Why Character Attacks on Hillary Won’t Work

The right wing noise machine continues to bluster about the book "Clinton Cash" even though the books author has been forced to admit that he found no "smoking gun."  Meanwhile other detractors of Hillary Clinton often make unattractive pundits - think Ann Coulter who looks like an anorexic drag queen in my view - and run the risk of alienating women if the appear to beat up on the only viable female presidential candidate to date.  A piece in The Daily Beast suggests that efforts to attack Hillary Clinton's character will likely fail - or backfire.  Here are excerpts:

If you’re Martin O’Malley, or one of the other potential Democrats pondering a race against Hillary Clinton, you’ve been presented with an unexpected opportunity—and a very, very tricky challenge.

The spate of stories about the interconnections between the Clinton Foundation, the Clintons’ wealth, and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State have opened up a line of attack against the prohibitive Democratic favorite that was once the province of her ideological foes. For close to a quarter-century now, the willingness—make that eagerness—of voices on the Right to embrace every accusation against the Clintons has proven to be a pearl of great price for Bill and Hillary, serving to insulate them politically from allegations that were, in fact, credible.
Throughout their political lives, the Clintons have successfully—and often accurately—argued that the criticism have come from those opposed to their agenda. Now, two news outlets that embody the “Mainstream Media” so much scorned on the Right have weighed in with stories that undergird precisely the same argument.

And herein lies the opportunity—and the dilemma—for O’Malley or any of the other possible Democratic challengers: what do you do with the argument that the case against Hillary Clinton is a matter not of ideology, but of character?

As far as I can tell, no intra-party campaign against a prohibitive favorite has ever been waged on such grounds.

Up to now, Clinton’s potential rivals have been taking the traditional route of arguing that she does not truly reflect the Democratic base on issues like income inequality and corporate regulation. Now, they have been handed a much more potent argument: that the financial behavior of the Clintons demonstrates that they identify with the one per cent—or one-tenth of one per cent—and that their conduct will be as big a liability to Hillary Clinton as Mitt Romney’s business career and tax returns were to him in 2012.

But, as with nitroglycerin, a potent substance can also be highly dangerous. Bill Clinton is the most admired man in America; and among Democrats, his approval rating is stratospheric. Up to now, there has been no significant unhappiness within her party at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton nomination—not to mention the significant cohort of voters eager to see a woman elected President.

[N]othing is more likely to rally Democrats around Clinton than the assaults from across the political divide. Throughout their public lives, Bill and Hillary Clinton have benefitted enormously from the fury of their ideological enemies. Making a case that will persuade Democrats to move away from Clinton on character grounds will be the political equivalent of defusing a ticking bomb.

Suddenly Wall Street Realizes that Income is Bad for Wall Street

It seems pretty elemental to economic projections that having wealth concentrated in a tiny percentage of the population while everyone else struggles to survive is not going to stimulate spending on consumer goods and other expenditures that keep corporate America in business.  Yet all too belatedly Wall Street seems to be catching on to the reality that the creation of a new Gilded Age as envisioned by the GOP is not going to bode well for the captains of industry or Wall Street itself.  While the Koch brothers continue to court cretins in the GOP base like the authors of the signs in the image above, others seem to be having second thoughts.  Here are highlights from a piece in Mother Jones:

There's a lot of evidence that record-high income inequality has gutted the United States' post-recession recovery. But on Tuesday, the argument was made by an unexpected source: Standard & Poor's (S&P), a Wall Street firm providing ratings and analysis on stocks and bonds, issued a report pointing out economic disparity's role in "dampening US economic growth."

Over the next decade, S&P forecasts that the economy will expand at just a 2.5 percent annual rate, a downgrade from the 2.8 percent growth it predicted just five years ago. One explanation: "At extreme levels, income inequality can harm sustained economic growth over long periods. The US is approaching that threshold."

