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Why Hillary Clinton Lacks Credibility On Criminal Justice Reform [Jacob Sullum, Forbes, April 30, 2015]



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Why Hillary Clinton Lacks Credibility On Criminal Justice Reform [Jacob Sullum, Forbes, April 30, 2015]
Given her history on criminal justice reform, many should be skeptical of Clinton’s recent speech.
Yesterday Hillary Clinton delivered what The New York Times called “an impassioned plea to mend the nation’s racial fissures and overhaul an ‘out-of-balance’ criminal justice system.” In a speech at Columbia University, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee noted that “the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population” but “almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population.” The former secretary of state observed that “a significant percentage” of the country’s 2 million prison and jail inmates “are low-level offenders.” She bemoaned the racially disproportionate impact of America’s eagerness to lock people in cages, saying “a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes.” Clinton said this situation cries out for reform. “It’s time to change our approach,” she declared. “It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration.”
For critics who have long argued that our criminal justice system puts too many people behind bars for too long, Clinton’s words of outrage were welcome. But they were also hard to take seriously given her history on this issue. While condemning overincarceration, she glided over her own role in promoting it and exaggerated her efforts to correct it. She referred only obliquely to the war on drugs, which has played an important role in sending nonviolent offenders to prison. And three decades after the prison population began the dramatic climb that she now considers shameful, Clinton offered almost no specific ideas for reversing it, which makes her look like a dilettante compared to politicians in both major parties who have given the issue serious thought.
As first lady in the 1990s, Clinton was a cheerleader for the “tough on crime” policies that produced the “era of mass incarceration” she now condemns. “We need more police,” she said in a 1994 speech. “We need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The ‘three strikes and you’re out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.” The Clinton administration gave us all that and more, bragging about building more prisons, locking up more people (including nonviolent offenders) for longer stretches, opposing parole, expanding the death penalty, putting more cops on the street, and implementing a “comprehensive anti-drug strategy.”
In a 2001 report, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) noted that Bill Clinton “stole the ‘get tough on crime’ show” from Republicans by “consistently support[ing] increased penalties and additional prison construction.” The highlight of his efforts was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which subsidized cops and prisons, restricted gun ownership, expanded the use of the death penalty, created new mandatory minimum sentences, and added to the list of federal crimes, which were already too numerous to count. Looking at the results of the crackdown that Clinton led at the federal level and encouraged at the state level, JPI dubbed him “the incarceration president.” The total prison population grew by 673,000 during Clinton’s eight years in office, compared to 448,000 during Ronald Reagan’s two terms. The number of federal prisoners doubled under Clinton, rising more than it  did during the previous 12 years under his two Republican predecessors.
By the end of his second term, Clinton seemed to be having second thoughts about this incarceration binge. “We really need a reexamination of our entire policy on imprisonment,” he told Rolling Stone in October 2000. “There are tons of people in prison who are nonviolent offenders.” Seven years later, while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton’s wife expressed similar qualms. “Mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes may be appropriate,” she said during a debate in June 2007, “but it has been too widely used.”
During another debate that December, Clinton was asked whether she regretted how “your husband’s crime bill…has affected the black community, or do you stand by that?” Both, apparently:
I think that the results not only at the federal level but at the state level have been an unacceptable increase in incarceration across the board, and now we have to address that….There were reasons why the Congress wanted to push through a certain set of penalties and increase prison construction, and there was a lot of support for that across a lot of communities because…the crime rate in the early ’90s was very high. And people were being victimized by crime in their homes, in their neighborhoods and their business. But we’ve got to take stock now of the consequences, so that’s why…I want to have a thorough review of all of the penalties.
As Dara Lind notes at Vox, Clinton nevertheless attacked her rival Barack Obama as soft on crime because he thought some of those penalties were too harsh. A month after Clinton decried “an unacceptable increase in incarceration,” her campaign tried to undermine Obama by citing his criticism of mandatory minimums.
Clinton’s position on her husband’s crime policies—that they were appropriate back then but maybe went a little overboard—rankles activists who were resisting the war on drugs when Bill Clinton was escalating it. Here is how Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, put it in a Huffington Post essay yesterday:
Even as I rejoice at this outbreak of bipartisanship on a cause to which I’ve devoted my life, I must admit it also brings up feelings of anger and disappointment at the failure of Hillary Clinton, and other candidates, and so many other ostensible leaders to acknowledge that they were willing and even eager proponents of the very policies that produced America’s records-breaking rates of incarceration. The laws and policies we embraced back in the 1980s and 1990s, they’re all saying in one way or another, were the right thing at the time—but now we just need to roll them back now that times have changed.
