The Democrat’s Dilemma
By
Robert Reich
What’s the reason for
the tempest in the teapot of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s personal finances?
It can’t be about how
much money they have. Wealth has never disqualified someone from high office.
Several of the nation’s greatest presidents, who came to office with vast
fortunes – JFK, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his fifth cousin, Teddy – notably
improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The tempest can’t be
about Hillary Clinton’s veracity. It may have been a stretch for her to say she
and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House, as she told
ABC’s Diane Sawyer. But they did have large legal bills to pay off.
And it’s probably true
that, unlike many of the “truly well off,” as she termed them in an interview with
the Guardian newspaper, the Clintons pay their full income taxes and work hard.
Nor can the tempest be
about how they earned their money. Most has come from public speaking and book
royalties, the same sources as for most ex-presidents and former First Ladies.
Then what’s it about?
That’s why Diane Sawyer
asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether
she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
And it’s why Hillary’s
answers – that the couple needed money when they left the White House, and have
paid their taxes and worked hard for it — seemed oddly beside the point.
The questions had
nothing to do with whether the former first couple deserved the money. They
were really about whether all that income from big corporations and Wall Street
put them on the side of the privileged and powerful, rather than on the side of
ordinary Americans.
These days, voters want
to know which side candidates are on because they believe the game is rigged
against them.
According to new Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans now think economic
system unfairly favors the powerful, and 78 percent think too much power is
concentrated in too few companies. Even 69 percent of young
conservative-leaning voters agree the system favors the powerful.
Other potential
presidential candidates are using every opportunity to tell voters they’re on
their side. Speaking at last week’s White House summit on financial hardships
facing working families, Vice President Joe Biden revealed he
has “no savings account” and “doesn’t own a single stock or bond.”
The same concern haunts
the Republican Party and is fueling the Tea Party rebellion. In his stunning
campaign upset, David Brat charged that
Eric Cantor “does not represent the citizens of the 7th district, but rather large
corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts, and constant supply of
low-wage workers.”
But the Republican
establishment doesn’t think it has to choose sides. It assumes it can continue
to represent the interests of big business and Wall Street, yet still lure much
of the white working class though thinly-veiled racism, anti-immigrant
posturing, and steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
The Democratic Party,
including Hillary Clinton, doesn’t have that option.
Which means that, as
the ranks of the anxious middle class grow, the winning formula used by Bill
Clinton and Barack Obama may no longer be able to deliver.
That formula was not
just to court minorities and women but also to appeal to upscale
Republican-leaning suburbs, professionals, moderates on Wall Street, and
centrist business interests.
Accordingly, both Bill
Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s economic plans called for deficit reduction as
part of a “responsible” fiscal policy, trade expansion, and “investments” in
infrastructure and education to promote economic growth.
But in a world of downward
mobility for the majority, Democrats need to acknowledge the widening divide
and propose specific ways to reverse it.
These might include,
for example, raising taxes on the wealthy and closing their favorite tax
loopholes in order to pay for world-class schools for everyone else; enacting a
living wage and minimum guaranteed income; making it easier to unionize; and
changing corporate and tax laws to limit CEO pay, and promote gain-sharing,
profit-sharing, and employee ownership.
In this scenario, Democrats
would seek to forge a new political coalition of all the nation’s downwardly
mobile – poor, working class, and middle class; white and black and brown.
It’s a gamble. It would
make big business and Wall Street nervous, while ignoring Republican-leaning
suburbs and upper-middle class professionals. The GOP would move in to fill the
void.
But as the middle class
shrinks and distrust of the establishment grows, a new Democratic strategy for
the downwardly mobile may be both necessary and inevitable. If she runs,
Hillary may have to take the gamble.
And if America is to
have half a chance of saving the middle class and preserving equal opportunity,
it’s a gamble worth taking.
ROBERT
B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California
at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, was
Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one
of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has
written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The
Work of Nations." His latest, "Beyond Outrage," is now out in
paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and
chairman of Common Cause. His new film, "Inequality for All," is now
available on Netflix, iTunes, DVD, and On Demand.