The gap between the richest and poorest Americans has been skyrocketing for decades, with no end in sight. How exactly does this widening wealth gap affect the economy? "Higher levels of income inequality increase political pressures, discouraging trade, investment, and hiring," the report explains. It leads extremely wealthy households to save more and consume less, while lower-income households must borrow to sustain consumption. "When these imbalances can no longer be sustained, we see a boom/bust cycle such as the one that culminated in the Great Recession."

S&P suggests focusing on education to increase national productivity. According to the report, one additional year of education in the American workforce could increase GDP by $525 billion—about a 2.4 percent boost—over the next five years.

As S&P ominously concludes the report, "A lifeboat carrying a few, surrounded by many treading water, risks capsizing."

Why Seeking Unity With Extremists Is Wrong

In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank has a column that suggests that the man has his head so far up his ass that it is a wonder he hasn't suffocated.  Obama's inaugural address cited the founding principles of America and called on Americans to embrace their better angels and work to deliver the full fruits of those principles: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.Yet all Mibank can do is chide Obama for not seeking unity with the extremists and political saboteurs within the Republican Party.  I guess, those who opposed Hitler and his policies were wrong as well in Milbank's book.  Seeking peace with evil and those who would knowingly and deliberately wreak harm on others - in this case the poor, those without health insurance, the unemployed, disadvantaged minorities - while bestowing tax cuts to billionaires and pandering to bigots and white supremacists is never the right thing to do.  Yet, Milbank would have Obama roll over to the agenda of those who want to bring back the inequality of the Gilded Age and a time that saw even a higher percentage of Americans doing without protections in the work place or any kind of social safety net.  Here's a sampling of Milbank's head up his ass whining:

President Obama began his second inaugural address with a reminder that this ceremony, like the 56 inaugurations before it in U.S. history, was a unifying symbol.

What followed was less an inaugural address for the ages than a leftover campaign speech combined with an early draft of the State of the Union address. Obama used the most visible platform any president has to decry global-warming skeptics who “still deny the overwhelming judgment of science.” He quarreled with Republicans who say entitlement programs “make us a nation of takers.” He condemned the foreign policy of his predecessor by saying that “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”

“We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate,” the president informed his opponents. Not that they were listening.

[T]he emphasis was unusually political for an inaugural address. Obama reminded his opponents that his oath of office, “like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction.”

But if the speech wasn’t as grand or as memorable as previous addresses, perhaps that’s not entirely a bad thing. In his first term, Obama was undone by impossibly high expectations. This time, expectations are quite low that he can do much to change the grim state of Washington. With a lower hurdle to clear, Obama’s pedestrian rhetoric and tough words for his opponents gave Americans a fair sense of what to expect in the coming years.

The blunt truth is that the American people need to face reality: many of the nation's problems track directly to one political party, the GOP.  It's failed policies brought about the 2008 financial collapse, it's rush into unfunded wars that were fool's errands and based on lies, and it's blind fealty to the wealthy and those who seek to undo the Constitution's promise of equality and religious freedom have all helped to put America in the bad place in which it finds itself today.  Yet Milbank expects Obama to embrace these people and not challenge their lies. 

The GOP's Assault on the Social Safety Net

I have noted before that the current Republican Party seems to want nothing less than to restore the so-called "Gilded Age" of the robber barons when the wealthy knew few limits on excess and everyone else struggled to get by. It was a time of few safety regulations and a time where the unfortunate often had nowhere to turn for help and support. Today, we are seeing Newt Gingrich attack child labor laws and a political party that obstructs every tax increase against the very wealthy yet resists any breaks for the already struggling and shrinking middle class. Adding to the utter hypocrisy of it all, the GOP claims to be the party of "family values" and most of its demagogic leaders wear Christianity on their sleeves - even as they totally disregard the Gospel message. In this setting, Obama is argued by some to be the true conservative seeking to maintain social stability. Here are highlights from a Washington Post column that contrasts the competing visions for America:

At a moment when the nation wonders whether politicians can agree on anything, here is something that unites the Republican presidential candidates — and all of them with President Obama: Everyone agrees that the 2012 election will be a turning point involving one of the most momentous choices in U.S. history.

