Hanging With Hillary
Saturday morning was spent in the company of Hillary Clinton out in Eldridge, Iowa — just north of Davenport. Her message was simple and direct: it’s a dangerous world out there but Mom and Dad — Bill and Hill– will take care of you. Read my report.
Check out The Huffington Post’s special page on the battle for Iowa.
And here’s my running Iowa campaign journal.
December 30th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Hill sez of the wonderful economy of the 90s that it’s “not exactly ancient history”. Ah, it’s the economy, stupid! Redux! The rear-view mirror might be the best image for the Dems to magnify, at this point and particularly for her campaign. Still, I’ve got unpleasant news for Hillary-lovers — the 90s actually ARE ancient history, for all practical purposes.
We’re in uncharted economic waters now, with storm-seas getting choppier, and nobody’s too sure where the bailing pails are, or even if there are any onboard. E-Z Filing for financial aid grants aren’t going to make a whole lot of difference.
When the Clintons first entered the White House, the U.S. was already emerging from a fairly severe recession, and they had the good sense to take credit for that windfall, and thereafter they also quite sensibly took credit for a rosy-looking outlook propelled in large part by a bubble economy (mostly in stocks, but also substantially in property, starting in the mid-90s). Why, there was even heated controversy on the floor of Congress about what do with a looming federal budget *surplus*, using figures projected from what turned out later to be somewhat overestimated productivity growth figures. Federal budget surplus?! Now that *really* sounds like ancient history, doesn’t it?
What we’re headed into now is very different.
Although IT-led productivity growth in the last decade contributed something (though not as much as thought), it’s probably not going to contribute much more in the future, except perhaps in the form of job losses as IT functions consolidate. (Larry Ellison’s NetSuite stake might actually pay off, finally!)
Juan Cole speaks of any future Dem administration as potentially “Carterized” by high oil prices, if a withdrawal from Iraq leads to a regional conflagration — and the word he used about withdrawal was “when”, not “if”. Oil prices haven’t quite reached shock levels, but are hanging around in that neighborhood.
The period might resemble the Carter years in other ways — we’ve had a relatively flat stock market since 2000, when you look at it in real (inflation adjusted) terms and average out the wild fluctuations. Median wages have been stagnant or even in decline.
The late 00′s might strongly resemble the late 70s — except with a *burst* property bubble rather than a growing one, with bubble fallout much worse than that of the property bubble of the late 70s because the home price overvaluations were (and still are) much more dramatic.
Add in something else: the first wave of baby boomer retirements. That’s gonna be a lot of angry voters. They’ll be wondering who to blame for how much their retirement sucks, compared to what they were led to expect. Especially if equity in their homes is negative, as it will be for tens of millions if home prices correct to historical norms.
Finally, that national debt. Sure, it’s only roughly proportional to the size of the economy, but if the dollar really tanks, and the economy actually shrinks, we won’t get much international help in keeping that debt from growing faster. Even now, the Chinese are passing up on Treasury Bill auctions, and stocking up on Euros whenever they can. And Japan is still vainly struggling to avert its eyes from demographic/financial perils already worse than our own, so they won’t be showing up much for those auctions either.
It all makes me wonder: who would WANT to take the Oval Office in 2008? Surely, only some glutton for punishment. You hate Hillary? You wish her the worst? Well, then: VOTE for her!
I hate Giuliani even more, so I think I’ll vote for him instead.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Oh boy, this just in: Hillary conspiracy-theorizing about Bhutto’s assassination:
http://tinyurl.com/3c2j9g
Now, I must admit I had a similar thought after the controversy erupted over exactly how she died. The government’s position is that the bullets missed, but the blast banged her head into a lever on the sunroof. There was confusion in the first reports — a bullet went into her head, no, it into her neck, and her supporters later said one to the head, one to the *abdomen*. There was no proper autopsy, and she’s in the ground now, so I’m sure there will be arguments for years to come.
The nasty thought that occurred to me: maybe her assassins were *inside the vehicle*, moles in the operation who made sure the job was finished. How’s that for paranoid? No, I don’t believe it. But watch for it.
This was not terribly diplomatic of Hillary, come to think of it. If someone else gets the nomination, and wins, she won’t exactly be in line for Secretary of State. She’s more of an HHS type anyway, I guess.
