This Might Not Go Well

In purely academic terms, three strikes and you are out is not bad if applied to violent crimes, but a fundamentally racist criminal justice system applying that to minor drug offenses is obviously racist and obviously wrong. One dollar can safely be leveraged to 1,000, done right, forget 30, which is where the market crashed in 2008, and ultimately all money everywhere and all monetary transactions will reside on one single, global blockchain, just like there is but one internet, but right now Bill Clinton's mixing up the banks in, I believe, 1999 gets blamed for 2008. W spending a trillion on tax cuts, another three trillion or so on Iraq and Afghanistan, and sending all sorts of wrong signals to Wall Street on greed (how do you outlaw the sin of greed?) is not talked about. But right now even a gifted politician like Bill Clinton comes across as tone deaf on these two issues. In 1992 the Sister Souljah comments was designed to grab the white votes. It might be a similar attempt now, but the ground has shifted. White liberals are not too keen on subtle racial messages that point the other way.

This move might have been a mistake. Or perhaps Bill Clinton is reading the writing on the wall, and is not liking it. The race was not supposed to be neck and neck. A New York primary was not supposed to ever matter. But this time the New York primary might decide who the next president is. Stranger things are known to happen.

But Black Lives Matter is not about Bill Clinton. Well, maybe now it is. Bill Clinton ran as a New Democrat, which basically was elbowing the Liberal, and it worked, but now that Liberal seems to be in vogue.



Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability
In a widely circulated video yesterday, Clinton defended programs that have ballooned both prison and poverty rates

Bill Clinton is no doubt his wife’s double-edged sword: Though he is among the most charismatic politicians of his era, he’s also prone to saying things that make campaign life rather awkward. The big problem, however, isn’t just that Bill Clinton can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s that his right-leaning New Democrat policy record is a bad fit for today’s liberal politics. ...... Yesterday, speaking in Philadelphia, Clinton responded to protesters by defending two now-very-controversial bills that he signed into law: The 1994 Crime Bill, widely criticized for fueling mass incarceration, and so-called welfare reform, which dramatically reduced poor families’ access to cash aid. ..... At the same time, he insisted that Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with either. And that gets at one of her campaign’s unshakeable dilemmas: They are running on what’s still popular about the Clinton years and trying run away from what’s not. That, of course, is impossible. And in Philadelphia, the balancing act tripped as a frustrated Bill Clinton lashed out at protesters with a full-throated recourse to throwback war-on-crime rhetoric. ..... what’s most remarkable is that Clinton made a case for the laws that just doesn’t add up. On the Crime Bill, he blamed Republicans for the the “increased sentencing provisions,” and said that the law created “a 25-year low in crime” and a 33-year low in the “murder rate.”..........Protesters, he said, were “afraid of the truth” for not letting him speak. But the truth is not what Clinton was speaking...... The number of those living in extreme poverty has skyrocketed since 1996. .....

Hillary Clinton can’t get around running as the Clinton Administration’s second coming.

Though her camp likes to protest that holding her to account for anything she endorsed during the Clinton presidency is unfair, it’s actually appropriate in a purported democracy that has proven itself prone to the allure of political dynasty. Times have changed, and many Democratic voters don’t want to go back to the 1990s. And Hillary Clinton has to answer for it. ....... Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign has been so shockingly successfully precisely because he’s been able to exploit this dissonance.

On welfare cuts, which he voted against and described as a bigoted assault on the poor

, that’s easy. ...... Sanders, however, has said that he did so because it included the Violence Against Women Act, and he did vocally criticize incarceration as a policy solution: “We can either educate or electrocute,” he said. “We can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails.” He also criticized the unsuccessful 1991 Crime Bill, which he voted against, as “not a crime prevention bill” but “a punishment bill, a retribution bill, a vengeance bill.” ......

Sanders on many issues provides a decisive contrast. And many people like what they see.

......... On welfare, Bill Clinton was just plain wrong. On crime, he rightly pointed out that the bulk of the nation’s prison population reside in state facilities; that there was very real public outcry over crime and that people demanded action; and that there was support even from black leaders for the bill. But it was politicians like Clinton who weaponized those public fears for political gain. And today, voters are beginning to understand the costs. And that continues to be a hard square to circle for Hillary.