Like just about everything she writes, this Jeanne d'Arc post on the left/center-left split in the Democratic party is insightful, measured, and persuasive. (If only the same could be said of your humble correspondent and his scribblings....) That said, though, she seems throughout the piece to accept as axiomatic an idea that I often see asserted but seldom addressed substantively: namely, the notion that Clintonism was by its very nature a sellout of the goals and the soul of traditional liberalism.

Now, it is certainly true that the DLC-style centrism that Clinton embodied represents at least a partial rejection of the means generally associated with Great Society liberalism. (Though, interestingly, not necessarily those of the New Deal; it was FDR, after all, who called any system of long-term public assistance for the able-bodied a "narcotic.") But a look at the Clinton record would seem to indicate that his policies were far from disappointing in terms of achieving liberal ends -- which, one would think, should be the real test of the soul of any Democratic politician or governing philosophy.

Here's a brief passage from a 1999 speech by Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling that puts a few important facts and figures on the table:

From 1993 to 1998, poverty has fallen across the board and incomes have risen for each and every income group.

• The poverty rate has fallen from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998, lifting nearly 5 million people out of poverty.
• Between 1993 and 1998, the poverty rate has fallen by 15 percent or more for all persons, African Americans, Hispanics, children, African American children, Hispanic children, single mothers, and many other groups. The poverty rate is now the lowest on record for African Americans, African American children, Hispanic children, single mothers, African American single mothers, and Hispanic single mothers.
• At the same time, incomes have grown by 9.9 – 11.7 percent for every quintile of the income distribution. For the bottom three quintiles, this is the strongest growth since at least the 1970s. The 10.3 percent increase in incomes for the bottom quintile over the last 5 years represents a particularly dramatic turnaround from the 4.4 percent decline between 1981 and 1993.
• Over the last 5 years typical families have seen their income rise by 12.1 percent and African American families have seen their incomes rise by 21.0 percent. That represents more than $5,100 in income for the typical African American family.


• In 1998, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) lifted 4.3 million people out of poverty – twice the number of people lifted out of poverty by the EITC in 1993.

With all due respect to my more liberal friends, I think this anti-poverty record deserves closer examination before Clintonism is simply dismissed as Republican-lite economics or corporatism run amuck. The lives of millions of real people -- the people that we as Democrats claim to speak for -- would appear to be significantly better because of Bill Clinton's centrist presidency. And speaking as a lifelong member of the Democratic party who stands foursquare and unapologetically for social and economic justice, I, like many others I suspect, would have to see that idea convincingly refuted before I could seriously consider supporting a return to traditional liberal politics and policies.

And if that sounds like a challenge of sorts, I suppose that's because it is. Some of the blogosphere's finest minds and pens belong to traditional liberals, and it would be a real service to both blogdom and the Democratic party if one or more of them were to substantively address this issue. How, exactly, would a liberal Democratic administration differ from the Clinton model with regard to its policies and initiatives? How would it go about getting those policies enacted? And, most importantly, why should we expect it to produce more impressive outcomes for the people at the bottom of the economic pile?

Those strike me as fair, and perhaps even essential, questions -- particularly given the fact that a return to traditional liberalism would be, at minimum, a harder sell for the party. It would require us to reject a strategy that has produced three popular vote victories in a row at the presidential level, while at the same time appearing, at least, to have significantly advanced the cause of our nation's most hard-pressed citizens. Given those realities, it seems to me that the burden should be on our liberal allies to make the case for any radical change in the party's message and direction.

So, ladies and gentlemen ... the floor is open.

POSTSCRIPT: In case you don't want to wade through the Sperling speech in its entirety, you'll find the tabular data here.

UPDATE (7/26): More here.

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