{"id":359863,"date":"2018-05-05T19:10:15","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T18:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-ghosts-of-new-democrats-are-haunting-us-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-05-05T19:10:15","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T18:10:15","slug":"the-ghosts-of-new-democrats-are-haunting-us-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-ghosts-of-new-democrats-are-haunting-us-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghosts of \u2018New Democrats\u2019 Are Haunting Us \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A battle for democracy within the Democratic Party is underway and the heirs of Bill Clinton\u2019s New Democrats are trying to stack the deck, says Norman Solomon. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By Norman Solomon<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

That struggle is set to reach a threshold at a party committee meeting next week and then be decided by the full Democratic National Committee before the end of this summer.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To understand the Democratic Party\u2019s current internal battle lines and what\u2019s at stake, it\u2019s important to know how we got here.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After a dozen years of awful Republican presidencies, Bill Clinton and running mate Al Gore proved to be just the ticket for the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton settled into the White House in early 1993 as the leader of pathbreaking New Democrats. Many media outlets hailed him as a visionary who had overcome left-leaning liberalism to set the party straight.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although candidate Clinton had criticized Republican trickle-down economics and spoken about the need for public investment by the federal government, as president he proceeded along the lines of what <\/span>Washington Post <\/i><\/span>economics reporter Hobart Rowan described as a formula of \u201cfiscal conservatism and social liberalism.\u201d That formula provided a template that the next Democratic president, Barack Obama, deftly filled.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Both Clinton and Obama were youthful and articulate, breaths of fresh air after repugnant Republican predecessors in the White House. Yet our two most recent Democratic presidents were down with corporate power\u2014not as far down as the GOP, but nevertheless in the thrall of Wall Street and the big banks.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Deference to Oligarchic Power<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From the outset of the Clinton and Obama administrations, top appointees reflected and propelled the deference to oligarchic power. Robert Rubin went from being co-chair of Goldman Sachs (paid $17 million in 1992) to serving wealthy interests as director of Clinton\u2019s National…<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A battle for democracy within the Democratic Party is underway and the heirs of Bill Clinton\u2019s New Democrats are trying to stack the deck, says Norman Solomon. By Norman Solomon Twenty-five years ago, the so-called New Democrats were triumphant. Today, a\u00a0fundamental battle for democracy is in progress\u2014a conflict over whether to reduce the number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-359863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}