Replies

Politico magazine has an article dated May 15th entitled

Duck This Dynasty

Why America doesn’t need another Clinton presidency.

Six months: that’s how long Democrats have to talk about inequality in America with conviction and, for whatever it’s worth in politics, consistency. Six months from now marks the midterm elections, the unofficial start of the 2016 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton’s long-delayed ride to inevitability.

What does Hillary Clinton have to do with inequality in America? She’s no robber baron, of course. But the core case against inequality isn’t about resentment of wealth—it’s about the ways in which the concentration of wealth is making politics increasingly pointless, a game of access and not arguments. Anyone who fears that future should think twice before casting a ballot for a dynastic politician, because dynastic candidates turn politics pointless in essentially the same way. They trade on family capital to make elections less meaningful; they are prone to be inflexible and indifferent to inequality; and they have good reason to be even less accountable to the public than ordinary politicians. Concentrated economic power and concentrated political power are, in the end, two sides of a coin.

The prospect of a dynastic future should be especially disturbing to Democrats like me. Political life tolerates all sorts of little hypocrisies, but some gulfs between what a party wants to say—and whom a party chooses to say it—are too wide to be bridged. If we want to talk critically about the concentration of economic power in the United States, if we really believe that the rise and rise of the 1 percent is the signal issue of our time, we have to live by our words when it comes to the concentration of political power. We can’t effectively criticize inequality as long as we practice the politics of dynasty. And that means Hillary Clinton can’t possibly be our standard bearer in 2016. Leave dynasties to the Republicans and Jeb Bush—or whichever other scion of Kennebunkport the GOP wants to throw at us next.

Even Democrats can be right sometimes.

Darn it, hit post before I meant to.

Hope the excerpt isn’t too long, the article runs 4 pages.

I looked through the FR home page to make sure Politico wasn’t on the prohibited list.

I agree with Politico on this one, the arguments against Clinton II apply equally to Bush III.

We’re well on the road to the creation of an American nomenklatura or a Late Roman Republic state of affairs where the retainers, hangers on and clientia of the great speak of faithfully serving the Family Bush and being torn by the possibility of a Christie candidacy:

“Those of us that have been dedicated to the Bush family for years would obviously have to take a Jeb candidacy into extremely serious consideration,” said Fred S. Zeidman, a Texas businessman and top fund-raiser for George W. Bush’s two presidential campaigns who has helped introduce Mr. Christie to potential supporters in his state.”

What is Mr. Zeidman, a royal freedman?

This is a republic.