The Ghosts of 'New Democrats' Are Haunting Us
by
Norman Solomon
Then-President Barack Obama talks with former President Bill Clinton and
senior adviser Valerie Jarrett at the White House in July 2010. Obama was
meeting with business leaders to discuss new ways to create jobs and
strengthen the partnership between the public and private sectors to make
new investments in the clean energy industry. (Pete Souza / White House)
Twenty-five years ago, the so-called New Democrats were triumphant. Today,
their political heirs are eager to prevent the Democratic Party from living
up to its name. At stake is whether democracy will have a chance to
function.
A fundamental battle for democracy is in progressa conflict over whether to
reduce the number of superdelegates to the partys national convention in
2020, or maybe even eliminate them entirely. That struggle is set to reach a
threshold at a party committee meeting next week and then be decided by the
full Democratic National Committee before the end of this summer.
To understand the Democratic Partys current internal battle lines and
whats at stake, its important to know how we got here.
After a dozen years of awful Republican presidencies, Bill Clinton and
running mate Al Gore proved to be just the ticket for the corporate wing of
the Democratic Party. Clinton settled into the White House in early 1993 as
the leader of pathbreaking New Democrats. Many media outlets hailed him as a
visionary who had overcome left-leaning liberalism to set the party
straight.
Although candidate Clinton had criticized Republican trickle-down economics
and spoken about the need for public investment by the federal government,
as president he proceeded along the lines of what Washington Post economics
reporter Hobart Rowan described as a formula of fiscal conservatism and
social liberalism. That formula provided a template that the next
Democratic president, Barack Obama, deftly filled.
Both Clinton and Obama were youthful and articulate, breaths of fresh air
after repugnant Republican predecessors in the White House. Yet our two most
recent Democratic presidents were down with corporate powernot as far down
as the GOP, but nevertheless in the thrall of Wall Street and the big banks.
From the outset of the Clinton and Obama administrations, top appointees
reflected and propelled the deference to oligarchic power. Robert Rubin went
from being co-chair of Goldman Sachs (paid $17 million in 1992) to serving
wealthy interests as director of Clintons National Economic Council, a post
so powerful that it earned him the title of economic czar. Two years
later, Rubin began a long stint as secretary of the treasury, succeeding
former Texas senator and big-business tool Lloyd Bentsen. They were just two
of the numerous corporate functionaries in the upper realms of the Clinton
administration.
Ron Brown, corporate lawyer and lobbyist for American Express and
Duvaliers Haiti, would supervise a Clinton industrial policy at the
Department of Commerce, economic analyst Doug Henwood wrote after eight
months of Clintons presidency. Mickey Kantor, corporate lawyer, would
negotiate trade deals. Warren Christopher, corporate lawyer, would oversee
the New World Order. Hillary Rodham Clinton, corporate lawyer and board
member at Walmart, the low-wage retailer thats destroyed countless rural
downtowns, would supervise health care.
While that kind of lineup went over big with moneyed interests, its policy
pursuits would end up driving a wedge between the Democratic Party and the
working class. Of course the guys driving Clintons economic train loved the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Why wouldnt they? Workers were costs,
not people. Corporate trade deals were profit boosters.
Weeks after pushing NAFTA through Congress with an alliance of Republicans
and corporate-friendly Democrats, Clinton signed the trade pact in December
1993a move that was unpopular with working-class voters across the
political spectrum. A year later, Republicans gained control of the House of
Representatives, a GOP grip over the body that went uninterrupted for 12
years.
During his first term, Clintons signature accomplishments to serve economic
elites went beyond NAFTA to include the landmark Telecommunications Act of
1996. That same year, riding a wave that included ample undertows of
misogyny and racism, Clinton celebrated his signing of the welfare reform
bill into law. The legislation created a gold rush for media conglomerates
to gobble up broadcast stations, while low-income women found their
financial plights becoming even more dire.
Heartbroken over the new welfare law, one of the lone holdouts against the
corporate sensibilities in the Clinton Cabinet, Labor Secretary Robert
Reich, exited as the first term ended. Meanwhile, Clinton doubled down on
selecting an intensely corporate crew for the administration. The firmer,
teamis still adding partnerser, members, Time reported in December 1996,
cataloging the array of investment bankers, stock-market-friendly lawyers
and wealthy financiers who had reached key posts.
The newcomers are dont-rock-the-boat appointments, and they are exactly
what Wall Street wants, a senior economist at an investment banking firm
told the magazine. During the last years of his presidency, Clintons
economic team implemented reckless Wall Street deregulation, paving the way
for the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.
The political similarities between how Presidents Clinton and Obama behaved
in officeand the electoral disasters that ensued for Democratsare grimly
acute. Only two years into their service to corporate America as presidents,
the bottom fell out of support from the Democratic base to such an extent
that in both instances the Democrats lost control of Congress.
Arriving in the Oval Office while a huge financial crisis threatened the
homes of millions, Obama proceeded to bail out the big banks, offering
little help to people whose houses were under water and who faced
foreclosures.
Not coincidentally, like Clinton, Obama stocked his Cabinet with Wall Street
favorites. His first-term treasury secretary was Rubin protégé Timothy
Geithner. During the second Obama term, the job went to Jack Lew, a former
top executive whose achievements from 2006 till 2008 included overseeing a
unit of Citigroup that made money by betting against the housing market as
it prepared to implode.
