Bill Clinton, The Genesis Of The Corporately-Owned New Dems And The Decline Of The Democratic Party

The Democratic Party Won't Fix Itself— It Has To Be Forced On Them

They're not Republicans, but they are what's wrong with the Democratic Party

Perhaps you read Nicholas Liu’s Salon piece last week, Can Democrats Finally Quit The “Consultant Class?”. He noted that “As the scope of the Democratic Party's 2024 election loss sunk in and the inevitable recriminations began, the so-called ‘consultant class’ emerged as the most unifying target of blame for a party otherwise divided on ideology, policy and personal quarrels. In a forum sanctioned by the DNC for the national chair race in January, nearly every candidate pledged to scrutinize the DNC's contracts with consultants, with the stated goal of pruning the organization of those who have for decades helped guide the party's leaders and candidates in an era marked by embarrassing defeats and narrow victories that fell short of expectations. The winner of that race, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin, said at the time that ‘D.C. consultants’ will ‘be gone when I’m there.’” So far they’re not— but being reviewed.

“James Skoufis, a fierce critic of the Democratic Party's cozy relationship with those consultants,” wrote Liu, “argued that Martin should be able to find plenty of waste and fraud, as winning elections and building credibility was not the criteria that has been used in the past. ‘Many of these contracts, which can be seven or eight figures large, were not earned through honesty and value they bring to campaigns,’ Skoufis said. ‘They were instead earned via relationships within the DNC, for knowing a friend of a friend of a congressman, or another consultant, or the right people within the organization.’ The use of the ‘D.C.’ label by Martin to characterize disfavored consultants evokes the image of a political swamp that can be found anywhere in the U.S., though its brackish waters are most thick where the federal government and swarms of lobbyists reside. Skoufis, who sometimes refers to those consultants as being part of the ‘cocktail circuit,’ defined them more specifically as mercenaries who earn lucrative contracts by ‘drifting from campaign to campaign, administration to administration, cable contract to cable contract, and advise the party’s political hub and candidates, and are often rewarded with more contracts and campaigns,’ even when the party loses.”

For her 2024 campaign, former Vice President Kamala Harris spent hundreds of millions of dollars on consulting and media firms run by Democratic Party insiders, including those who worked for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign. It all amounts to a giant waste of money, Skoufis said, because their advice, encapsulated by the Biden administration trying to persuade Americans that their perception of a difficult economy was not rooted in reality, is “totally removed from the desires, needs, and motivations of working class and middle-class voters.” 

In this criticism, Skoufis appears to share common ground with a number of consultants and staffers largely from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Those people, many of whom supported the insurgent campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders and AOC and were once blacklisted by the DCCC, are quick to distinguish themselves from the much-derided “consultant class.”

“They exist largely to protect their own power and keep making money,” Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, a group that supports progressive candidates, told Salon. “The party needs to pivot away from consultants who have conflicts of interest, who go around the revolving door to also work with corporations like Uber or McDonald's or Exxon Mobil or Goldman Sachs and represent their interests in the political world.”

One Democratic Party-aligned polling firm that has consistently appeared on the DNC payroll, Global Strategy Group, was paid by Amazon in 2022 to help the company suppress a union election at a Staten Island warehouse. Although the DNC publicly floated a proposal to ban party consultants from engaging in union-busting in response to backlash, they have not since clarified if it was actually put into effect. Such a proposal would have, in theory, barred the DNC from paying $1.2 million to GSG during the 2023-2024 election cycle even as the firm continued to represent union-hostile companies like Google, or paying nearly $12 million to Wilmer Cutter Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, a law firm that advertises “union avoidance strategies,”  during the same period, according to FEC filings. 

It's not just those firms' corporate ties that are raising eyebrows. SKDK, another popular Democratic Party firm and a co-creation of former Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn, recently registered as foreign agents for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even as the party is already facing widespread censure of its support for a country that has been accused of committing genocide.

…The most recent failed presidential campaign provides an ideal case study for critics of business as usual. While Harris entered the campaign with some tentative appeals to economic populism and acknowledged that the cost of living was “still too hight,” she and her surrogates increasingly relied on well-worn arguments about Trump's authoritarian tendencies and bumbled over how tightly to embrace the Biden-era economy in the face of widespread discontent. By the fall, earlier proposals or promises to crack down on price gouging, expand the child tax credit and impose more taxes on the wealthy had been watered down, while rhetoric against moneyed elites gave way to more neutral appeals like “job creation” and “opportunities for the middle class”— much of this, apparently, at the direction of Harris advisers with corporate ties… 

One of those advisers, Karen Dunn, was serving as lead trial counsel for Google in a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit at the same time she helped Harris prep for her debate against Trump; two others, Obama campaign alum David Plouffe and Harris' brother-in-law, Tony West, have seats on Uber's senior management team. West reportedly played a key role in convincing Harris to tailor her economic message to be more business-friendly and campaign more with surrogates who could ostensibly provide cross-party appeal, like billionaire Mark Cuban and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.