Obama could not agree more. “This is not just another political debate,” the president said in his theme-setting speech in Osawatomie, Kan., earlier this month. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”

[T]he Republican Party is taking a run at overturning the consensus that has governed U.S. political life since the Progressive era.

Obama is defending a tradition that sees government as an essential actor in the nation’s economy, a guarantor of fair rules of competition, a countervailing force against excessive private power, a check on the inequalities that capitalism can produce, and an instrument that can open opportunity for those born without great advantages.

The GOP is engaged in a wholesale effort to redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society. . . . . . Republicans are increasingly inclined to argue that any redistribution (and Social Security, Medicare, student loans, veterans benefits and food stamps are all redistributive) is but a step down the road to some radically egalitarian dystopia.

Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled. The rhetoric of the 2012 Republicans suggests they want to go far beyond where Reagan or Bush ever went.

America has already reached a level of income inequality that would make a former banana republic dictator blush. Yet what we are seeing is only the beginning if the demagogues of the GOP get to have their way.

A Great Political Cartoon

David Mixner had this cartoon on his blog and it was just too good to pass up. It sums up where this nation is headed.

Ohio Vote Shows Obama Winning Back the Rust Belt

Tuesday's vote in Ohio to repeal the GOP's union busting legislation was a huge rebuke to anti-family, anti-worker Republicans who talk a good game - until one looks at the details, of course - about caring about average Americans but in truth are aimed at building a wealth disparity in the United States that might rival that seen in Tsarist Russia. Some speculate that the defeat of several GOP initiatives demonstrates that average votes and citizens are waking up to the fact that Republicans are not their friends. Indeed, with friends like Ohio Republicans, who truly needs an enemy. It continues to amaze me how simpletons continue to fall for the GOP "no tax" mantra when those being protected from tax increases are the wealthy and not regular folks. It's part of the refusal to accept objective reality that now seems to be a prerequisite to belonging to the GOP base. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the possible awakening of voters to the reality that the GOP is the party of class warfare and that it's average Americans (and non-religious extremists) who are the targets of this war. Here are some highlights:

Barack Obama is winning the Rust Belt back. The overwhelming repeal in Ohio of Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor bill from last year shows that the GOP has gone way, way too far—too far for Democrats, obviously, but also for independents. It shows the potential for something else, too: the populist message can stick. “Class warfare” can work. It can take hold even with the people who allegedly despise our Kenyan leader the most: the white working class. And if this turns out to be right, then the Washington conventional wisdom will be proven as wrong as it’s been since 1998, when the Cokie Roberts caucus convinced itself that the American people wanted to throw Bill Clinton out of the White House over Monica.

Ohio’s Question 2 lost 61 to 39 percent. I was on a press conference call yesterday with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and others, and pollster Guy Molyneaux ran through some numbers from polling that the union did. Fully 57 percent of independents backed the repeal. In 2010, 59 percent of independents voted for Kasich. So that’s a huge switch. The white working class, which Kasich won by 14 points in 2010, backed repeal by the very 61 percent that it took overall.

But the larger context in which this vote took place is important, too. And that context is Operation Wall Street, income inequality, Republicans in Congress killing the jobs bill piece by piece, Obama finally getting some blood flowing through those veins again instead of water. People have started to care about class issues, and it’s pretty clear what they think: The Republican Party isn’t representing them (unless they happen to live in a household with an income of at least $368,000 a year). In the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 76 percent agreed that “the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.”

What this means for next year is twofold. First, it suggests that Davids Plouffe and Axelrod should work the Rust Belt. Plouffe in particular has been signaling a strategy that would put more emphasis on Virginia and Colorado and North Carolina (where the convention is being held) at the expense of states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But the way Democrats and majorities of independents are acting in those Rust Belt states now, they’re looking more like states Obama can hold.

