While some people are waving around the words of David Axelrod, he whom last we saw had been banished from the Obama circle for talking to Peggy Noonan wannabee Maureen Dowd, a couple of people who are still in good standing with the Obama White House have been offering their support for Hillary Clinton.
First off, as an apertif, we have economist Austan Goolsbee, he of the wonderfully snarky Twitter feed, who back in November showed why the numbers for Bernie Sanders’ budget required taxation that would hit everyone hard in order to work:
1) On the non-health side, the Sanders proposals are well above the $3.3-$3.5 trillion mentioned in the articles. Realistically, his proposals are $5 trillion+. At that size, you almost certainly need taxes on the middle class to pay for them.
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2) Sanders is right that we shouldn't just think of his single-payer health plan as a $15 trillion tax increase. We should ask whether people would be better or worse off in total. But even by that measure, lots of low and middle income workers would, in fact, be worse off and paying higher taxes.
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3) Sanders' plan would raise government spending more than $20 trillion over the next 10 years. It would take government expenditures as a share of GDP in the U.S. to levels equal to the big European social welfare states. Advanced countries with governments that size rely on heavy taxes on the middle class like big VAT/Sales taxes and high income tax rates that apply to large shares of their population.
Then the main course, Eric Holder, of whose backing Fortune magazine said “Hillary Clinton just got this huge endorsement — thanks in part to her stance on gun control”:
Clinton’s campaign announced the endorsement in astatement to the Associated Press. Holder served President Barack Obama for five years in his position. “Our next president can’t shy away from building on the progress of President Obama,” according to his statement, “which is why Hillary Clinton is the candidate that we need in the White House.”
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Holder added that Clinton “has bold plans to address police brutality, fight for common sense reforms to our gun laws” whereas a Republican president would “tear down our progress on civil rights, health care and curbing gun violence.”
Holder, America’s first African-American Attorney General, will be at Clinton’s side as she goes to South Carolina, whose Democratic base is made up largely of African-American voters who are supportive of gun control:
South Carolina is the only one of the initial four states to vote where black voters anchor the Democratic Party base of support. While polls in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire show Sanders either leading or nearly deadlocked with Clinton, her advantage among black voters leaves her with a commanding lead in South Carolina.
The former secretary of state conceivably could lose Iowa and New Hampshire but quickly regain the upper hand in the nominating contest by winning in South Carolina and several other Southern states that follow.
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Gun violence is particularly important to black voters in South Carolina. In North Charleston last April, a white police officer was captured on video shooting and killing an unarmed black man, Walter Scott. The officer has since been fired and charged with murder.
In June, a white gunman entered a historically black church in Charleston and killed the minister and eight others, drawing a national outcry.
The next few weeks ought to be very interesting.