Big Ideas in Politics: Clintonism

Now that Bill Clinton is back in the headlines again (and some are making allusions to the Bull Moose Party) it's worth looking again at Matt Bai's fine analysis of the competing versions of Clinton's legacy:

There are, among Democrats, dueling interpretations of what Clintonism means and how it came into being. The most popular version now, by far, is that Clintonism was chiefly an electoral strategy, a way of making Democrats sound more acceptable to conservative voters by softening the party’s stances on “values” issues like guns, welfare and abortion and introducing pallid, focus-grouped phrases like “work hard and play by the rules” and making abortion “safe, legal and rare.” In other words, Clinton was basically as liberal at heart as any other Democrat who marched for civil rights and protested the Vietnam War, but he was a brilliant political strategist who instinctively understood the need to rebrand the party.

Even some of Clinton’s friends from the old days — those lukewarm defenders of the faith — accept this basic version of history. “Clintonism was about winning,” says Susan Estrich, the longtime Democratic strategist and pundit. “It was about grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat. If you were a Democrat of a certain age, it was like being a Red Sox fan — you never won. And even when you won, you lost, because you got Jimmy Carter. Clinton led us out of the desert when no one else could.”

On the other hand, Clinton’s more ardent supporters, those few who were there at the beginning, argue that Democrats have badly miscast him as an expedient strategist, when in fact he was a visionary and a modernizer. “He used to tell me all the time, ‘One of these days, people are going to figure out that I actually believe in this stuff,’ ” Al From told me recently. From and the Democratic Leadership Council that he founded in the 1980s have in recent years become a kind of convenient stand-in for Clinton, the main object of acid derision from liberal bloggers who prefer to savage someone other than the former president himself for the evils of Clintonism. Clinton was the chairman of the D.L.C. when he ran for president, and much of his campaign rhetoric came from its work.

There's much more than this. It's the best article I've read in a while about Clinton's presidency and what it will mean for the current election. Read it here.

Big Ideas in Politics: Superdelegates

This semester, we'll be paying special attention to the big ideas at play in the ongoing presidential campaign. The coverage of this campaign has been intensive without managing to be exhaustive. One of the benefits of the intensity of the coverage and the unprecedented length of this campaign has been the light it has shed on the small but sometimes pivotal fine print rules of the American electoral process.

Today's New York Times has an article explaining one of those rules that might end up playing a key role in deciding who ends up getting the Democratic party's nomination: the rule that covers superdelegates:

Not all Democratic presidential convention delegates are awarded like door prizes in the primaries and caucuses being so fiercely contested around the country.

National party rules give special status to a select political group, including members of Congress, governors, members of the Democratic National Committee, past party officials, and former elected leaders like Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and their vice presidents, Al GoreWalter F. Mondale. and

Officially designated unpledged party leader and elected official delegates, members of this high-powered group are usually known by a catchier term: superdelegates.

If the primary season does not settle the nomination fight and it turns into a hunt for individual delegates, it is conceivable that this group of politicians and party insiders could hold the balance in awarding the nomination.

READ MORE

Big Ideas in Politics: Defining the Middle Class

Though December may seem like ancient history in this media coverage of this campaign, I'd like to draw your attention to a post by the campaign reporter Matt Bai on the New York Times Politics blog. It seems that nearly all the candidates these days are talking about helping the struggling middle class, but precise meaning of the term remains hazy. Bai writes:

All the Democratic candidates, to one extent or another, have been blurring the distinction between the poor and the “middle class” — arguing, in effect, that rising inequality means there is increasingly little distinction between the two. It’s important to define these terms, because they have a lot to do with how you make policy. We know what we mean by poverty, more or less; the federal government defines that by income ($20,650 for a family of four at the moment), and about 14 percent of Americans qualify. But you might be surprised to learn — I certainly was — that there is no recognized definition of what it means to be middle class.

Read More

Read a profile of Matt Bai written by an NYU student.

Welcome Back to Class

Welcome Back -
Brittany and I have some interesting events planned for this semester, but we're always looking for your suggestions. Some of my favorite events from last semester came from student suggestions - the amazing "Tings Dey Happen," the King Corn screening, the lecture by the leader of Human Rights Watch. All of those events were made possible by Broome Street students like you. So keep the suggestions coming. If you have any professors whom you'd like to invite to give a special guest lecture to our group, please let me know.

Now that the semester's back in session, I'm going to try to catch up on posting here about all of the big ideas in the news this past month.

I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.

Eric

Welcome Back!

Hey guys! To ring in the new semester, here are some upcoming events:

Thursday, Jan 24th at 9pm
Discussion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Racism and the White Backlash"
Ever wonder if the words of MLK still ring true? Find out at this program. Feel free to pick up the reading for this discussion in the envelope outside of Room 901.

Saturday, Feb 2nd at 11am
Current Events in Room 901.
Coffee, Doughnuts, and Race Relations.

Monday, Feb 11th at 9pm
Screening of Invisible Children: Rough Cut
Please come support the grass roots campaign to raise awareness of the Internally Displaced People in Northern Uganda.

I am looking for peer leaders for these programs if you are interested. Email me at blp233@nyu.edu

--Brittany