Which leads to the second possible consequence for next year. The conventional wisdom laid down by the geniuses who lay down the conventional wisdom is that Obama—any Democratic president, or any Democrat, really—can either play to the base or the middle but can’t possibly reach both. . . . . If the White House plays its cards right, 2012 could be about inequality. The Democrat can’t possibly lose an election about inequality.

A lot of this will depend on events, starting with the unemployment rate. But what the Ohio result shows is a way to unite liberals and moderates, Democrats and independents, behind one message that both want to hear. That hasn’t happened much in recent American history. The White House had best be alert to it.

Vatican Calls for Global Economic Authority and Condemns " Idolatry of the Market"

I will be the first to admit that I rarely agree with anything emanating from the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican who all too often turn Christ's Gospel message upside down in their quest for power, control, and most importantly money. But I guess once in a while even such people get something right. Hence the Vatican's condemnation of the cult of free market controls which often morphs into a struggle of the survival of the fittest (or most greedy) with the vast majority suffering in poverty and varying levels of neglect as the amoral and greedy waltz away with most of the profits and resources. The interesting thing to watch will be to see how this new Vatican announcement plays with the Christian Right adherents of the prosperity Gospel and the Tea Party crowd who would throw most citizens to the wolves as they hoard money and possessions for themselves. Candidly, nothing would please me more than to see a rift develop between conservative Catholics and the greedy hate merchants of the Christian Right and GOP. Reuters looks at this in some ways surprising development. Here are some highlights:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.

It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.

Asked at a news conference if the document could become a manifesto for the movement of the “indignant ones”, who have criticised global economic policies, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department, said: “The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good. “We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking.”

Nightmare Before Christmas

Bob Herbert has a good op-ed in the New York Times that looks at the growing economic inequality in the USA (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/opinion/22herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin). While the top tier of the population makes more and more money, the rest of the populace is left struggling to maintain the life style they had growing up. Of course, the Chimperator is oblivious to such things and, I suspect, could care less. Here are some column highlights:

Christmastime is bonus time on Wall Street, and the Gucci set has been blessed with another record harvest. Forget the turbulence in the financial markets and the subprime debacle. Forget the dark clouds of a possible recession. Bloomberg News tells us that the top securities firms are handing out nearly $38 billion in seasonal bonuses, the highest total ever. But there’s a reason to temper the celebration, if only out of respect for an old friend who’s not doing too well. Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life-support.

Record bonuses on Wall Street at a time when ordinary working Americans are filled with anxiety about their economic future are signs that the trickle-down phenomenon that was supposed to have benefited everyone never happened. The rich, boosted by the not-so-invisible hand of the corporate ideologues in government, have done astonishingly well in recent decades, while the rest of the population has tended to tread water economically, or drown.

A study released last month by the Pew Charitable Trusts noted that “for most Americans, seeing that one’s children are better off than oneself is the essence of living the American dream.” But for the past 40 years, men in their 30s, prime family-raising age, have found it difficult to outdistance their dads economically. As the Pew study put it: “Earnings of men in their 30s have remained surprisingly flat over the past four decades.” Family incomes have improved during that time largely because of the wholesale entrance of women into the work force.

What seems to be happening now is that working Americans, and that includes the middle class, have exhausted much of their capacity to tread water. Wives and mothers are already working. Mortgages have been refinanced and tremendous amounts of home equity drained. And families have taken on debt loads — for cars, for college tuition, for medical treatment — that would buckle the knees of the strongest pack animals. According to Demos, a policy research group in New York, “American families are using credit cards to bridge the gaps created by stagnant wages and higher costs of living.” Americans owe nearly $900 billion on their credit cards.

Instead of celebrating bonuses this Christmas season, too many American workers are looking with dread toward 2008, worried about their rising levels of debt, or whether they will be able to hang on to a job with few or no benefits or how to tell their kids that they won’t be able to help with the cost of college.