Hillary Clinton is officially running for president, and Yale’s liberals are justifiably excited. The prospect of our first female president is enough to get us buzzing, as it should be.
However, progressives at Yale should not be so quick to rally behind Clinton’s candidacy without demanding more from her economic policies regarding the reduction of income and wealth inequality. There seems to be a revitalized liberal energy on campus at the moment, but it’s unfortunate that the same idealism exhibited in other liberal movements such as Fossil Free Yale and Unite Yale is missing when it comes to the politics of inequality.
While Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee, a sizable contingent of progressives are still lukewarm about her candidacy, including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who refused to endorse her last Sunday. These individuals’ concerns have little to do with Clinton’s qualifications or competence. Rather, they worry that she will not pursue a radical enough agenda aimed at tackling income and wealth inequality, and these concerns are justified.
It is unclear where Clinton stands regarding many of the more progressive solutions for curtailing the ever-increasing gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country. Some of the most important of these proposals, such as a more progressive tax code and increased bargaining rights for workers, appear to be contrary to the interests of the super rich, and there is good reason to believe that Clinton will avoid direct confrontations on these issues. This argument is nothing new.
However, I think that by viewing Clinton’s candidacy against the backdrop of Yale’s liberal community, I can offer some important observations about the modern progressive coalition. Specifically, I find the enthusiasm surrounding her campaign slightly troubling because I see it as representative of two defects of the college-aged liberal movement as a whole.
First, we lack the same passion and urgency for progressive economic issues that we exhibit towards social issues. Second, we are too unwilling to criticize the super rich and to identify their role in contributing to growing inequality.
I am constantly impressed by Yale students’ passion for social issues, whether it’s opposition to investments in fossil fuels (also an economic issue, obviously), protesting the unequal treatment of minorities by police, or supporting equal pay for equal work. I love how progressive the campus atmosphere is as a whole.
However, I am disappointed that I don’t see this same passion when it comes to economic policy. I rarely see discussions centered around the reduction of income and wealth inequality, and I’ve found that on the whole there is not nearly enough urgency regarding this crucial issue.
This makes sense, as economic policy is often much more nuanced than is social policy. Same-sex marriage, for example, is an easy issue to understand. There is essentially a binary choice involved. It is much more difficult to discern the ramifications of changes to the tax code or welfare systems.
Rising inequality is perhaps the biggest crisis contemporary society must confront, yet there seems to be a major lack of energy and interest among Yale liberals regarding what can actually be done to stem the tide of the increasingly unfair status quo.
Since the Citizens United decision in 2010, money has played an unprecedented role in politics. With no limits on independent expenditures, it is perhaps easier than ever for wealthy individuals or corporations to translate economic power into political power, whether it’s by bankrolling individual candidates’ campaigns or by spending vast amounts of money on lobbying efforts.
Rather than using their seemingly limitless resources to promote a more equal and just society, the super rich increasingly use their power to promote their own interests. The economic elites have recently begun donating more and more money to conservative candidates, and it would be extremely naive to believe that this shift represents a sudden change of heart regarding trickle-down economics. Instead, they see this political spending as a personal investment that will pay off in the future in the form of lower taxes and weaker regulation.
I think most of us do recognize what’s going on, yet there’s still a hesitancy to identify it outright. I’m not proposing by any means that we be hostile or bitter towards the rich, nor am I suggesting that every exceedingly wealthy individual is contributing to this problem. Rather, I simply believe we need to be more frank, critical, and demanding in our diagnosis of the current situation.
Some of this reluctance to criticize the rich may be for practical reasons; in the current landscape, Democrats are just as dependent on money as Republicans are, and antagonizing wealthy donors is not the most strategic move for winning an election. Or perhaps there’s some sort of cognitive dissonance at work in which we don’t want to hold negative views about ourselves, family members, or close friends who may be part of the economic elites that I am referring to.
If our unwillingness to criticize is purely pragmatic (as it is for many liberal politicians, especially Clinton), it’s a shame we feel so bounded by the unfortunate realities of politics. As Yale students we have a duty to be idealistic. We have the luxury of not having to play by all the rules that the real world demands, and we should use this unique position to shape the liberal ideology that is so desperately needed in the current climate.
In practice, I’m not sure what the ideas I am advocating for—more focus on economic policies and a more critical disposition towards the rich—would actually look like. I suppose strong support for a more liberal challenger to Clinton would be nice, as it may at the very least force her to shift leftward on some key issues. Or maybe we could start a Yalies who are Ready for a More Aggressively Liberal Hillary movement. Even if no tangible changes come from this article, it’s an important discussion for Yale’s liberals to partake in and be aware of.