{"id":35331,"date":"2016-04-08T07:26:48","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T11:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=35331"},"modified":"2016-04-08T07:27:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T11:27:50","slug":"bill-clinton-lambasted-for-telling-the-truth-about-black-lives-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=35331","title":{"rendered":"Bill Clinton Lambasted For Telling the Truth About Black Lives Matter, His Own Record Blasted By Salon"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><b>Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">In a widely circulated video yesterday, Clinton defended programs that have ballooned both prison and poverty rates<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">DANIEL DENVIR<br \/>\nSalon.com<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"featuredMedia\"><a class=\"lightBox\" title=\"Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability\" href=\"http:\/\/media.salon.com\/2016\/04\/bill_clinton6.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability\" src=\"http:\/\/media.salon.com\/2016\/04\/bill_clinton6-620x412.jpg\" alt=\"Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability\" \/><\/a><span class=\"caption\">Bill Clinton <span class=\"photoCredit\">(Credit: AP\/Matt Rourke)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"articleContent\">\n<p>Bill Clinton is no doubt his wife\u2019s double-edged sword: Though he is among the most charismatic politicians of his era, he\u2019s also prone to saying things that make campaign life rather awkward. The big problem, however, isn\u2019t just that Bill Clinton can\u2019t keep his mouth shut. It\u2019s that his right-leaning New Democrat policy record is a bad fit for today\u2019s liberal politics.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ym_1007925900364593340\" class=\"ym\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"recirc1\"><\/div>\n<p>Yesterday, speaking in Philadelphia, Clinton responded to protesters by defending two now-very-controversial bills that he signed into law: The 1994 Crime Bill, widely criticized for fueling mass incarceration, and so-called welfare reform, which dramatically reduced poor people\u2019s access to government aid.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, he insisted that Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with either. And that gets at one of her campaign\u2019s unshakeable dilemmas: They are running on what\u2019s still popular about the Clinton years and trying run away from what\u2019s not. That, of course, is impossible. And in Philadelphia, the balancing act tripped as a frustrated Bill Clinton lashed out at protesters with a full-throated recourse to throwback war-on-crime rhetoric.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent \u2019em out into the street to murder other African American children,\u201d he chided. \u201cMaybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn\u2019t. She didn\u2019t. You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"xRrVI5gHVyo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xRrVI5gHVyo?feature=oembed&amp;origin=http:\/\/www.salon.com&amp;enablejsapi=1\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what will get the headlines, and possibly spark a hashtag. And for good reason. But what\u2019s most remarkable is that Clinton made a case for the laws that just doesn\u2019t add up. On the Crime Bill, he blamed Republicans for the the \u201cincreased sentencing provisions,\u201d and said that the law created \u201ca 25-year low in crime\u201d and a 33-year low in the \u201cmurder rate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Protesters, he said, were \u201cafraid of the truth\u201d for not letting him speak. But the truth is not what Clinton was speaking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was around in 1994 and very engaged on the crime bill, and it was quite clear that it was Bill Clinton\u2019s legislation, not forced on him by the Republicans,\u201d emails Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, tough-on-crime posturing was nothing new for the Bill Clinton who left the campaign trail in 1992 for Arkansas to preside over the execution of a man so mentally disabled after a suicide attempt that he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/fighting_words\/2008\/01\/fool_me_thrice.html\">reportedly<\/a> put aside his last meal\u2019s pecan pie \u201cfor later.\u201d In his 1994 State of the Union, Clinton endorsed three strikes laws, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/politics\/special\/states\/docs\/sou94.htm\">saying<\/a> \u201cthose who commit repeated violent crimes should be told when you commit a third violent crime, you will be put away and put away for good, three strikes and you are out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As for the decrease in crime, that\u2019s real. But it\u2019s not clear <em>which<\/em>\u00a0provisions of the\u00a0bill it is that Bill believes are responsible. Whatever he had in mind, the evidence suggests that he\u2019s wrong that his law had anything to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>If he\u2019s\u00a0claiming the decrease came about because of\u00a0\u00a0the surge in federally-funded police hired by localities, he\u2019s likely wrong there too: Most researchers have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/fact-checker\/wp\/2014\/09\/26\/bill-clintons-claim-that-100000-cops-sent-the-crime-rate-way-down\/\">found<\/a> that it had little to no effect on crime.