“Mrs. Clinton’s speech should bust any remaining illusions that she will return her party to her husband’s 1990s centrism. She is running as an Obama-Warren Democrat, which means that is also how she would govern.”
Any doubt about Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy was put to rest on Saturday when she re-launched her presidential bid with a speech that Elizabeth Warren might have given. The former Secretary of State is running to the left even of President Obama, embracing Mr. Obama’s identity politics of race, sex and class but adding Senator Warren’s economic themes.
“The financial industry and many multinational corporations have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on long-term value—too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on investments in new businesses, jobs and fair compensation,” she said on Roosevelt Island in New York City.
So here is Mrs. Clinton’s answer to the dilemma that any Democrat faces after the Obama Presidency: How do you explain seven years of historically slow economic growth and stagnant incomes?
One answer would be to return to her husband’s economic pragmatism, but that would put Mrs. Clinton at odds with most of today’s Democratic Party. So she’s going for the Warren-Obama strategy of blaming economic underperformance on the wealthy, big business, Wall Street and the Republican Party.