… “In election after election where Democrats lose, the establishment's first instinct is to punch down on not only just marginalized groups, but marginalized groups that it counts as its own base, or did at one point, and then wonder why those people don't want to vote for Democrats anymore,” he said. "Throwing immigrants and trans kids under the bus and turning into a diet Republican Party is not the solution. You'll always be out-righted by them.”

Andrabi, noting polls that showed a shift towards Trump over the economy rather than on identity and human rights, said that the objective for the Democratic Party should be to “unite these marginalized communities, be it immigrants, be it trans people and their families, be it working class people of all races, against the same handful of billionaires and corporations that are picking all of their pockets.”

Is it just the consultant class? Or as Lily Geismer put it in The Nation, is it the dead hand of Clintonism? For students of recent political history, the mainstream Democratic approach has a familiar, and deeply frustrating, ring. “It’s a worldview steeped in sclerotic economic policy prescriptions and the courtship of fickle suburban voters. And while the full measure of its bankruptcy has become broadly visible only in recent election cycles, its deficiencies have been evident to those who cared to look for more than three decades, since the rise of Bill Clinton and his particular brand of neoliberal politics. Clintonism fundamentally changed the Democratic Party. With its determined rejection of old liberal commitments, it established a new paradigm for the party’s politics and, with it, a new way of doing business that has persisted even as Clinton himself has faded into the background… It saturated the Obama years, seeping into both policy and electoral strategy through the coterie of Clintonites who shaped so much of his administration’s ethos; it underpinned Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid; and it reasserted itself in 2020 through the party insiders who were so fixated on resisting challenges from within their ranks that they abruptly shut down the Democratic primary field in order to guarantee that Biden would be the nominee— thereby quashing a class-based insurgency in the party— and then propped up a cognitively challenged Biden long past any conceivable electoral viability. Most recently, the dead hand of Clintonism forged the foundations of Kamala Harris’s difference-trimming campaign pitch, which targeted the same elusive moderate suburban voters in swing states.”

She wrote that during and after the Reagan era, “As the Democrats set about clawing their way back toward political relevance, a faction that had been trying since the 1970s to shift the party’s political and ideological direction formed an organization with the explicit goal of reinventing both. They called themselves the New Democrats and named their organization the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). At the helm was Al From, a journalism school graduate who had done stints in the Johnson and Carter administrations before turning himself into a ‘policy entrepreneur’ for the party’s disenchanted centrist flank. Alongside him was a cadre of overwhelmingly white Southern men who shared his critique of the party’s longtime embrace of industrial manufacturing, labor unions, civil rights, and social welfare. In their place, the faction embraced market competition, entrepreneurship, deregulation, and public-private collaboration— all while supplementing it with gentle modulations to create incremental gains in racial and gender equality… [T]he DLC also began cultivating an electoral strategy that rested on the twin notions that white middle-class professionals were key to capturing the presidency, and that capturing the presidency was key to the party’s future viability… Instead of stressing outcomes, the Democrats would tout ‘opportunity’; instead of promoting New Deal–style master plans to alleviate entrenched inequalities in income, housing, and education, the Democrats would romance Wall Street while sending traditional allies, such as teachers’ unions and displaced industrial workers, to the back of the line... They were especially dismissive of the theory, which was at the heart of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 campaigns, that the party could make gains by encouraging disaffected and marginalized Americans to vote. Instead, they argued, the Democrats needed to lure back the white moderate professionals and lower-middle-class workers who had been migrating to the Republicans with a message that emphasized social issues and moral principles.”

“The DLC got a chance to test these theories in 1992, when a candidate of unusual political talents emerged— from within its own ranks. Bill Clinton, who was one of the founding members of the DLC and served as its chair in the early 1990s, proved the ideal candidate to deliver the group’s message and vision. Ambitious and charismatic, he had used his years in the Arkansas governor’s mansion to cultivate a national platform by implementing programs to foster postindustrial growth while experimenting with new forms of fiscal austerity, including an early welfare-to-work program. His 1992 campaign, [i]n addition to his famous call to ‘end welfare as we know it,’ offered a series of proposals to prove that he believed in ‘family values,’ was tough on crime and supported the death penalty, and was not beholden to ‘special interests.’ His denunciation of the rapper and activist Sister Souljah at one of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition events was such a transparent attempt to distance himself from the more progressive factions of the party that the phrase ‘Sister Souljah moment’ became a synonym… for signaling to centrist voters that a politician ‘is not beholden to traditional, and sometimes unpopular, interest groups associated with the party.’”