But the drug war policies of that era were never justifiable, and the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that they did far greater harm than good. No policy that results in the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and the highest in the history of democratic nations, is justifiable. And no policy that generated such devastating consequences for African American citizens and communities can or should ever be excused as a necessary response to the drug and crime problems a generation ago.
Compounding skepticism about Hillary Clinton’s enlistment in the cause of criminal justice reform is her general lack of interest in the issue during her eight years in the U.S. Senate. She does not seem to have introduced any bills in this area, although she did continue to support more cops on the street and longer prison sentences (for sex offenders and violent criminals motivated by bigotry). In yesterday’s speech, she referred to “measures that I and so many others have championed to reform arbitrary mandatory minimum sentences.” But the only example she cited was her cosponsorship of 2007 legislationaimed at reducing crack cocaine sentences.
Three years later, after Clinton had left the Senate, Congress approved shorter crack sentences almost unanimously. But Congress did not make those changes retroactive, which suggests a reform that Clinton logically should support. Why not let currently imprisoned crack offenders seek new sentences under the current rules, thereby reducing penalties that pretty much everyone now agrees are unjust?
That reform, which could help thousands of federal prisoners, is part of the Smarter Sentencing Act, which was reintroduced in February by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). The bill’s 12 cosponsors include four Republicans, two of whom, Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are vying to oppose Clinton in next year’s presidential election. The House version of the bill was introduced by a Republican and has 30 cosponsors, including seven Republicans. In addition to making shorter crack sentences retroactive, the bill would cut mandatory minimums for various drug offenses in half, eliminate the mandatory life sentence for a third drug offense, and expand the “safety valve” for low-level, nonviolent offenders.
Clinton did not mention crack retroactivity or the Smarter Sentencing Act in her speech. In fact, she had very little to say about changes that would make a noticeable dent in the prison population. “We need to restore balance to our criminal justice system,” she said. “It is not enough just to agree and give speeches about it—we actually have to work together to get the job done. We need to deliver real reforms.” Yet her main concrete proposal was equipping police with body cameras, which is a good idea with broad support but is unlikely to have much of an impact on the number of people behind bars, let alone “end the era of mass incarceration.”
That goal can be achieved only by 1) locking fewer people up, 2) imposing shorter sentences, and/or 3) letting current prisoners out. But Clinton did not move beyond platitudes on any of those points, aside from mentioning “probation and drug diversion programs” that let “low-level offenders who stay clean and stay out of trouble” keep their freedom. “I don’t know all the answers,” she confessed. No one expects her to know all the answers, but a few more suggestions would make her sudden interest in criminal justice reform a little more credible.
“Today there seems to be a growing bipartisan movement for commonsense reforms in our criminal justice systems,” Clinton said. “Senators as disparate on the political spectrum as Cory Booker and Rand Paul and Dick Durbin and Mike Lee are reaching across the aisle to find ways to work together.”
Clinton is late to this party, and endorsing reforms backed by Republicans such as Paul, Cruz, and Lee would highlight that fact. Yesterday Paul’s office responded to her speech by noting that “Hillary Clinton [is] trying to undo some of the harm inflicted by the Clinton administration” and “is now emulating proposals introduced by Senator Rand Paul over the last several years.” The press release cited five criminal justice bills Paul already has introduced this session, addressing mandatory minimum sentences, asset forfeiture, restoration of felons’ voting rights, expungement of criminal records, and police body cameras. “We welcome her to the fight,” it said.
Clinton can expect more such jabs. But if she means what she says about putting aside partisan differences to “restore balance to our justice system,” she should be happy to “work together” with political adversaries such as Paul “to get the job done.”
Why Hillary’s embracing Bernie [Bill Scher, POLITICO Magazine, April 30, 2015]
As long as Warren isn’t in the race, Clinton can afford to split the progressive vote.
It was only a tweet, but one could detect a certain jubilation in Hillary Clinton’s voice as she “welcomed” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—the senator so far to the left he’s not even a registered Democrat—into the presidential race. "I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class. GOP would hold them back,” Clinton tweeted. To be sure everyone noticed, she signed the tweet "H." This is really me talking, everybody!
You can bet that, if it had been Elizabeth Warren, there would have been less jubilation in Clintonworld.
Why is Hillary happy? First of all, Bernie has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, whereas a Warren might actually have a shot. Second, the quixotic nature of his campaign will all but ensure that resistant progressives go over to Clinton sooner rather than later. Finally, he is the first of a bunch of progressive-come-latelies, Lincoln Chafee, Jim Webb and Martin O’Malley, whose main achievement will be to split the anti-Hillary left. With Clinton generally polling around 60 percent among Democrats, having four candidates divvy up the remaining tally is a recipe for a Hillary coronation. If Clinton doesn’t have to sweat, then she doesn’t owe anybody anything.
