Mark Schmitt is right to argue that Obama would be well-served to develop a more thoroughgoing critique of not only the Bush years, but the past few decades of bond market-focused neoliberalism, of which Clinton was a decided part. It's a tricky strategy because, as Paul Krugman rightly points out, Clinton's economic record was quite good. Growth was high and distribution improved. What Clinton failed at was public investment. Health care. Infrastructure reconstruction. Reinvigorating unions. He managed the economy with an adept progressive hand, but he left little in the way of institutions, programs, or reforms that pushed in a more progressive direction. It was a curiously transient presidency. The problem is that Obama really doesn't have such a program either. He's got a health care plan, but Clinton's is a bit better. He's for green jobs and infrastructure reinvestment, but those are insufficient. Mark says, "to give voters like those in rural Pennsylvania a real reason to believe that their economic circumstances could be different, he will have to couple the critique of Clintonism that was implicit in his San Francisco remarks with a much bigger vision, a kind of new New Deal, tied to his communitarian appreciation of the significance of rebuilding all the bonds of a community." But it's getting a bit late in the game for that. One of the real weaknesses of the Obama campaign has been its inability to distinguish itself on substantive domestic issues. His foreign policy is genuinely forward looking, and his personal magnetism and political talents are once-in-a-generation gifts. But he never tied them to a domestic policy platform that he could use to lope past Hillary. One of the reasons the race has descended into trivialities is that the two campaigns disagree on very little, and so can't get traction by attacking each other on substantive differences. Obama could, of course, bring out a New Deal style vision tomorrow, but the problem is that he has no good answer for why he didn't do it a year ago. He can't say "because though I called for audacity, I remained timid," and he can't say "because I need to beat Hillary Clinton." It's a problem.
