After listening to Hillary Clinton’s official announcement speech, Ezra Klein has a question:
Clinton name-checked almost every center-left policy idea in existence: universal pre-k, guaranteed paid sick days, massive investments in clean energy, rewriting the tax code, raising the minimum wage, and so on….Many of these ideas are good. But there’s a Democrat in the White House right now. He supports these ideas, too. And yet, they languish in press releases and stalled legislation. How will Hillary Clinton make them law?
Well, yeah, that’s a good question. It’s also a good question for the Republican nominee, who will probably have to face a Democratic Senate, and at the very least will have to face Democratic filibusters. That means a Republican president might be able to cut taxes, but not a whole lot more.
I dunno. Maybe that’s enough for Republicans. Get in a few tax cuts, appoint some conservative judges, and prevent anything new from happening. Nobody’s ecstatic, but everybody’s satisfied.
In any case, I doubt it’s an issue for Hillary either. As near as I can tell, Americans seem to vote for president based almost solely on affinity. That is, they vote for whoever says the right things, with no concern for whether those things are obviously impossible or little more than self-evident panders. It’s kind of amazing, really. Most voters seemingly just don’t care if presidential candidates are lying or stretching or even being entirely chimerical. They merely want to hear the desire to accomplish the right things. Every four years, they really do take the word for the deed.
I suppose it’s like that everywhere, not just America.
