Hillary Clinton and the lingering ideology of the Democratic Leadership Council

Hillary Clinton is still throwing shade on Bernie Sanders: Caroline Kelly, Clinton doubles down on Sanders criticism, warns that he's promising 'the moon' CNN 02/07/2020.

Which I'm starting to find amusing. Could it be that Hillary knows that her criticism will Help Sanders more than hurt him in the primary contest? And is therefore playing the famous "three-dimensional chess" with this to boost his prospects?

Still, it's hard to see how the comments of the leader who won the popular vote for the Presidency in 2016 is effectively grappling with the current state of American democracy:

When asked by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres if she wanted to address her prior remarks about the Vermont independent, Clinton noted that while she originally made them about a year and a half ago, "I have a pretty clear perspective about what it's going to take to win, and as I said earlier, that's what I think the key calculation for any voter has to be."

"You've got to be responsible for what you say, and what you say you're going to do," Clinton added. "We need to rebuild trust in our fellow Americans and in our institutions, and if you promise the moon and you can't deliver the moon, then that's going to be one more indicator of how, you know, we just can't trust each other." ...

On Thursday, Clinton followed up her comments on responsibility by pointing to health care, a key issue for Sanders, who is a well-known proponent of "Medicare for All." In October, Sanders said he doesn't need to come up with a detailed plan "right now" for how much his signature health care plan would cost individual Americans.

"I want quality affordable health care for everybody. ... But let's remember what's at stake. We have a current President who's trying to take away fundamental health care rights," Clinton said, referencing the Trump administration's support for a lawsuit looking to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, including protections for people with preexisting conditions.

"So we can have a big argument about ideally what kind of health care we should want for everybody, because I'm on the front lines on that battle, but let's remember: If we don't win, people will lose what they have right now," she added. "So I just want everybody to understand how high the stakes are and to hold every candidate and every public office holder accountable for what they do or they don't do." [my emphasis]

I view those quotes as showing the extent to which Clinton is still fighting the DLC battles of the 1980s. Assuming the CNN quotes convey her comments fully enough there, what she seems to be saying is that not only should Democrats not even be talking about Medicare for All but instead should focus on the minimum goal of containing the damage the Trump Administration has already done to the health insurance system in the US.

This strikes me as a version of the Make American Boring Again message that is essentially one of mildly disturbed complacency.

Corporate Democrats generally aren't going to challenge drastic descriptions of the danger of the Trump Administration. But even during the Reagan years, Democrats had an advantage in national public opinion when it came to polls showing people were generally more attracted to Democratic positions than Republican ones. But the Democrats went into a defensive crouch in which they courted corporate cash more actively and they accepted Republican framing of issues from defense to fiscal conservatism to law-and-order. The corporate-centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was the chief organized expression of that political tendency.

But what at least as frustrating to Democratic activists as their centrist positioning on issues was their seeming unwillingness to fight for their own stated positions, in dramatic contrast to the steadily increasing zeal of the Republicans to fight for theirs.

Clinton's appeal to Democrats to Settle For Less that shows up in that article seems like a tired repetition of DLC centrism. Long after the DLC itself disbanded, which is did in 2011. (Ben Smith, The end of the DLC era Politico 02/007/2011)

And it's a reflection of the continuing asymetric polarization between the Democratic and Republican Party, with the former struggling to get past timid centrist and the latter having descended to an authoritarian party in a continuing process of radicalization. (See: Norman Ornstein, Yes, Polarization Is Asymmetric—and Conservatives Are Worse The Atlantic 06/19/2014: Edward Lempinen interviewing Thomas Mann, Impeachment puts GOP’s divisive tactics center-stage, says Berkeley expert Berkeley News 12/17/2019)