In fact, profiteering from the 2008 housing implosion was in keeping with
what helped make Obamas election to the presidency possible. In 2007, his
campaign was lubricated by bountiful donations from the biggest Wall Street
investment banks. And more than anyone else, his financial patron in the
quest for the White House was Penny Pritzker, a billionaire real estate
magnate who profited handsomely from the 2008 subprime mortgage disaster
that befell so many low- and moderate-income Americans, a large proportion
of them people of color.
In 2013, Obama made Pritzker the secretary of commerce, a position she held
through the end of his presidency. Of all the people to choose for that
Cabinet role, he selected someone with an estimated wealth of more than $2
billion who just happened to be the most important financial backer of his
political career.
After his re-election, Obama lost interest in the Democratic National
Committee, leaving its finances in shambles by the time the 2016 election
rolled around. And, as measured by votes, the Democratic base eroded
nationwide. During Obamas eight years in office, his party lost about 1,000
seats in state legislatures.
Now, the New Democrats and those walking in their footsteps are battling to
retain control of the national party.
This years midterm election campaign has seen lots of intervention efforts
by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, favoring establishment
candidates over progressive opponents in party primaries from California to
Texas to Pennsylvania. Days agoafter the release of a secretly recorded
audio tape that exposed how House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer tried to
pressure a progressive congressional candidate to pull out of a race in
ColoradoHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Hoyer at a news
conference.
Later this year, as the 2020 election grows larger on the horizon, the DNC
will make decisions about party rules with major effects on the race for the
presidential nomination. Insiders who dont want to democratize the
Democratic Party are weighing their options.
Consider, for instance, a long-standing New Democrat named Elaine Kamarck.
Shes one of only a few people (all of them Clinton 2016 primary supporters)
on both the DNCs Unity Reform Commission and its powerful Rules and Bylaws
Committeewhich will meet in Washington next week to vote on such matters as
superdelegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Based at the Brookings Institution, Kamarck has been on the DNCs Rules and
Bylaws Committee since 1997. Her official Brookings biography says that she
has participated actively in four presidential campaigns and in 10
nominating conventionsincluding two Republican conventions.
The bio goes on to tout Kamarck this way: In the 1980s, she was one of the
founders of the New Democrat movement that helped elect Bill Clinton
president. She served in the White House from 1993 to 1997, where she
created and managed the Clinton administrations National Performance
Review, also known as the reinventing government initiative.
In her role on the Rules and Bylaws Committee, Kamarck is part of the
process that could end upas recommended by the partys Unity Reform
Commission that included Clintonites and progressiveseliminating 60 percent
of the existing 712 superdelegates (more than one-seventh of the total) in
time for the 2020 national convention.
The distorting and undemocratic impacts of superdelegates have gone way
beyond their numbers. By November 2015, Hillary Clinton had already gained
public commitments of support from 50 percent of all the
superdelegatesfully 11 weeks before any voter had cast a ballot in a state
caucus or primary election. Such a front-loaded delegate count, made
possible by high-ranking party officials who are superdelegates, can give
enormous early momentum to an establishment candidate.
Many Democrats are eager to substantially reduce or eliminate superdelegates
as antithetical to democracy. But Kamarck has quite a different agenda. She
doesnt want to get rid of superdelegates. In fact, shed like more of them.
That makes sense, when you consider that Kamarck is working to lower
corporate taxes. Shes co-chair of the big business organization RATE
(Reforming Americas Taxes Equitably) Coalition, which has the explicit
mission of reducing the corporate income tax rate.
Such an agenda is best served in the long run by choking off democracy as
much as possible, lest the riffraff get away with undermining the ruling
elites.
Kamarck has backed the original Unity Reform Commission proposal, but also
made clear that she believes that, in the long term, more so-called peer
review by veteran party leaders produces stronger presidential nominees,
BuzzFeed reported in April.
Kamarcks idea is for party authorities to screen candidates. BuzzFeed
explained: In a forthcoming study for New York Universitys law journal,
she said, she will propose a number of changes to the nominating system,
from an increase in superdelegates to a new pre-primary endorsement process
where the partys top elected officials would meet with the candidates,
question their positions, and issue votes of confidence or no confidence.
Candidates who fail to meet a certain threshold would be barred from debates
or from a spot on the ballot, depending on how the party decided to
structure the system, she said.
Lets face it: Democracy is dangerous to the powerful who rely on big money,
institutional leverage and mass media to work their will. The insurgencies
of this decade against economic injusticeembodied in the Occupy movement
and then Bernie Sanders presidential campaignare potentially dire threats
to the established unjust order.
For those determined to retain their positions in the upper reaches of the
Democratic Party hierarchy, democracy within the party sounds truly scary.
And inauthenticity of the partyand its corresponding heavy losses of seats
from state legislatures to Capitol Hill during the last 10 yearsdont seem
nearly as worrisome to Democratic elites as the prospect that upsurges of
grass-roots activities might remove them from their privileged quarters.
As Sanders told a New York Times Magazine reporter in early 2017: Certainly
there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the
status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have
first-class seats.
