digamma.net - notes

This post from Scott Lemieux reads like a parody of desperate Clinton defenders, but he actually means it:

As Ezra says, as long as the GOP has more than 40 Senators and the White House, major accomplishments are not an issue. This also comes up a lot in debates with my Naderite friends, but while there are any number of valid critiques of Clinton, to attack him for not achieving any major progressive initiatives after 1994 is bizarre; with a Republican Congress this simply wasn’t a possibility. The President has a lot of power to affect the implementation of existing policy and can do a lot to obstruct change, but his ability to create major domestic policy shifts without Congress is nil.

No one on the left ever dreamed that Clinton would create a major progressive domestic policy shift. The most they ever hoped for was that he wouldn’t actively push conservative policies. And he fell well short of that goal.

The Telecommunications Act? Communications Decency? Antiterrorism? Welfare reform? These were all passed with Clinton’s signature and, with the POSSIBLE exception of welfare reform (on which he waffled repeatedly), with his enthusiastic support. You can’t blame the Constitution for that.

I pointed these out and Lemieux replied:

Of course, Clinton can be criticized for not preventing bad policies from passing, but since nothing I said contradicts that I’m not sure what the point is.

This is a pretty bizarre move of the goalposts. It seems to me that allowing major right-wing shifts should be considered worse than failing to create major left-wing shifts. Right?