverty in inner-city neighborhoods declined significantly during the Clinton years, and increased significantly during the Reagan and Bush(es) years. I have seen it with my own eyes in New York and Chicago, and there are also clear statistical patterns. The difference in homelessness alone is staggering. This is why democrats consistently poll so much higher in these areas. Some of the difference may be coincidental: Clinton presided over a large economic expansion, which was slowed or reversed under his successor. But some of the difference has to do with the provision of government resources to the poorest people, not necessarily in cash but also in the funding of social services, which to Bush-43 were primarily an arena to service his religious-right constituency by wasting time with “faith-based” nonsense. Another important contributor to the quality of life in these areas derives from the hope that follows upon some attention and understanding being paid to a population that is so often ignored or denigrated. The problem that so many on the left have–and I consider myself a left-leaning social democract–dealing with “centrist” politicians is that they can’t believe that it makes any real difference to people’s lives when the overall social-economic structure is more or less left in place. This goes back to the days of Roosevelt, but I have heard it expressed much more strongly by British socialists in opposition to Blair than in the USA. I think that this is a problem of failing to take account of the importance of even small material changes for large populations of people at the bottom of the economic ladder. The value of small improvements in the social welfare for such persons is really quite significant, because so many of them live on a sort of economic precipice: an extension of unemployment insurance compensation, for example, is very important for a family living two paychecks away from homelessness. And the belief that one matters to one’s country can make an enormous difference to one’s ability to seek to improve one’s own lot. I don’t mean to undermine continued efforts towards reworking large-scale attitudes towards the social contract. I just want to remind people that the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in the the US federal government is very, very significant for large portions of the US citizenry, and any diminishment of that is an expression of either obliviousness or callousness. Let’s not let our critical stance get in the way of acknowledging these stark and vital human realities.