High-profile Dems in the 1990s must have thought that you can have it all: They could bask in the admiration and acclaim enjoyed by their more liberal forebears while enjoying the largesse and security (personal and political) that comes when you win the backing of corporations and very-high-net-worth individuals.
And during the go-go Clinton years it almost seemed as if it worked: The economy was booming as they cut regulations, forced new rules and restrictions onto key anti-poverty programs, and very nearly agreed to cut Social Security.
Leading the charge was Bill Clinton himself. He signed the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" on August 22, 1996, saying it would "end welfare as we know it and transform our broken welfare system by promoting the fundamental values of work, responsibility, and families."
And when he signed the bill repealing Glass-Steagall, Bill Clinton said that ''This legislation is truly historic" -- a statement that's indisputable in hindsight: It's helped contribute to historic levels of unemployment, lost wealth for the middle class, and ongoing economic insecurity. His next sentence -- ''We have done right by the American people" - is more dubious.
Clintonian economic centrism was nothing but a fantasy -- a bubble-driven fantasy. the go-no nineties were fueled by an Internet bubble, and then a housing bubble sent the economy into manic overdrive.
Moms and Jobs
That nineties-era deregulation led to the financial crisis of 2008. Much has been made of the fact that unemployment statistics look slightly better for women than for men -- but compared to what? And for which women?
As of March 2012 official unemployment rate for women in the United States was 7.7 percent. In the 20 years before the crisis that figure was only reached for all workers in the final months of the first President Bush's term -- just before he lost his re-election bid over dissatisfaction with the economy.
In other words, it's a very bad number. Remember "It's the economy, stupid?"
Single mothers have been disproportionately hurt by the ongoing American recession. So have minority women, as well as mothers from all backgrounds who must contend with un- or under-employed spouses as well as young-adult children who are still living at home or accepting money from their parents during a period of record joblessness for the young.
And the "golden years" won't provide any comfort, much less gold, for America's mothers. Women over the age of 55 actually face higher unemployment rates than men do.
Poor Moms
We now know that welfare reform everybody was bragging about the nineties -- that decade's "Grand Bargain," its "bipartisan" triumph -- was a failure. It may have slightly helped single mothers find jobs in the 1990s, but nearly 90 percent of the job gains among single mothers during that period were due to other factors.
Even those meager gains were soon wiped out. Deregulation shattered the economy and led to mass unemployment, while conservative state legislators slashed the programs meant to help mothers who need jobs. And then the Federal programs were cut too.
But the cuts for mothers and their children? They didn't go away when the jobs did.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children was ended, and we now know that its successor (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families - TANF) only helps 27 out of every 100 impoverished families. That's less than half the families that were getting help before all of this bipartisan "reform" kicked in.
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