Hillary Clinton’s Wildly Unrealistic Puppies and Rainbows Plan

[Nanjeanne]

The funniest thing about pro-Hillary punditry is the claim that her proposals are achievable while Bernie Sanders’ proposals are not. This has been all over the punditry of late, especially in the oldsplaining get-off-my-lawn punditry aimed at the rude teens who support Sanders. For an example of it, look no further than the New York Times official endorsement:

In the end, though, Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers. His boldest proposals — to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system — have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic, while Mrs. Clinton has very good, and achievable, proposals in both areas.
This is frankly insane. Hillary Clinton’s legislative agenda has a 0% chance of passing through the GOP-controlled Congress. None. Nothing. Zilch. This is true, not only because the GOP fundamentally disagrees with her proposals, but also, crucially, because the GOP pursues obstruction for its own sake. It has been very explicit about this. The GOP has (probably correctly) determined that helping a Democratic president pass things of note benefits the Democrats and hurts the Republicans.

Moderate liberals used to understand this fact. One of the big stories of the 2016 election is that many have now apparently unlearned this reality. Or, more likely, they need something to say about why Hillary should be favored over Bernie, and pretending that she can actually get her legislative agenda done is the only thing they can think of.

1. Theory of Change
We’ve heard a lot in this election about Sanders’ supposedly faulty theory of change. Most of the analysis on this has been pretty bad and has not actually responded to what his campaign seems to think his theory of change actually is.

Sanders appears to be a believer in what we might call the Burlington Model of change. In the Burlington Model of change, you capture the executive and then, through exemplary executive operations and large scale organization, you use the executive office to get your opponents run out of the legislature in the next election. I call this the Burlington Model because this is what happened in Burlington, Vermont when Sanders captured the city from the incumbent Democratic establishment.

Whatever you think of Sanders’ theory of change, he at least has one that takes into account the procedural hurdles to getting his agenda across. Clinton has none. She appears to believe that her becoming President will create this puppies and rainbows land of unicorns where a GOP Congress will help her pass her legislative agenda. Few in the media have called this out, but it is truly a nonsensical fantasy.

So much more to read . . . but I'll end with this:

3. The Pundits Are Bullshit
You don’t have to base your vote on this pragmatist calculation of course. There are various other arguments out there, e.g. those about symbolic gains of each candidate and the long game implications of each candidate. But what you can’t do, if you are being honest, is cry about the unrealism of Sanders platform without also crying about the unrealism of Clinton’s platform. And that is what the pundit class (which is heavily in the pro-Hillary camp) are currently doing.

http://linkis.com/mattbruenig.com/2016/JLsKi
Matt Bruenig is researcher of poverty and welfare systems at the think tank Demos.

[NowSam]

1. She'll just tell her sponsors to cut it out

and knock it off.

[valerief]

2. I couldn't get past this lie:

to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system

When did Sanders say he wanted to start all over again? I heard Hillary say it repeatedly, but not Bernie. He doesn't want to drop ACA, leave people with nothing, and then work on getting Medicare for All. There would be a transition period.

[amborin]

3. she and Chelsea have been lying about Bernie's plans for health care & about everything ekse

[Nanjeanne]

4. Seriously. Bernie Sanders who has been running his entire life for healthcare as a RIGHT for ALL

is going to dismantle anything that has helped people. For heaven's sake he worked hard to get something like $11 billion added into the ACA for health clinics around the country.

I don't care about phony laughs or condescending smiles - I cannot take her disingenuous statements and outright lies.

[Ken Burch]

5. "Unrealistic Puppies" would be a great band name. n/t.

[emulatorloo]

6. "Wildly Unrealistic Puppies" would be even better!

to Matt Bruenig for coming up with that

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Nanjeanne.

[Thinkingabout]

8. A method to break up the banks is already in the Dodd Frank Act, this bill

Has already enacted. We know the Glass Stegall was repealed by Republicans, I doubt they will be willing to reinstate it. This would be another problem in Sanders agenda and Hillary is going to use a bill already enacted, doesn't have to get it through congress.

[DanTex]

9. This is actually a good article. I agree on most everything except for the electability part.

And even there, I mostly agree.

He's right that Clinton and Sanders will face the same resistance from the GOP. Neither of their plans are going anywhere in close to their current form. This is precisely what makes the difference between the Sanders and Clinton presidency very small. The author makes a good point that Sanders would make more liberal appointments, which is true, but there's another factor that he doesn't mention, which is that Clinton (and her team) does have more experience fighting the GOP at the national level, and since it's going to be a fight after all, to me this is the most important thing. Look at Obama, for example. His second term has been entirely subject to GOP obstruction, and yet he still got a lot done: the Iran deal and executive actions on climate change, for example. These had nothing to do with how liberal he was, but how savvy he was, and in terms of savviness, the nod goes to Hillary over Bernie.

He makes the argument that Sanders has what he calls the "Burlington theory of change," which is basically a medium-term, top-down plan. Win the executive branch, and then use the bully pulpit to push the GOP out of congress. The problem is that this is at least as much of a "nonsensical fantasy" as Clinton's plans of shoving things through the GOP congress. The nation is not Burlington.

That leaves us with electability, and he correctly points out that Bernie polls slightly better right now, but there are credible arguments that the polling doesn't matter much. So he concludes that there's not much on which to base an electability case for either candidate.

Somehow he neglects to mention that Sanders self-identifies as a socialist, a word that polls worse than almost any other you can think of. I can't imagine why. Trying to discuss Sanders's electability without talking about socialism is intellectual dishonesty. Not to mention the fact that nobody anywhere near as liberal as Sanders has won anything outside of a few blue states. This is where the article falls apart.

[MisterP]

10. Blairism