But will she fight?
by Tom Sullivan
Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich isn’t worried about Hillary Clinton’s values or ideals. “I’ve known her since she was 19 years old,” he writes, “and have no doubt where her heart is. For her entire career she’s been deeply committed to equal opportunity and upward mobility.” The question Reich poses is: Will she fight?
If she talks about what’s really going on and what must be done about it, she can arouse the Democratic base as well as millions of Independents and even Republicans who have concluded, with reason, that the game is rigged against them.
The question is not her values and ideals. It’s her willingness to be bold and to fight, at a time when average working people need a president who will fight for them more than they’ve needed such a president in living memory.
Hillary Clinton gave a nod to the vocal and enthusiastic “Elizabeth Warren Wing” of the Democratic party in her announcement video, echoing Warren by saying “the deck is still stacked” against ordinary Americans. In 2008, she spoke about “invisible Americans,” but she couldn’t make the sale. There is an “Elizabeth Warren Wing” because Warren is credible, and she’s credible because she’s proven she’s a fighter. The question is will Hillary Clinton come out swinging or will she follow Bill and “triangulate”?
Reich observes:
In recent decades Republicans have made a moral case for less government and lower taxes on the rich, based on their idea of “freedom.”
They talk endlessly about freedom but they never talk about power. But it’s power that’s askew in America –concentrated power that’s constraining the freedom of the vast majority.
That’s a keen observation. By relentlessly attacking labor and voting rights, through regulatory capture and recent attacks against cities, the One Percent has concentrated in its hands not just wealth, but power. By eroding the political clout of working people with one hand, while with the other spoon-feeding them “freedom” as pablum, the One Percent has eliminated most challenges to its “divine right” to rule. It looks increasingly like a conscious effort to create a Potemkin democracy.
Money may be how the rich keep score. But money is also the ability to wield power. The palpable frustration in America is not simply income insecurity. It is the nagging and worrisome power imbalance that threatens to further erode democracy and tear apart this country. Demonstrating a willingness to fight to restore that balance is what has made Elizabeth Warren both a star to everyday supporters and a credible threat to the power elite. It remains to be seen whether Clinton will take up that fight.
Making the right noises in stump speeches will not bring people out to the polls in 2016. Millennials may lean Democrat by default, but it’s turnout that wins elections.
Americans love a fighter. They made how many Rocky movies?