The Big Dog has taken some reputational hits in the past decade. The #MeToo movement was not kind to his serial infidelity and the unequal nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Balancing the budget - an extraordinary achievement in many ways - was largely derided in left wing economic circles amid the lunacy of Modern Monetary Theory. The wreckage of 2008 argued, correctly, for Keynesian deficit spending. If you want to see what the wrong thing to do in 2008-2010 was, look at Britain's austerity program.
All of which brings me to the debate about what Democrats should do if they win in 2028 (which they almost certainly will if we have free and fair elections). The problem is that, much like Clinton, this hypothetical Democratic president and Congress will face fiscal realities arguably more dire than Clinton faced.
This includes Social Security.
The problem, as I see it, is that we have an ideological schism in everyone to the left of Mitt Romney. Right now you have a vague sort of Bernie Bro, DSA type of leftist and they have been countered by a technocratic prioritizing of "abundance." The argument is fiscal policy, which is taxing and spending. There is a broad acknowledgement that we need to tax the rich more, but when it comes to Social Security, something like Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" might not work. To shore up Social Security, you need to increase the steady stream of revenue.
Some of that might come from moving from a payroll tax to more of an income tax. As Krugman notes, the explosion of the wealth gap comes not from a divergence in salary, but in equities. A CEO might have a large salary, sure, but he also has a ton of stock options that are taxed differently than salaried income.
Capturing that will piss off a lot of people, though doing it subtly - a scalpel rather than a battle axe - might ease some problems.
By the time Trump is finally forced off the national stage, America will be facing multiple crises of his and the Republican's making: a galloping climate crisis, America's diminished standing in the world, poisonous divisions within the body politic, an AI movement largely unfettered from public accountability, a degraded military from numerous misadventures, a need to re-attract immigrants to a place that doesn't feel as safe as it once did, widespread public corruption...the list goes on.
The fiscal crisis will not be a "Trumpist" crisis; it's a Republican crisis. It's the old "starve the beast" form of governance that will require the next government of adults (ie Democrats) have to clean up the mess.
American politics really went off the rails after the 2000 election. Some of that was 9/11, but if Nader doesn't run and Gore actually wins, the track of American history might not include 9/11. It certainly wouldn't include Iraq. It wouldn't include Bush's wasteful tax cuts. Gore was as exciting as a Saltine cracker, but his governance could have built on Clinton's and created a financially solvent country that felt no need to elect the charlatan from the tabloids and reality TV.
If Democrats swarm back into power in 2028, they will have to make actual hard governing decisions on boring shit like how to shore up Social Security, how to reduce the deficit. When Clinton did it, interest rates fell, businesses expanded and the economy boomed - and not just at the top.
The question is: Would an angry Democratic primary electorate vote for this candidate?
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