As Hillary Clinton talks up her commitment to economic and social justice, the big question for Democrats is: Does she means what she says or is she just mouthing words to block challengers from her left, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship explain.
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
“Perfect! Perfect!” exclaimed a woman looking around at the Four Freedoms Park on New York City’s Roosevelt Island as a large crowd waited for Hillary Clinton to announce her presidential candidacy last weekend.
And so it was. Secretary Clinton had chosen an ideal setting to link her destiny to the founding father of the modern Democratic Party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the political giant whose famous proclamation in 1941 of the Four Freedoms — freedom of speech and worship, freedom from fear and want – defined the essence of American ideals after a devastating economic disaster and as we prepared to enter a great world war.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Perfect! Perfect!” Except for one thing – something the exultant spectator packed in the crowd at ground level might not have been able to see. As the camera pushed in toward the horizon behind Clinton, there it was, beyond the island and across the water: the skyline of Wall Street, the embodiment of financial might and its moguls and barons — “the malefactors of great wealth,” as his cousin Teddy called them — that FDR took on in his fight to save democracy from unbridled greed, and capitalism from itself.
As Clinton spoke – “Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers” and “Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations” – you could imagine the juxtaposition to have been deliberate, staged by her managers to superimpose her rhetorical defiance of plutocracy against its glass and steel castles off in the distance.
No doubt she had thrown around herself this cloak of populism because it is the current fashion — a superb and timely one — among many Democrats, especially progressives battling the oxymoronic Wall Street Democrats who in the past 30 years hijacked FDR’s party and severed it from its working class roots.
So it was refreshing to see her…