Twenty years of Clintush is enough. - Democratic Underground

Political Heretic

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Sat Feb-02-08 12:47 AM
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Twenty years of Clintush is enough.

I don't hate Senator Clinton. I disagree with the politics of both her and her husband. Not completely - that would be binary thinking that isn't worthy of a liberal. There are many points on which I agree with Senator Clinton. However, broadly speaking, the political philosophy of the New Democratic ushered in with the Clinton dynasty is problematic for me.

President Clinton, by his own account was the corporate man's president. A pro-business pragmatist is a phrase Bill Clinton used about himself. The result of this pro-business pragmatism was massive deregulation of industries such as banking and telecom that have led to a lot of severe problems. The result was also the rise of Free Trade instead of Fair Trade, which contrary to the promises has seriously harmed the American worker. The Clinton's vision of globalization, which continued on the Bush Sr. vision of a "New World Order" has also had a devastating effect on so-called "developing" countries, keeping their people impoverish while we use the "Shock Doctrine" (thank you Naomi Kline) to force countries to become exporting siphons - with capital flight out of their country and into the pockets of Wall Street.

Under the Clintush Dynasty, the expanse between the richest and poorest Americans has exponentially increased. That is one of the most significant indicators of how our Democracy is doing. As that gap increases, our country moves closer and closer to collapsing in on itself as wealth is concentrated at the top. Under the Clintush dynasty the wages and benefits of the majority of Americans have stagnated or declined. Even during the so-called halcyon days of the 1990's, the "boom" was a boom in Wall Street, not Main Street.

For the American worker, the 1990's was characterized by what Business Week (cf. Chomsky, Albert, Balkin) cheered as "greater worker instability." Let that sink in - business week was cheering this increase. Greater worker instability means that the average worker was too afraid of losing his job to do things like demand better wages or fair treatment or seek a better job. This is of course great for Business, because it can continue to apply pressure to the workforce and decrease benefits, increase hours, decrease pay and working conditions and the climate is such that the worker must tolerate it.

The booming of the 1990's came partially from better economic policies (Clinton was better than Reagan - this is not an all or nothing analysis - but "better than" isn't good enough) but came largely from the technology surge leading to the dot com bubble. Most of the wealth was generated on Wall Street.

In summary - these are the important economic indicators to me:

1) The strength of organized labor, and the governments protection of labor rights - did it increase or decrease or stay the same under a president?
2) The wages of the middle class and poor - did they increase, decrease or stagnate under a president and by how much?
3) The disparity between richest and poorest Americans - did this gap increase, decrease or stay the same under a president.

Combine these points with a Clintushian legacy of Neo-liberalist globalization and so-called "Free Trade" and the continued degradation of Labor and I am ready to say that Twenty years of leadership from two Families is ENOUGH. It's time for something new.