In light of Paul's discussion on elites earlier today, it is worth noting Hillary Clinton comments on economists disagreeing with her on the gas tax holiday:
Hillary Clinton has just started doing an Indiana town-hall meeting being broadcast on ABC, and George Stephanopoulos asked her a direct question:
Could she name a single economist who agrees with her support for the gas tax holiday?
Hillary sidestepped the question, and tried to use the complete dearth of expert support for the idea to her advantage, pointing to it as proof that she's on the side of ordinary folks against "elite opinion" -- a phrase she used twice.
"I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion behind policies that haven't worked well for hard working Americans," she said.
A bit later she added: "It's really odd to me that arguing to give relief to a vast majority of Americans creates this incredible pushback...Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that don't benefit" the vast majority of the American people.
Now, it seems to be a truism of politics that "elites" are bad. However, there seems to be significant disagreement on who the "elites" actually are in any given circumstance. In this case, Hillary Clinton casts economists as elites whose opinions always diverge from policies that would benefit "hard working Americans." The problem with this formulation isn't the use of the term "elite," but rather that by attacking academics it fits the conservative model of elite rather than the progressive model of elite. Here is a crude sketch:
- Elites for conservatives: Liberals, academics, judges, the entertainment industry, journalists, and the arugula / Belgian endive / wine set.
- Elites for progressives: Higher-ups in large corporations, most national media pundits, political insiders, and wealthy donors.
Clinton's formulation really rubs me the wrong way because casting economists as the elitists is much closer to the conservative formulation of elites who run the country than it is to the progressive formulation of elites who run the country. Clinton is trying to frame the gas tax holiday as "taking on the oil companies," which is a working class, progressive populist position. However, when it turns into taking on academics, the framing takes a sharp turn to the right where study and science are discounted, even scoffed at. Mimikatz summed this up pretty well last night:
This is also bad morally because it suggests we should all just go on driving as much as we want, completely divorced from the reality of global warming. It is the opposite of Rooseveltian straight talk. It not only does not educate on the subject of gasoline usage and global warming, it misinforms.
It has as its premise the notion that taxes are bad, even taxes that pay for highways and bridges. Talk about right-wing frames! There is a reason this idea originated with McCain.
Worst of all, it suggests Hillary does not understand global arming and the kinds of things that need to get done, or just doesn't care. Or, as Steve Benen suggests, rather than admit she made a mistake, she is compounding and amplifying it, making things infinitely worse in an imitation of the current Decider, who also can't admit a mistake, by having her spokesperson say we shouldn't listen to experts, just follow your gut. We've had quite enough of that.
It fits into a larger pattern where Clinton is using right-wing conceptualizations of elitism to attack Obama. Now, for example, she is sending out direct mail attacking Obama for being an elitist who wants to take away rural people's guns. That is a pretty stark right-wing turn for Clinton in this campaign.
A true nightmare scenario for progressives is when the leader of the Democratic Party participates in, gives credence to, and "closes the triangle" on the centerpiece of conservative ideology over the last forty years: the Great Backlash Narrative against civil rights and "liberal elites.". While Obama has engaged in some right-wing talking points of his own on "Hillarycare," a social security "crisis," and the rather absurd notion that the Clintons are ultra-partisan super lefties, Clinton is stepping into far more dangerous territory here. Her arguments border on holding liberalism and progressivism itself in the same sort of narrative contempt that conservatives have long done through the Great Backlash Narrative. This very much reminds of me when the DLC was dominant in the Democratic Party in the 1990's, and it is not a place to where I long to return. |
