Bill Clinton Would Be in Charge of 'Revitalizing the Economy' Hillary Clinton Says, Ft. Mitchell KY

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47. Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton's Five Major Accomplishments Were Longstanding GOP Objectives.

May 15, Truthout, - Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton's Five Major Accomplishments Were Longstanding GOP Objectives.-

Thomas Frank, author of Listen, Liberal, discusses the Hillary Doctrine's basis in neoliberalism, how the Democratic Party stopped governing on behalf of the working class and how President Bill Clinton's major achievements actually enacted conservative goals, and ultimately hurt working people.

Mark Karlin: The innovation class, the creative class, the wealthy class, the professional class with Ivy League degrees: How did President Obama become the avatar for believing these groups should be the decision makers in government?

Thomas Frank: Obama thinks such people should be in charge because they came up through the same system as him. "Because he himself was a product of the great American postwar meritocracy," his biographer Jonathan Alter writes, "he could never fully escape seeing the world from the status ladder he had ascended."

Most of our other Democratic leaders (the Clintons, for example) came up the same way and believe the same thing. Indeed, what Alter describes is standard-issue stuff for Democrats these days. The Democrats are a class party in the fullest sense of the phrase, and the class whose perspective they reflect and whose interests they serve is the highly educated, white-collar professional class. Theirs is a liberalism of the rich.

Can you describe a little about what you call "The Hillary Doctrine," including how microlending is a good example of her belief in opening doors of entrepreneurship to solve the world's economic problems?

..You can see the appeal of this movement: It's telling you that the solution to poverty is not unions or government or anything like that, but for everyone to work hard and start their own businesses -- and, incidentally, to extend the reach of Western financial institutions to every village on the planet. A pure win-win. Everyone feels good. Everyone feels virtuous.

Except for the people who live in those countries, of course, because they know it doesn't work. You don't build a country's economy by having everyone buy a goat and sell milk to one another. All these people have to show for this strategy is debt. Some empowerment.

I was captivated by your description of Hillary Clinton being surrounded by a "microclimate of virtue." Can you describe what you mean by that and how it was represented in your section, "No Ceilings," that included Melinda Gates and a panel to show how much women in power "cared" for poor women? I love your sardonic description, "the presenters called out to one another in tones of gracious supportiveness and flattery so sweet it bordered on idolatry."

More, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36035-thomas-frank-bill-clinton-s-five-major-achievements-were-longstanding-gop-objectives
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511967219