\u00a0And if he\u2019s referencing the harsh sentencing, the best available evidence suggests that he\u2019s wrong on that as well: A groundbreaking 2014 study from the National Research Council of the National Academies found that \u201cthe increase in incarceration may have caused a decrease in crime, but the magnitude of the reduction is highly uncertain and the results of most studies suggest it was unlikely to have been large.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The truth\u00a0of the matter is, as Maurer explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cCrime was already going down before the crime bill was adopted. This was due to a number of factors, not least of which was the waning of the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>On so-called welfare reform, meanwhile, Clinton made a point of denying that the law led to increased black poverty.<\/p>\n<div class=\"recirc2\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"inarticle-300-mi1\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"toggle-group target hideOnInit\" data-toggle-group=\"story-14460755\">\n<p>\u201cThey say the welfare reform bill increased poverty,\u201d Clinton said. \u201cThen why do we have the largest drop in African-American poverty in history when I was president?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, that was likely because the economy was booming\u2014but not in a way that laid the groundwork for long-term equitable growth. The rise of the service economy, followed by the economic meltdown, didn\u2019t serve poor people well over time. When the bottom fell out, there was no longer a safety net left to catch the poor (however scrappy that net had been prior to its decimation). The number of those living in extreme poverty has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonk\/wp\/2016\/02\/27\/bernie-sanders-is-right-bill-clintons-welfare-law-doubled-extreme-poverty\/\">skyrocketed<\/a> since 1996.<\/p>\n<p>Frances Fox Piven, the famed social scientist at CUNY Graduate Center, explains in an email to Salon that \u201cthe bill wiped out the rights that poor people had to income assistance under\u201d Aid to Families with Dependent Children, \u201crights that were the result of court rulings and activist agitation in the 1960s. Basically the new law turned welfare over to the states, and gave them an incentive not to grant assistance because they could keep any federal moneys they did not spend on benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Piven writes that \u201cthe catastrophic result was not immediately evident because in the late 1990s the economy was booming,\u201d which meant that jobs were initially available for those kicked off the rolls. But as unemployment rose and poor people\u2019s wages stagnated, it started to hurt: Prior to the reform, \u201c68 percent of families with children received cash aid,\u201d Piven said. \u201cBy 2013, the percentage had fallen to 26 percent and the assistance leaves these families well below the poverty level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bill Clinton, she notes, signed the \u201cbill with Hillary\u2019s advice and encouragement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>Hillary Clinton can\u2019t get around running as the Clinton Administration\u2019s second coming. Though her camp likes to protest that holding her to account for anything she endorsed during the Clinton presidency is unfair, it\u2019s actually appropriate in a\u00a0purported democracy that has proven itself\u00a0prone to the allure of political dynasty. Times have changed, and many Democratic voters don\u2019t want to go back to the 1990s. And Hillary Clinton has to answer for it.<\/p>\n<p>Bernie Sanders\u2019 insurgent campaign has been so shockingly successfully precisely because he\u2019s been able to exploit this dissonance. On welfare cuts, which he voted against and described as a bigoted assault on the poor, that\u2019s easy. But the crime bill has been a tough one for Sanders to exploit to his advantage: He did vote for that one.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders, however, has said that he did so because it included the Violence Against Women Act, and he did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/2\/26\/11116412\/bernie-sanders-mass-incarceration\">vocally criticize<\/a>\u00a0incarceration as a policy solution: \u201cWe can either educate or electrocute,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails.\u201d He also criticized the unsuccessful 1991 Crime Bill, which he voted against, as \u201cnot a crime prevention bill\u201d but \u201ca punishment bill, a retribution bill, a vengeance bill.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 1994 legislation was a classic something-for-everyone bill, and voting for it while criticizing provisions he didn\u2019t like may have looked progressive at the time; two decades later, it\u2019s not a great look. Nonetheless, Sanders on many issues provides a decisive contrast. And many people like what they see.<\/p>\n<p>On welfare, Bill Clinton was just plain wrong. On crime, he rightly pointed out that the bulk of the nation\u2019s prison population reside in state facilities; that there was very real public outcry over crime and that people demanded action; and that there was support even from black leaders for the bill. But it was politicians like Clinton who weaponized those public fears for political gain. And today, voters are beginning to understand the costs. And that continues to be a hard square to circle for Hillary.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/04\/08\/bill_clinton_needs_to_go_away_why_the_legacy_of_his_presidency_has_become_a_political_liability\/\">http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/04\/08\/bill_clinton_needs_to_go_away_why_the_legacy_of_his_presidency_has_become_a_political_liability\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}