Today In Strawman Building
By HTML points us to this post by digamma. HTML says he “has” me, which is kind of strange because I basically agree with this:
No one on the left ever dreamed that Clinton would create a major progressive domestic policy shift. The most they ever hoped for was that he wouldn’t actively push conservative policies. And he fell well short of that goal.
The Telecommunications Act? Communications Decency? Antiterrorism? Welfare reform? These were all passed with Clinton’s signature and, with the POSSIBLE exception of welfare reform (on which he waffled repeatedly), with his enthusiastic support. You can’t blame the Constitution for that.
How about we compare this to what I actually wrote:
This also comes up a lot in debates with my Naderite friends, but while there are any number of valid critiques of Clinton, to attack him for not achieving any major progressive initiatives after 1994 is bizarre; with a Republican Congress this simply wasn’t a possibility.
digamma and HTML, in other words, simply misread the post. I never said that Clinton was beyond criticism — indeed, I specifically said otherwise. What I actually said was that Clinton couldn’t be criticized for not being able to singlehandedly pass major new progressive initiatives, which digramma concedes. If we’re talking about DOMA, the Telecommunications Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, etc., criticize away; I certainly have. But his comment was a non-sequitur, and the claim that I’m “moving the goalposts” by pointing this out bizarre.