Above all, the weakness of Bernie Sanders and her other likely challengers virtually ensures that she will not be forced to adopt policies so progressive that her cautious campaign team fears they could cost her the election in November. Indeed, Warren’s hovering over the race has put more pressure on Hillary than anyone actually preparing to join it.
Needless to say, Bernie Sanders was not the first choice of progressives who crave a primary challenge. Progressives all like Bernie. But they love Elizabeth. Bernie has been teasing a run for months, and has been fighting the left-wing fight inside Congress for decades. Yet groups like MoveOn.org ignored him in favor of a formal–and by all indications, futile–campaign to draft the first-term senator from Massachusetts.
Why so little love for Bernie? He and Warren share the same ideology and agenda. The two have both achieved first-name only status among the left’s rank-and-file. (Sanders has long held court on Thom Hartmann’s national radio show, mixing it up with callers for the weekly segment, “Brunch With Bernie.”)
Bernie can even boast of a stronger electoral record compared to Elizabeth. When he first won statewide, back in 1990, Vermont voters simultaneously elected a Republican for governor and two years earlier backed George H. W. Bush over its Massachusetts neighbor Michael Dukakis. That year, the political independent and self-described socialist reached out to conservatives and secured the endorsement of the NRA to help him oust Vermont’s lone U.S. representative. Warren, on the other hand, didn’t have to do any heavy coalition building to win back Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat.
Yet Warren is the one that progressives believe has the secret sauce that can sell the progressive message across ideological lines. Conservatives may mock her as a Harvard professor, but on the stump she comes across more like a regular middle-class Jane, pithily distilling widespread frustration at a system skewed in favor of Wall Street.
Sanders, on the other hand, speaks in the leaden language of the old-school left-wing activist that he is. (“That was a depressing speech,” one fellow traveler said after a recent stem-winder.) He may have won over some right-wing voters while retail politicking in Vermont, but few progressives believe he can replicate that across the nation.
As to the other progressives who are likely to run, all have suspect credentials. Chafee and Webb are former Republicans. O’Malley had a solid reputation as a left-of-center technocrat while governor of Maryland, though in the wake of the Baltimore riots, his mayoral tenure is being remembered for high incarceration rates and not low poverty rates.
Yet all three now are singing out of Bernie’s populist songbook and all have the potential to diminish his ability to consolidate and maximize the progressive anti-Hillary vote.
O’Malley can appeal to Hillary skeptics who want a safer, button-down alternative. Chafee has suggested he wants to emphasize foreign policy, which may entice liberals most aggrieved by Clinton’s perceived hawkishness. Webb, like Sanders, believes Democrats need white working-class voters who spurned Obama to ensure an electoral majority. Unlike Sanders, Webb’s pitch is more tribal. The author of a book celebrating his fellow Appalachian Scots-Irish, Webb is fond of saying “If you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight.” Such racially competitive victimhood may not help Webb get far with in the multicultural Democratic electorate, but he could make it harder for Sanders, as well as Clinton, to make inroads with that constituency.
Before Sanders took the plunge it was clear that others would jump in. The question that Sanders had to ask himself was: Would it be better for progressives if I get behind one of the other challengers to minimize division, or am I the best champion of the progressive agenda?
Understandably, Sanders saw himself as the real deal. He has a fully fleshed out worldview, fingering the “billionaire class” as the problem and ridding money from politics as the solution. He has a 12-point action plan for revitalizing the middle-class. He has been talking about these economic issues, inside the Capitol and over the airwaves, on a daily basis for decades, with an eye toward appealing beyond the progressive base.
But while Sanders might give the most comprehensive one-hour speech on how to save the middle class, it’s less certain he knows how to move Hillary Clinton in his direction, or if that is even his underlying goal. (He insists, of course, that he’s running “to win" and “not running against Hillary Clinton.”)
As we have seen in the escalating fight over trade policy, Hillary can nod in the direction of the populists without embracing specifics. The left can demand she take a stand on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the “fast track” negotiation authority. But she will give you vague principles for what a trade deal should look like and skip the part about fast track, for as long as she can.
A strong primary challenger can make it harder for Hillary to skirt specifics. But much of the Sanders’ agenda and rhetoric doesn’t put Hillary on the spot.
