2016 Postmortem

Ferd Berfel

(3,687 posts) Wed May 18, 2016, 01:16 PM May 2016

Bubba's Toxic Economic Legacy: What Hillary Doesn't want you to remember

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bubbas-toxic-economic-legacy-when-hillary-brags-about-first-clinton-presidency-legacy

Bubba's Toxic Economic Legacy: When Hillary Brags About the First Clinton Presidency Legacy, She Doesn't Want You to Remember This
Hillary Clinton recently stated that her husband would be a key player on economic policy. That's not good news.

Over the past several months, Hillary Clinton has been somewhat hesitant to bring up her husband’s legacy as president, which, for many progressives, is a vexing reminder of how the Democratic Party embraced neoliberal policies towards the end of the 20th century, under the leadership of the the triangulating Bill Clinton. Faced with the insurgent campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton has tried to hype her progressive bona fides, which has meant avoiding some of Bill’s more despicable policies — from the 1994 crime bill and expansion of the war on drugs, to welfare reform and the Defense of Marriage Act. Almost two decades removed from the Clinton administration, there is a lot to find distasteful, and Hillary clearly wants to avoid discussing the worst of her husband’s presidency (which, like or not, she played a major role in).

There has been one area, however, where Hillary has been quick to conjure up her husbands legacy: the economy. On Sunday, she even said that she would put Bill in charge of “revitalizing the economy” as president.

This isn’t the first time Hillary has bragged about Bill’s booming economy, and her desire to emulate it. Take this statement from January, for example:

“I’m going to have the very best advisers that I can possibly have, and when it comes to the economy and what was accomplished under my husband’s leadership in the ’90s—especially when it came to raising incomes for everybody and lifting more people out of poverty than at any time in recent history—you bet.”