Hillary Rodham Warren: Mrs. Clinton Begins Her Dance With the Democratic Left.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/hillary-rodham-warren-1414712886?mod=hp_opinion
So we hear that Hillary Clinton ’s Wall Street admirers are concerned about her comments last week, at a rally with Senator Elizabeth Warren, that businesses don’t create jobs. They better get used to it, because this is only the beginning of Mrs. Clinton’s dance with Liz as the former first lady adapts to the leftward shift of her party while making another run at the White House.
“Don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs,” Mrs. Clinton said in Boston. She added that “I love watching Elizabeth, you know, give it to those who deserve to get it.” She didn’t say who deserved it, but Sen. Warren has a long target list.
Mrs. Clinton tried to backtrack on Monday. “Trickle down economics has failed. I short-handed this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades,” she said. “Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in America and workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out—not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas.”
Bill Clinton must have helped on that one, and it’s nice to know she thinks some businesses create jobs. But the real importance of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign remarks is what they say about the direction of the Democratic Party since she and Bill lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Democratic economic policy has moved sharply to the anti-business left. President Obama ’s soak-the-rich rhetoric has led the shift, but even he hasn’t gone far enough for the Warren wing. This accounts for the Massachusetts Senator’s star status on the stump this year, as she bashes bankers and proposes even higher taxes on business.
To distance themselves from Mr. Obama’s economic record, Hillary and Bill will try to make voters ignore the record of the last six years and recall the 1990s. Her political problem will be reconciling the claims of that record with the Obama-Warren economic agenda.
What the Clintons won’t mention is that the economy really took off after Republicans took Congress in 1994, or that Mr. Clinton agreed with Newt Gingrich to cut the capital gains tax rate to 20% in 1997. Don’t expect to hear much about welfare reform, the passage of Nafta, or the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Look for her to suggest that the 1990s boom was all the result of the tax increase of 1993, without mentioning that it cost Democrats control of Congress.
Watching Mrs. Clinton dance this two-step will be one of the political dramas of 2015. Mrs. Clinton knows that minor-league liberals like Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley pose no political threat to her nomination, but Mrs. Warren could. The Senator could neutralize Mrs. Clinton’s first-woman-President pitch while being more popular with the party’s Argentine economics wing. This explains Mrs. Clinton’s effusive praise for Mrs. Warren and what is sure to be a major bow to her policies.
The Wall Streeters who think Mr. Obama is an aberration and that electing Hillary Clinton will return the country to the 1990s should think again. If we know anything about the Clintons, it is that they will do whatever it takes to win. So don’t rule out a Vice President or Treasury Secretary Warren.
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