2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How can a brilliant political scientist like Rachel seem oblivious to the DLC? [View all]mythology
(9,527 posts)She is very smart and realizes that those connections that you think are so obvious and so concrete, really aren't.
For example, a number of economists don't find that the so-called repeal of Glass-Steagall had an appreciable impact on the 2007 banking crisis as the repeal was only for a small part of the act and the firms that failed weren't granted new less-regulated power by the partial repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Likewise the case against free trade isn't nearly as cut and dried as some wish to pretend it is. Plant closing related job losses didn't increase after NAFTA. The decline in manufacturing jobs coincides with increases in automation and worker productivity that have nothing to do with NAFTA. To pretend that the issue is black and white is simplistic.