(PHOTO: President Obama and Secretary Clinton, then both senators, hold a joint rally for the Obama campaign in Unity, New Hampshire in June 2008).
In this multi-pronged blog post, there are a few items I touch on so please forgive me but here's what's on my mind:
First of all, Hillary Clinton appears to have hit a rough patch - though definitely not a fatal one by any stretch of the imagination - as she has made some unfortunate remarks that exacerbate the questions surrounding her wealth. She first said that she and her husband were "dead broke" and then said that her family was unlike the "truly well off." There is a better way to handle these questions and Secretary Clinton would be well suited if she took advice from a source very close to her on how to tackle questions like this: President Clinton. Despite being very wealthy obviously, Clinton always responds with an effective retort such as, "I didn't ask for a tax cut" or "I don't need a tax cut," demonstrating essentially that he is supporting progressive policies like tax fairness despite the impact those policies will have on his financial well-being. Something along those lines could easily quell the issue.
The best way to squash questions regarding 'hypocrisy' of scolding wealthy elites while being wealthy is to emphasize that you're actually being selfless by supporting policies that would hurt your own finances and your class. This is of course why FDR was famously called a "traitor to his class." (And, yes, I realize that the wealthy elite doesn't mind higher income tax rates on the rich as long as you don't hit Wall Street with a financial transactions tax and stiffer rules and regulations -- but that discussion is for another day). As a political matter, there is an easy way to diffuse this using the kind of language Bill Clinton has deployed and actually this very good article on MSNBC.com I noticed just minutes after I began writing this post -- I swear, not before! -- emphasizes this exact point very well. Further, as she did on the campaign trail in the last couple months of the 2008 primary, Secretary Clinton would be wise to instead underscore that she actually did not grow up wealthy and was raised middle class thus reasonably allowing her to credibly say she empathizes with middle class struggles. This tactic was successfully deployed by President Obama in his campaigns -- i.e., "Michelle and I paid off our student loans just a few years ago" -- and by President Clinton, who trumpeted himself as the "man from Hope" in 1992. Finally though, it should be noted that these issues probably will not matter much for Secretary Clinton because for one, as Dave Weigel pointed out on Facebook this weekend, the Democratic Party is after all the party of the FDR and JFK, and second, her record of working for and advocating for vital progressive policies that help working families -- like childcare, paid family leave, universal pre-K, etc. -- will be more crucial in a campaign anyway.
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Second of all, in an extensive interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, President Obama made an interesting remark that caught my attention when he noted that Democratic voters are "surprisingly united" on issues such as economic inequality and wages. In the past, the President has remarked similarly on how amazingly unified congressional Democrats have been too on key issues in his presidency and the facts back up that assertion. It is indeed amazing to see such strong Democratic unity in both Congress and among Democratic voters in the Obama years. This unity exists despite the fact that elements of the media like to claim that there are massive divisions within the Democratic Party -- usually, these schisms are wildly exaggerated. It is incredible because the history of our party is one of incredible divisions. During the tenure of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, many Democrats in Congress voted against Clinton's major legislative achievements, like NAFTA and welfare reform, and liberal Democratic voters' disgruntlement with Clinton was far worse than any progressive disenchantment Obama has faced. In Jimmy Carter's presidency, Carter was unable to get key Democratic priorities like a consumer protection agency and health care reform through an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress thanks to divisions within his party. Carter would later write that he got along better with GOP members of Congress than with Democratic members of Congress. He faced a modestly strong primary challenge from Ted Kennedy too that was really alls bout the divisions of the party. The divisions within the Democratic Party during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency are obviously well documented. Even more recently though, we can point to a famous example of Democratic division: the 2008 primaries!
Nevertheless, in the Obama era, such division is seemingly nonexistent. President Obama received the highest percentage of votes from Democratic voters of any president ever -- 92 percent -- and, according to public opinion polling, is the most popular president among Democratic voters ever, all Senate Democrats voted for the Recovery Act and for the Affordable Care Act, Democratic voters are overwhelmingly liberal on social issues and now even extremely unified on economic matters, and Hillary Clinton appears to be the clear frontrunner in the 2016 Democratic primaries. Why this remarkable unity? A few factors are probably at play. The GOP going far to the right and President Bush's legacy are part of it though this unity is consistent with the overall partisan polarization in the country. A very small part of it may be that the current president is quite effective at uniting various elements of the party as a consequence of begin economically progressive and socially liberal but aggressive on national security, traits that unite various factions in our party.
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Last but not least, as the 41st anniversary of the premiere of the most popular version of Match Game is this Wednesday, I think it's appropriate I share why exactly it is that I love this game show so much. For one, few game shows in the annals of television history can boast such amazing chemistry between the host, the celebrity panelists, and the contestants. The antics on display on the set were nothing short of surprisingly hilarious entertainment that actually overshadowed the rules of the game -- a point host Gene Rayburn himself made. It is the freewheeling nature of the interaction between the outlandish Rayburn, the definitely drunk panelists, and the nervous contestants that made the show so unbelievably funny for a game show. That's why an exchange like the 1977 "school riot" episode wound up in a TV Land/TV Guide list of TV's 100 most unexpected moments - an unusual distinction given that game shows are usually seemingly carefully scripted. A huge part of this success was undeniably because of the impeccable talent of Gene Rayburn, who earned a lifetime achievement award shortly before his 1999 death and who was rightly recognized as the third greatest game show host of all-time by TV Guide. Rayburn's wild nature, somewhat surprising given his age, allowed for the genuine spontaneity on set that viewers happily embraced.
Beyond these aspects of the show, the risqué fill-in-the-blank questions and the ability of contestants and celebrities to actually say on air words like "boobs" and "bosom" reflected the relaxed cultural standards of the era in which the show hit its peak popularity: the mid-1970s. At the same time that TV sitcoms like All in the Family and Three's Company were venturing into new territory by touching on issues of race in a jocular manner or by utilizing sexual innuendo, Match Game similarly pushed the envelope on these matters thus distinguishing itself in the then-crowded game show universe. Perhaps that is why the show became a cultural staple as it captivated young Americans who rushed from school to watch the afternoon-time show and as it broke records at the time as the most popular daytime television show in American history. Lastly, though the format was kind of unusual, the latter half of the program, which relied upon previous audience surveys on fill-in-the-blank questions and stoked curiosity among viewers as to what their peers would say in response to such questions, was unique enough to even spawn a spin-off in the form of Family Feud. Given the amazing chemistry on set, its cultural significance, and the impact it has had on TV, Match Game - #4 in TV Guide's 2013 list of the 60 greatest TV game shows ever - has rightfully earned its storied place in TV history.
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