Clinton Advisers Point to Edwards Threat

[BeyondGeography]

By Anne E. Kornblut

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa -- Clinton advisers have been pushing the notion that former senator John Edwards poses a growing threat in the Iowa caucuses, suggesting their internal data show something of a mini-surge for the North Carolinian. Obama advisers have countered that it makes for a convenient storyline -- and is evidence the Clinton campaign is threatened by a two-way race with Sen. Barack Obama.

Today, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton took Edwards on over his signature issue, indicating she may view the Edwards improvements as quite real. "People talk about poverty in this campaign," Clinton said during a crowded event here. "Well, we lifted more people out of poverty during the 1990s than at any time in our history."

Clinton went on to dismiss the notion that her candidacy is backward-looking in a bad way. "Some people say, 'There she goes talking about the '90s again,'" she said, drawing laughter from the crowd. "Well, it wasn't so bad. We had policies that actually helped to create 22.7 million new jobs. The typical Iowan family saw an increase of $7,000 in their incomes during the '90s."

Clinton is continuing a five-day blitz across Iowa, where a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows her in a statistical tie with Obama, with Edwards trailing close behind. The poll indicates that there is hope for each candidate to land a first-place victory -- but that it will turn largely on the ground game, depending on which candidate can mobilize voters, many of them new. Edwards, though behind nationally and in some Iowa polls, has a steady corps of supporters who have been through the process before and are thus expected to be more reliable about showing up on Jan. 3. Edwards and Clinton are also dueling over rural voters.

But that is not to say that Clinton no longer views Obama as a formidable challenge. Perhaps the greatest sign that she does is in the form of a literal sign -- the one hanging behind her at events, that says she is "Working for Change, Working for You." And like a holistic healer, she has also injected a promise of Obama-style hope into her stump speeches over the last few days, promising on many fronts a "new beginning."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/19/post_244.html

Anyone else feeling slightly spun?

[AtomicKitten]

1. She can try to coapt Edwards' and Obama's positions til the cows come home.

It rings hollow.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Hi AK

Good see you back in-between campaign duties. :hi:

[AtomicKitten]

4. thanks BG

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

[Carrieyazel]

3. "We" lifted more people out of poverty? You mean Bill did, right?

I think President Clinton, Donna Shalala, Bob Rubin, Bob Reich, Alexis Herman et. al had more to do with it than someone who had no official position.

[BigDDem]

5. Ill beat a few of the usual suspects to the punch:

"They're scared TO DEATH of him!"

[rinsd]

6. Its politics.

Much like the recent friendliness between Obama & Biden.

[Armstead]

7. Let's look below those numbers

Here's an example of a contrary view from the Economic Policy Institute.

(Yes the website contains the word "socialist" but that does not mean the information is automatically incorrect.)

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:YPjdeW9JMYEJ:www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/512/512_06_WorkingAmerica.shtml+black+unemployment,+reagan,+trends&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Excerpts:

"...Actually, those boom years of the 1990s saw the gap between the rich and the rest of us grow to its biggest point since 1929--the start of the Great Depression. "Using newly available income data that goes all the way back to 1913, income in 2000 was only slightly less concentrated among the top 1 percent of households than during the run-up to the Great Depression, which was the worst period of uneven income concentration in the last century," the authors wrote."


"PROPAGANDISTS FOR Corporate America often point to the long-term growth in family income as evidence that the American Dream of constantly rising living standards still exists. Yet a closer look at the statistics in the State of Working America shows that increases in family income in recent decades have come about almost entirely as a result of women’s additional work in families where men also hold jobs.....Since the early 1980s, however, married women have increasingly felt financial pressure to work as a result of stagnant or declining wages. By the year 2000, some 47.7 percent of all families were two-earner, married-couple families, up from 41.9 percent in 1979. This trend kept median family income growing, if slowly, over this period--but it masked the stagnation or decline in men’s real wages.

This is particularly true for those in the poorest 20 percent of the population. Over the 1979-2000 period, income for this group increased 7.5 percent thanks to married women’s income. Without it, income would have plunged 13.9 percent. Better-paid workers faced the same pressures. Their income grew 24 percent over the same period, but without wives’ earnings, the gains would have been just 5.1 percent."

----

THE SHARP downward swing in wages and family income since the mid-1990s--along with the impact of the terrible job market--highlights the harsh impact of free-market policies on the U.S. working class. Since the late 1970s, U.S. workers have seen the quality and security of their jobs continuously eroded through deregulation of industry, privatization of public-sector jobs, cuts in social spending, "flexible" labor policies and free-trade deals.

".....Known as "neoliberalism" to much of the world, these policies have been pursued by both Republican administrations (Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s tax cuts and frontal attacks on unions) and Democratic ones (Jimmy Carter’s deregulation of airlines and telecommunications, and Bill Clinton’s championing of NAFTA and abolition of the federal welfare system).


"The combined effect of these policies has given employers the leverage to compel workers to toil harder and longer for less, while the gains of higher productivity have flowed away from labor to capital. Again, this is a long-term trend that began in the late 1980s--and accelerated as pre-tax profit rates peaked in 1997 at their highest level since the 1960s. The increase in capital’s share of overall income in this period meant that the economic gains of higher productivity went overwhelmingly to the top. The authors of the State of Working America calculate that in the boom year of 2000, for example, the increase in pre-tax returns on capital compared to 1979 levels was the equivalent of a $56.8 billion transfer from labor to capital..."
----

"The 1990s boom did benefit the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. The percentage making poverty-level wages fell from 30.5 percent to 25.1 percent--the lowest level since 1973. Apologists for the Clinton boom--and now the Bush bust--use such figures as evidence that a rising economic tide lifts all boats.

The problem is that the boats of the working poor are leaky--and easily sink in rough economic seas. As the authors of the State of Working America put it, "Those earning very low wages still represented 9.8 percent of the workforce in 2000, 4.9 percent more than in 1979... large share of the workforce, roughly a fourth, still earns poverty-level wages."

.MORE

[frazzled]

8. That's like Giuliani hoping for Huckabee to beat Romney in Iowa ... his only hope

The Clinton campaign knows that, short of her winning in Iowa herself, the next best thing is for Edwards to win in Iowa--because she can beat him everywhere on February 5. If Obama were to beat her out in Iowa, that scenario would not be so certain.

My reading: a vote for Edwards (in Iowa) is a vote for Clinton. A vote for Obama means a competitive race.

Of course they're pushing this narrative.