For example, on the day he announced, Sanders’ Twitter feed declared: “Every candidate for president has got to answer one simple question. Are you prepared to take on the billionaire class whose greed is destroying the middle class and, through Citizens United, our American democratic system?" This is a softball question disguised as a hardball. Hillary can easily answer, “Yes!” without committing to any specific policy, or even swallowing the class-based rhetoric her advisers want to avoid.
Other elements of his “Agenda for America” similarly give challengers plenty of latitude. He wants “a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay,” “quality education [that’s] affordable for all” and to "lead the world in reversing climate change.”
But certain planks could squeeze Hillary if Sanders decided to drill them. Either you are for expanding Social Security benefits or you’re not. Either you believe Wall Street banks “must be broken up” or you don’t. Clinton’s restraint on trade may have to give way if Sanders hammers her over it.
Yet Bernie is a gentleman, apparently. “I’ve never run a negative ad in my life,” he says. If he continues that streak, many Democrats who fear a bloody primary would be relieved.  But many populist progressives who want to push Hillary out of her Establishment comfort zone would not be. It looks as if they are destined to be disappointed.
The Problem for Bernie Sanders: The Narrow Lane to Hillary Clinton’s Left [Nate Cohn, NYT The Upshot, April 30, 2015]
The presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders won’t change that fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to win the Democratic nomination without a serious contest.
The presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont and self-described socialist who will most likely champion the liberal cause, won’t change that fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton is poised to win the Democratic nomination without a serious contest.
That’s true even though the Democratic Party’s liberal activist base, which strongly opposed her bid in 2008, has considerable reservations about her ties to Wall Street, her foreign policy, the recent allegations about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the revelations about the private email account and server she used when she was the secretary of state.
This is mainly because of Mr. Sanders’s own weaknesses as a candidate and Mrs. Clinton’s strengths. But there is another, strangely simple reason Mrs. Clinton will have an easy road to the nomination: The left wing of the Democratic Party just isn’t big enough to support a challenge to the left of a mainstream liberal Democrat like Mrs. Clinton.
That might seem somewhat surprising if you’re an affluent, secular, well-educated person living along the coasts, in places like Bethesda, Md., Berkeley, Calif., or Montclair, N.J., where the party really is dominated by the uniformly liberal voters who love Elizabeth Warren and harbor at least some reservations about Mrs. Clinton. From that vantage point — which happens to be the same as that of many political journalists — it often looks as if Mrs. Warren could even defeat Mrs. Clinton.
But the Democratic primary electorate is nothing like these liberal enclaves. Elsewhere, the party includes a large number of less educated, more religious — often older, Southern or nonwhite — voters who are far from uniformly liberal.
The majority of Democrats and Democratic primary voters are self-described moderates or even conservatives, according to an Upshot analysis of Pew survey data from 2014 and exit polls from the 2008 Democratic primary.
Some of these self-described moderates hold fairly liberal views. But the “mostly liberal” Democrats barely outnumber Democrats with “mixed” or conservative policy views, according to the Pew data, which classified respondents based on how consistently they agreed with Democratic policy positions. Only about a quarter of Democratic-leaners hold the consistently liberal views that would potentially put them to the left of Mrs. Clinton.
These moderate and conservative Democrats allowed Bill Clinton to easily win the nomination in 1992 as a moderate Southern Democrat. They helped give Hillary Clinton a wide lead in the polls in 2008, until Barack Obama won Iowa and built an enormous lead among black voters — who represent about 20 percent of Democratic voters. Many black voters are moderate or conservative, allowing Mr. Obama to overcome the disadvantage faced by left-liberal Democratic candidates.
If the front-runner for the Democratic nomination were a fairly moderate Democrat, it would be easier to imagine a liberal Democratic candidate who could consolidate the liberal wing of the party and have a real chance of wining the nomination.
But by any measure — Senate voting record, public statements or campaign contributions — Mrs. Clinton is a liberal. She fares better among liberal Democrats than moderate ones in public opinion polls. She struggled to win over very liberal voters when running against Mr. Obama in 2008. But she did not lose them by a wide margin — and in some places, she won them. It was also at a time when the war in Iraq was more salient, and her weakness on Iraq then was far clearer than her weakness on economic issues now.
A strong challenger on Mrs. Clinton’s left would probably stand a good chance of faring well among very liberal voters again, but would struggle to build a broad enough coalition to have a plausible chance of winning the nomination.
Hillary Clinton a free trader, or not, depending on the moment [Mike Dorning, Bloomberg Politics, May 1, 2015]
Clinton has changed her view on free trade.
Three years ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised a proposed deal to reduce trade barriers among Pacific Rim nations as “the gold standard” for such pacts.
Now, the presidential candidate Clinton has nothing to say as President Barack Obama fights to win expanded negotiating authority to complete the agreement over furious opposition from organized labor and progressives in his own party.
