Bill just doesn’t get it. No one in the Clinton camp seems to understand why so many young people are flocking to Bernie Sanders or how to connect with them in a way that would unify the party in November should Hillary win the nomination. Most of their explanations so far have pegged these supporters as hopelessly naive, unrealistic and idealistic.
Not long ago Hillary waxed poetic about the fact that it’s exciting to be, in effect, “protesting” by voting for Bernie. Ah, I was young and foolish once, too! Bill doubled down on the idea that young people are just drawn to the idealistic and unrealistic on Friday, and decided it would be a good idea to joke about shooting people all at the same time:
"One of the few things I really haven't enjoyed about this primary: I think it's fine that all these young students have been so enthusiastic for her opponent and (he) sounds so good: 'Just shoot every third person on Wall Street and everything will be fine,'"
Let’s leave aside for a moment the irony of Slick Willie complaining about a political rival who just “sounds so good” as if Bernie Sanders oozed charisma at a rate surpassing the last two Democratic presidents combined. I’m not even going to jump on Bill for joking about shooting people on Wall Street as if he somehow really is advocating violence or something. What I do take issue with is the idea that it’s somehow Sanders who has an unrealistic understanding of inequality and what to do about it. Because here’s the realistic solution Bill offered:
He then added, "The inequality problem is rooted in the shareholder-first mentality and the absence of training for the jobs of tomorrow," he explained, as he elaborated on her support for Dodd-Frank.
Ohhhhh. So that’s all it is. Ninety some percent of the wealth created in the country is going to less than 1% of the people and the reason is “share-holder first mentality” and an “absence of training for the jobs of tomorrow.” Ohhhh. I get it now. We just need more and better job training! That will solve everything!
But here’s my question for Bill: What about the jobs of today? And just how many of these high paying jobs of tomorrow are going to be around when we continue to pass bad trade deals and the entire productive process becomes more automated all the time?
I think that not only young people but anyone who has been on the ground having to try and make a way in our current economic “recovery” can tell Bill that he fundamentally is missing the point. We have lots of people out there with training, with degrees, with years of experience and the like who are either unemployed or vastly underemployed. The problem for many of these people isn’t that they don’t have training. It’s that the jobs that actually exist in the real world right now aren’t paying enough to even pay back the cost of that training!
This is true for older workers who lost jobs in the recession as well. In doing political field work I’ve spoken with dozens if not hundreds of them who are not only trained but who have decades of experience in their fields. But many of them remain unemployable by companies who don’t want to pay a higher rate to someone who DOES have that training and experience.
And as for the younger people—even if we train everyone out the wazoo there are only so many jobs to go around. We’re graduating more people from our colleges than ever before. Unemployment is back down around 5%. But just as they have for the last 35 years, wages remain flat!
In fact, if you just google search “strong economy flat wages” you will find articles just like that one published roughly every quarter for the last five years! Even as some companies are hiring again, many of them are relying on temporary jobs and treating people as independent contractors instead of as employees. That keeps wages and more importantly benefits down and leaves job security at absolute zero.
Taken together, it’s clear to those of us who are out there IN the rigged economy that it’s Bill who is being completely unrealistic about how to fix the problem of inequality. We need to call “share-holder first mentality” what it really is—out of control corporate greed. And we’re not going to change that “mentality” by going to Wall Street and asking them to “cut it out” or by hobnobbing with the billionaire class and politely asking them over cocktails to share a little bit more of that wealth.
They have been taking the wealth of the middle and working classes for nearly four decades now. It is time we take it back.
And you can’t do that unless you are willing to get tough on Wall Street. And you can’t do that unless you’re willing to cut the cord that leaves you dependent on them. And that’s why young people who have more training and education than their parents ever had yet still lag behind those same parents in wages and standard of living look at the Clintons and see that it is THEY who are out of touch and completely unrealistic about today’s problems.