On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yeah, good thing we've had a Dem in the White House for the last 7
> 1/2 years. Otherwise NAFTA would have passed, domestic spending
> wouldn't have expanded, the wealth and income gaps wouldn't have
> narrowed, and union density wouldn't have risen by a remarkable 5
> points!
Under Clinton and despite having a Dem Congress for only two years, military spending dropped in inflation-adjusted terms while domestic spending has increased. And the reason we have massive surpluses is that taxes increased significantly, almost entirely on the very wealthiest folks, to the point that revenues increased from 17.7% of GDP in 1992 to 20.5% now. Cutting military spending, increasing domestic spending and taxing the wealthy are all the right direction. Clinton and Gore may not have and will not go as far in that direction as you or I want, but it is far better than Dubya slashing taxes for the wealthy and squeezing social spending to the bone.
On the macro economic front, increases in inequality have not been reversed, but lower unemployment and lower poverty rates has made a big difference for a lot of working class folks and real wages, after two decades of decline, have begun creeping up again.
As for unions, they were in free fall after the 1980s with a bunch of scholars seriously discussing the deunionization of the whole country by the year 2000 - the head of Berkeley's Center on Labor Education & Research was predicting a 5% unionization rate by the end of the decade. While unions have not made giant gains, they have reversed the hemmoraging and while most of the responsibility for that goes to changes within the unions themselves, the fact that the courts and the NLRB have a lot more pro-union appointees has made a difference. Given no changes in labor law - blocked by the GOP in the Senate - there is only so much any President can do, but court and NLRB appointments are the one area of executive power and Clinton has been pretty pro-union in those area, the appointment of Bill Gould as chair of the NLRB being a dramatic example.
NAFTA and the WTO are the big exceptions and unions are dealing with that not by supporting Nader but by working to elect a fair trade majority in Congress. They knocked out a Dem incumbent, Martinez of California, for voting for fast-track and have been active in primaries across the country to get pro fair trade folks nominated.
I know careful strategy that is not self-defeating has less appeal than a purist lost cause like Nader, but it may actually help change policy and improve people's lives rather than just be an excuse to bash other activists for not being pure enough in their methods.
-- Nathan Newman