If there was any calculation behind her comment, it was probably to deflect attention away from Obama’s claim that Hillary’s Iraq war authorization vote was an indirect contributor to Bhutto’s assassination. (A pretty low blow in itself. In the 11th hour, these people are getting pretty desperate for things to spin, and about how to spin them.) If there was no calculation behind the comment, it might be a matter of projection — after all, there are some interesting commonalities between Hillary and the late Bhutto, and like any Presidential candidate (perhaps more than most, given her negatives) Hillary is an assassination target. If some nutjob gets off an abortive shot, could a charge of “vast rightwing conspiracy” be far behind?
December 30th, 2007 at 9:43 am
A broken clock is right once a day.
Hillary is spot on here.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Can a former President who was impeached and who lost his law license to practice before federal courts be nominated to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court–just in the wild event something like this is being planned?
December 30th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Of course he can be nominated. Hell, I could be nominated.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
The level of vituperation surroun ding the Clintons on both Left and Right long ago passed the mere pathologiccal and has now entered the nihilistic. All those “Progressives” who won’t vote for Hil if she’s the nominee are the same poor souls who insisted that a vote for Nader had no consequences as Gore was just another Bush! And they still refuse to apologize for that! Go over the Ariann’a site and watch Marc do a hatchet job on the duo and recall that, in 2000, Huffington and her silly “Shadow Conventions” cheered on posuers like Chris Hitchens when he blasted Al. Now she weeps bitter tears and wishes St Albert of the Tennessee Hills were running. Can you say Chutzpah?
Our favorite Righty, Woody, complains that Bill was impeached and lost his law license. Over at HUFFPO you still read disappointed wingnuts who are outraged that bill got more sex then they did – excuse me, more straight sex. And this makes up for the criminal behavior of the last 7 years that has seen a new level of depravity set in the form of torture, political prisons and outright theivery by a sociopathic sadomasochistic imbecile that even Conservatives now recognize as a traitor.
I prefer John Edwards and want to see him in the Oval Office on Jan. 20 2009. But I’m increasingly of the belief that our time has run out. This unholy alliance againgst the Clintons by Huffington, Chris Matthews, Marc and the others coul;d lead to another GOP looney – or a fascist like Guiliani. That will make jc happy as the US will cease to be a power in the world a lot sooner than a lot of us expectyed. But We get to go down with the ship.
Listen assholes! This is NOT A GAME! There are real people suffering here and overseas and it is time to stop this nonsense.
But we won’t which is why I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that we as a nation – in rejecting Impeachment and indictment of the Bush Crime Family – are no longer fit for self-government.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
RLC
The US ceased to be a power a while ago. Vietnam proved that they had no monopoly on power projection in the `third world`and now Iraq further. Vietnam caused the US to implement neoliberalism all over the world, Pinochet etc. to respond the failure of Keynesianism…the failure of neoliberalism in turn led to the current `new american century`experiment which is clearly failing.
Read Giovanni Arrighi`s book Adam Smith in Beijing.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
The future is an Asian 21st century. Whether this is a good thing is too soon to tell.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
RLC: “more straight sex.“
I am surprised at this homophobic statement.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
The point of asking about a former president getting a court nomination isn’t to get a technical interpretation but to raise the point that Hillary nominating Bill to the Supreme Court and obtaining confirmation by a Democratic Senate is a real possibility. Someone needs to ask her that question, as if any answer she gives can be believed. I hate to think that we would have a justice who decides cases depending upon what the definition of “is” is.
December 30th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Does the title of the post, “Hanging with Hillary,” have anything to do with what happens to her political enemies?
December 31st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
The little men of the right – so infatuated with Bill’s penis – seem to find nothing wrong with the most corrupt and venal administration in US history.
jc if you’ve been paying attention you will have noticed that a cabal of self-loathing closeted gay men in the GOP spend the last years of Bill’s reign obessing over a blow job while trolling for rought trade in airport lavatories and hitting on pages. Homophobic?
Maybe but when did GOP come to stand for “Grand Old Perverts”?
December 31st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
There’s nothing perverted about the closet. Sad. Not perverted.
Larry King (not the TV host) that was a pervert. Mark Foley too. I thought, to be honest, that you were referring to leftists who were critical of Clinton and going with the “lefty homo” cliche.
December 31st, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Republicans always like their hands on others dicks. Just ask Larry Craig. Live and let live they ain’t for.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
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