In office, Clinton showed whose economic pain he really empathized with. He quickly rejected the notion, advocated by his longtime friend and labor secretary, Robert Reich, that the best way to achieve economic growth was through fiscal stimulus and investment in infrastructure. Instead, he followed the advice of Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who served as the director of Clinton’s National Economic Council and then as his secretary of treasury, as well as other finance-friendly deficit hawks who argued that balancing the federal budget by reducing the deficit would be a way to win back the trust of Wall Street, especially bond traders. Clinton also fulfilled some key campaign promises: He implemented NAFTA, much to the chagrin of many fellow Democrats, and he got tough on crime by signing into law the Violent Crime Control And Law Enforcement Act in September 1994.

… Dick Morris, who had advised Clinton since his first run for governor in 1978, had a reputation for ruthless if not unethical tactics (his most recent major advisee is Donald Trump)… Morris helped Clinton develop a reelection campaign that was obsessively focused on winning the support of white suburban “soccer moms,” who seemed like the most persuadable swing voters. This focus showed that all vestiges of the faint populism or progressivism that had appeared in Clinton’s presidential bid and first term had to go when there were any signs of trouble. Nevertheless, Morris… persuaded Clinton to co-opt features of the conservative agenda, a strategy he called “triangulation.”  The Clinton campaign duly rolled out a series of easily satirized “family values” proposals, including mandatory school uniforms, curfews for teens, and the V-chip, a device that would block TV programs deemed to be obscene.

Other aspects of the 1996 campaign agenda of triangulation made for less of a late-night punch line. Clinton’s effort to fulfill his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it” had failed just before the midterm elections. Gingrich’s Contract With America made welfare reform a major priority. Following their 1994 victory, House and Senate Republicans offered various versions of welfare reform, all of which were far more stringent than what Clinton had envisioned. Although he vetoed the first two bills, a third one landed on his desk at the height of his reelection race in the summer of 1996. It included far stricter time limits than Clinton was then proposing, while also advocating marriage and abstinence counseling and cutting $24 billion in funding for food stamps; it also barred most new immigrants— including those with authorized status— from receiving even basic welfare assistance.

… Most of Clinton’s cabinet— including Robert Reich, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and even Robert Rubin— advised him not to sign it. Morris and the DLC took a different stance. Even though Clinton had a double-digit lead over Bob Dole, the Republican nominee, Morris argued that the bill offered insurance for his reelection. Clinton ultimately capitulated, putting his pen to the personal Responsibility And Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in August 1996. The name was a direct callback to the New Democrats’ core notion that the best way to help struggling Americans was by creating “opportunity” through the private sector, not by maintaining a strong government safety net. The act also clearly illustrated the New Democrats’ belief that soccer moms and their husbands were a more valuable constituency than poor and working-class voters— a belief that rested on the assumption that these traditional Democratic constituencies would still show up for Clinton at the ballot box. It was a calculation that would pan out: On Election Day, Clinton carried every income group except the very wealthiest. 

The 1996 election was interpreted as a giant green light for the New Democrat agenda. The results provided Clinton with a powerful mandate to pursue his vision of a “New Economy”— one that the New Democrats had been promoting for years. He signed a series of trade deals, deregulated financial services, and offered incentives to bolster the tech sector. These efforts earned the full support of the DLC.

The aggregate results of these policies contributed to a rosy picture of the economy when Clinton left office. By 1999, the GDP was growing at and average rate of 23.5 percent annually; there were more than 18 million new private sector jobs; the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent (the lowest in 29 years); the inflation rate was 2.1 percent; and there was a budget surplus for the first time since 1969. The Clinton administration and the DLC proudly celebrated all this data as proof that their vision had been correct. Many of the benefits, however, were disproportionately enjoyed by those in the top economic strata. A large portion of the new jobs required a bachelor’s or associate’s degree, and those that didn’t tended not to pay a living wage or offered little chance for advancement.

While NAFTA would later get the lion’s share of the blame, it was only one of the many important free-trade policies established in the 1990s. Many economists now view the decision to expand trade with China and advocate for its admission to the World Trade Organization, along with the administration’s deregulation of finance, as even greater sources of harm. At the end of his presidency, Clinton made an effort to reach out to the communities that the New Economy had left behind, but the promises of worker retraining and investment from the private sector never materialized— even as the gutting of welfare and food stamp programs tore large holes in the social safety net.

Clinton’s success in the 1996 election, nevertheless, created a virtual orthodoxy on the best ways for Democrats to win presidential elections. While not every candidate went as far as pushing V-chips, every successive Democratic presidential nominee crafted their campaign to appeal to suburban professionals. Barack Obama’s campaign is remembered for its multicultural narrative of hope and change, but much of that message was carefully calibrated to appeal to affluent white suburbanites in swing states like Virginia and Colorado rather than to those Americans who were most acutely experiencing the fallout of the 2008 recession.