Her silence on the premier economic issue dividing Democrats is consistent with a long history of wavering under pressure on trade. She has even alternately praised and criticized the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement signed by her husband in 1993, calling it good for America or a “mistake,” depending on the audience and circumstances.
“What she does could make a difference on the outcome.”
Critics of the current deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, are frustrated by Clinton’s ambiguous stance as she tries to hold together a political coalition that includes party activists on the left and major financial supporters from business and Wall Street.
“We expect those who seek to lead our nation forward to oppose fast track,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a speech Tuesday without naming Clinton. “There is no middle ground, and the time for deliberations is drawing to a close.”
Some opponents of the trade accord believe a clear statement from their party’s almost-certain presidential nominee opposing fast-track authority, which allows Congress to vote up or down on trade deals but not to amend them, might seal its defeat and kill the entire agreement.
“What she does could make a difference on the outcome,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Opposition from Clinton “would spotlight how isolated President Obama is among Democrats.”
Lines Drawn
Democratic backers of the deal aren’t pressing as hard for her to express clear support and anger key constituencies such as unions and environmentalists whose enthusiasm Clinton would need in an election. Unions consider the Pacific trade agreement a job killer and activists worry that certain provisions could be used to override environmental, health and safety regulations.
A public Clinton stand on fast track “would be a factor but I don’t think it would be particularly dispositive at this point,” said Representative Gerald Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who supports the initiative. “The lines have been drawn.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traveled to Washington this week and delivered an address to Congress to promote expanded trade as Congress moves closer to a vote on negotiating authority. The measure would allow Obama and his successor to negotiate trade deals for up to six years and submit them to Congress for votes.
Only 13 Democratic House members have publicly expressed support for the legislation, considered necessary to complete the Pacific trade deal, which would cover the U.S. and 11 other nations accounting for 44 percent of American goods exports in 2013.
No recent Democratic political name has been more closely linked to the cause of expanded international trade than the Clintons’. NAFTA was a signature achievement of Bill Clinton’s presidency, won only after he took on the labor movement, key Democratic congressional leaders and much of his party’s rank and file in Congress.
Then-first lady, Clinton praised NAFTA in 1996 as “proving its worth.” At a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 1998, she thanked business leaders for lobbying for the trade deal with Mexico and Canada and criticized them for not making a more vigorous effort to give the administration fast-track authority to negotiate more such agreements.
In 2000, while campaigning for the U.S. Senate in New York, where upstate manufacturing jobs had declined, Clinton called NAFTA “flawed.” After she was elected, she listed the trade agreement as an example of her husband’s “good ideas and courage” in a 2002 speech to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. In 2004, she said “on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America.”
As she began to gear up for her 2008 White House run, she turned more skeptical. She voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2005, saying it lacked sufficient protection for foreign workers. She joined fellow New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer in sponsoring legislation calling for sanctions on Chinese exports unless that country stopped holding down the value of its currency.
By 2007, she called NAFTA a “mistake” in a CNN presidential debate. During the campaign she called for a “trade timeout” on additional agreements and promised to appoint a “trade prosecutor” to more vigorously pursue violations by U.S. commercial partners. A Washington Post editorial in 2007 called her evolution on trade issues “opportunism under pressure.”
Clinton wasn’t the only candidate to court voters in industrial states unhappy with trade deals. Obama criticized her on NAFTA during hard-fought primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania and promised to renegotiate the agreement if he were elected. He never followed through.
After House and Senate leaders negotiated compromise language on fast-track legislation in April, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement on the Pacific trade talks that didn’t take a position on the vote facing Congress.
“She will be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency, and open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas,” Merrill said.
“Any new trade measure has to pass two tests,” he added in the statement. “First it should put us in a position to protect American workers, raise wages and create more good jobs at home. Second, it must also strengthen our national security.”
Perhaps mindful of his own history on trade, Obama has declined to criticize his former secretary of state for withholding public support on the fast-track debate.
“She said what she should be saying, which is that she is going to want to see a trade agreement that is strong on labor, strong on the environment, helps U.S. workers, helps the U.S. economy,” Obama said in an interview Tuesday with the Wall Street Journal. “That’s my standard as well, and I’m confident that standard can be met.”
Bill Galston, a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, said he’d be surprised to see the former first lady take a position on fast-track authority, which she can always characterize as “a procedural issue.’
‘‘It’s clearly her assessment that it has become a very volatile issue,” Galston said. Should a complete treaty come before Congress, he added, it would become “increasingly difficult for her to avoid taking a position.”


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