HILLARY CLINTON’S POSITIONS

“Hillary Clinton was aware of the newly muscular economic-populist passions of the [Democratic Party’s] rank and file, and last year she made a series of moves that she surely thought would stand her in good, or at least improved, stead with a left flank that has never embraced her. She came out for paid family and medical leave. She proposed a set of reforms of Wall Street that would impose a graduated risk fee on large banks and a tax on high-frequency trading, among other measures, that was generally well received last fall. On a noneconomic matter, but one made salient on the left by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, she called for sweeping criminal justice reforms and vowed to end the ‘era of mass incarceration.’ She positioned herself clearly to the left of where she had been in 2008.

“Her [Clinton’s] overtures to the left, on close examination, were basically sound but they were still embroidered with the caution that has been her habit. For example, while her Wall Street package won some praise on the left, including from Elizabeth Warren, Clinton stops short of reinstating Glass-Steagall regulation of banks, which has become one of those symbolic positions for people on the left. On paid family leave, there is a bill in the Senate that would finance it by imposing a 0.2 percent payroll tax on workers and employers. It has fairly broad Democratic backing, but Clinton doesn’t support it. Her proposal would be funded by a higher tax on the wealthy only, because she wants to be able to say that she will raise no taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.”

Tomasky, “The Dangerous Election,” in the New York Review, March 24, 2016, pp: 4-6.