Once in office, Obama also adopted elements of the New Democrats’ focus on economic growth through free trade, finance, and tech entrepreneurship, even bringing back many Clinton alums to fill key posts in his administration. As the 2008 recession wrought a very uneven recovery, many working-class Americans began connecting the dots and concluded that the culprit for their economic pain was the Democratic Party. In turn, the party consistently failed to offer a meaningful alternative vision, instead doubling down on its Clinton-era strategy of appealing to the affluent and middle-class center—most clearly articulated by Senator Chuck Schumer when he predicted during the 2016 election:  “For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western PA, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

One of the major flaws in this strategy is that it failed to address the ways in which the Republican Party had changed since the 1990s. While some of the Democrats’ tactics and policies might have worked against a classic free-market conservative like Bob Dole or Mitt Romney (whose company was directly responsible for substantial job losses), it has proved far less effective at countering Trump and the MAGA right, who have leaned hard into nationalist populism. And, as demonstrated in the exit polls from 2024, there aren’t enough moderate suburbanites to balance out the other groups who have migrated toward the GOP…

Four decades later, the Democrats are once again facing a reckoning, with a choice to make about how they intend to forge their way out of the wilderness. While powerful factions of the party remain wedded to the spirit of Clintonism Past— that victories by the right necessitate rightward shifts by the Democrats, that vulnerable communities should be sacrificed to such efforts, and that the working class is an interest group whose needs can be overlooked— the results of the 2024 election make all too clear that the party needs to retire its 1990s ways.

This will mean more than giving Bill and Hillary Clinton less prominent speaking roles at the Democratic National Convention or refusing to tap Clinton administration alums to man key administration and campaign posts. It will also mean more than mere rhetorical populism— that is, more than talking about feeling voters’ economic pain. It will mean fundamentally reimagining the ethos of the party and allowing new generations of politicians and policymakers to emerge. Most of all, it will mean creating an agenda that meets the realities of both the present and the future by, among other things, addressing the profound inequalities at the heart of our economy, the climate crisis, and the country’s threadbare social safety net.

In the coming months, the story of the Clinton era should serve as a warning to Democrats that they must be clear-eyed about the past. Still, amid the wreckage, there is at least one lesson they can take from the party’s New Democrat days: It is possible to fundamentally change the direction of the party— and they must.

The contrast between the careerists and the grassroots could not be more stark. The careerists— whether they are party insiders, consultants or self-serving politicians— are primarily concerned with maintaining their positions, securing lucrative opportunities and preserving a system that rewards their loyalty to power rather than principle. They make their decisions based on polling, donor pressure and personal ambition, often treating politics as a game rather than a battle over the future of the country.

On the other hand, much the grassroots base is driven by conviction, urgency and a clearer moral compass. They are the ones knocking on doors, organizing protests and demanding change from the bottom up. They are less interested in maintaining the status quo and more focused on the kind of systemic transformation necessary to create a fairer, more just society. Unlike the careerists, they are not beholden to corporate interests or the whims of the political elite; their allegiance is to the causes they fight for. For them the party is a vehicle for achieving policy goals.

This fundamental divide defines much of today’s political landscape. The careerists may have the infrastructure, but the grassroots have the passion. And history has shown that when the grassroots mobilize effectively, they can upend even the most entrenched political machines. The question is whether they can overcome the obstacles placed in their way by those who seek to preserve their own power at any cost.

Wonder who the New Dems are today? In the House there are scores of them, Brad Schneider (IL) is the chairman. The 10 other officers are Nikki Budzinski (IL), Josh Harder (CA), Salud Carbajal (CA), Marc Veasey (TX), Haley Stevens (MI), Kristen Rivet (MI), Marilyn Strickland (WA), Jennifer McClellan (VA) and Andrea Salinas (OR). There freshmen who chose to join this year— along with their ProgressivePunch scores— are crypto-cartel puppet Shomari Figures (AL-D), Adam Gray (CA-F), Sam Liccardo (CA-A), George Whitesides (CA-D), Gil Cisneros (CA-F), Derek Tran (CA-D), Sarah McBride (DE-B), Johnny Olszewski (MD-A), Sarah Elfreth (MD-A), April Delaney (MD-F), Kelly Morrison (MN-A), Wesley Bell (MO-A), Maggie Goodlander (NH-F), Herb Conaway (NJ-A), Nellie Pou (NJ-A), Laura Gillen (NY-F), Josh Riley (NY-F), John Mannion (NY-F), George Latimer (NY-A), Janelle Bynum (OR-D), Julie Johnson (TX-A), Eugene Vindman (VA-F), Suhas Subramanyam (VA-D) and Emily Randall (WA-A).

When any of them hit you up for a contribution, remember. Did their voters send them to Congress to run up D and F voting records?