Clinton has certainly embraced marriage equality, publicly "evolving" on this issue much as President Obama and former President Clinton have done. There, too, the left laid the groundwork. "I'm not evolving when it comes to gay rights," says Bernie Sanders. "I was there!"
Love Is Not Enough
It is beautiful to see love honored and validated in all its forms. But "love is not all," as the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote. "It is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain."
Progressive positions on economic issues -- which affect "meat, drink, and a roof against the rain" for families of all social groups and orientations -- seem somewhat harder for certain Dems to embrace.
Wall Street, the largest source of mainstream Democratic financial support, is comfortable with socially liberal initiatives like gay marriage. But it is largely opposed to some of the specific measures that would reduce wealth inequality and encourage economic growth, especially in the areas of taxation, stronger regulations and the criminal prosecution of banker fraud.
The Populist Moment
How have the top Democrats responded to growing calls for economic populism? President Obama recently moved to increase the minimum wage for federal contractors, and has increased the hourly minimum wage he endorses. But he has not cracked down on Wall Street fraud and did not move to break up the big banks when he could have done so.
For her part, Secretary Clinton's embrace of economic populism has so far been largely rhetorical. She has taken verbal swipes at hedge funders, for example, but has thus far refused to speak up on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its potential impact on American workers. She has tweeted in support of workers marching for a higher minimum wage, saying she thinks it should be raised, but she has not backed specific minimum-wage proposals or indicated what she thinks that wage should be.
Gratifyingly, Clinton has also spoken out against mass incarceration. That's one of the major crises of our time, one which was accelerated when President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crimes Control Act. (President Clinton has essentially acknowledged as much in recent weeks.)
The Left Was Right
Which raises another point: On issue after issue, the left has been prescient in its analysis.
Welfare reform? When Bill Clinton signed the 1996 legislation, it was the left that pointed out that it wouldn't work. "I have devoted the last 30-plus years to doing whatever I could to help in reducing poverty in America," said Peter Edelman of the Department of Health and Human Services as he tendered his resignation. "I believe the recently enacted welfare bill goes in the opposite direction."
Edelman was right, and so were many others on the left. Thanks to a report from the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center, we now know that poverty increased in the United States by 130 percent between 1996 and 2013, and that "welfare reform" was the primary cause.
The invasion of Iraq? Many on the left were marginalized for opposing it, but they stood up when others -- including some leading Democrats -- did not.
Deregulation? When top Democrats were pushing it, it was the left that warned of fraud and future financial crises.
Gay marriage? The left's early adoption of this issue raises a thought that could make certain minds reel: Liberals may actually have a better feel for the zeitgeist than their triangulating counterparts.
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