Inside the Democratic Party, economic policy is often seen as a contest between President Barack Obama’s track record and the anti-Wall Street approach advocated by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton heads for an expected 2016 run for president, her allies are pointing her toward something in between.
A group of Clinton advisers offered a detailed economic agenda last week that aims to help raise wages for millions of workers and narrow the gap between rich and poor. The policy road map was produced at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank stocked with veterans of the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations. It appeared to focus on those who are disenchanted with Obama and skeptical that Clinton would effectively police Wall Street and champion middle-class workers.
“While there are large forces, globalization, technology and more, that are creating large challenges for many workers, there is no excuse or intellectual basis for fatalism,” said Larry Summers, one of its authors and a former treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton who later worked for Obama.
–
“I don’t think the 2014 midterms were some sort of fluke,” he said. “If you don’t give people a reason to get up and go vote for you, I’d expect them to sit down and stay home or vote for somebody else. So you can’t assume based on demographics or race or income class that the electorate is going to support you. … You have to do precisely the kind of policy work that this group is offering us.”
___
Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KThomasDC
