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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2016 Clintonism of the ’90s, rest in peace Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager A victory for smart, courageous citizens Some big opportunities are not worth it S o this is how it ends. Oregon LNG representatives call the mayor of Warrenton and email the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to say the company is dropping its long-standing proposal. That’s what happened Friday. 7KHFRPSDQ\¶VGUHDPRIDOLTXH¿HGQDWXUDOJDVWHUPLQDOLQ Warrenton on the Skipanon suddenly died. Community opposition property in 2004, which the may not have drove the Port leases from the state. company to call it quits. It was an absurd lease, in Perhaps the company’s which the Port gained noth- ¿QDQFLDO KHDGV ORRNHG DW ing but a headache. While Oregon’s federal the chessboard and saw the three ways their plan was RI¿FLDOV VXFK DV 86 6HQ blocked: by the county com- Ron Wyden, former U.S. mission, by the U.S. Army Rep. David Wu and U.S. Corps of Engineers and by a Rep. Suzanne Bonamici :DUUHQWRQKHDULQJVRI¿FHU¶V read the situation correctly and spoke for us, Salem was recommendation. Money managers usu- hopelessly slow. Former ally are who pulls the plug Gov. Ted Kulongoski had to on giant energy projects. be dragged into awareness. It was Wall Street — not Former Gov. John Kitzhaber, Northwest environmental- during his 2014 campaign ists — who pulled the plug for a fourth term, incredu- on the Washington Public lously asked if county pub- Power Supply System lic opinion opposed the nuclear plants in 1983 and Skipanon LNG project. Neither LNG proposal generated the largest munic- ipal bond default in U.S. his- — Bradwood or Skipanon tory. The Bradwood Landing — would have been good LNG project ceased in 2010 for this county. They car- because of that company’s ried enormous safety con- sequences. And like all such bankruptcy. If you lived in Clatsop big energy projects, they County, it was hard to avoid were prone to the boom and the LNG debate. Opposition bust cycle. Between the proj- went from being lonely busi- ects’ launching and today, ness to becoming the major- global fossil fuel supply has ity opinion. LNG was on the been transformed in a way county ballot three times: that makes such terminals in Dirk Rohne’s 2008 elec- a very dubious proposition. tion to the county commis- Had Bradwood been built, sion, in Richard Lee’s recall for instance, it would now from the commission and in likely be a white elephant. Whatever Leucadia the election of Scott Lee and National Corp. executives Peter Huhtala. It was former Port of want to believe or say, this Astoria Executive Director was an enormous victory for Peter Gearin who brought Clatsop County citizens who the LNG juggernaut to were smart enough and cou- Clatsop County by sign- rageous enough to stand up ing a lease on the Skipanon against a lot of money. By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Washington Post Writers Group W ASHINGTON — How far they’ve come. And I’m not talking about the GOP, whose front-runner representing 37 percent of the Republican electorate has repudiated post-Reagan orthodoxy on trade, entitlement reform, limited gov- ernment and Pax Americana (and possibly abortion, but who knows?). I’m talking about the Democrats. The center-left, triangulating, New Demo- crat (Bill) Clin- tonism of the 1990s is dead. It expired of unnatural causes, buried ² GH¿QLWLYHO\ if unceremoni- ously — by its very creator. 7KH ¿QDO Charles c h a p t e r Krauthammer occurred last week when, responding to Black Lives Mat- ter hecklers denouncing his 1994 crime bill, Bill Clinton unleashed an impassioned defense. He accused the protesters of discounting the thou- sands of lives, mostly black, that were saved amid the crack epidemic of the time because gang leaders and other bad guys got locked up. Yet the next day, the big dog came out, tail between his legs, say- ing he regretted the incident and almost wanted to apologize. It was a humiliating, Soviet-style recanta- tion obviously meant to protect his wife’s campaign, which depends on the African-American vote to fend off Bernie Sanders. You know Bill Clinton still EHOLHYHVKLVFULPHELOOZDVMXVWL¿HG 2QH FDQQRW GH¿QLWLYHO\ SURYH FDX- sality, but it certainly contributed to one of the most radical declines in crime ever recorded in this country. Moreover, the Black Lives Mat- ter charge that the 1994 law was an inherently racist engine for the mass incarceration of young black men is belied by the fact that it was sup- ported by two-thirds of the Con- gressional Black Caucus (including civil rights pioneer James Clyburn, D-S.C.), justly panicked at the time by the carnage wrought by the crack epidemic ravaging the inner cities. It’s one thing to argue that the law overshot and is due for revi- AP Photo/Steven Senne Former President Bill Clinton poses for a photograph with people from the audience after speaking in support of his wife, Democratic presi- dential candidate Hillary Clinton, Thursday, at the Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick, R.I. sion with, for example, a relaxation idency, often with her active collab- of its mandatory-sentence provi- oration. At the core of Bill Clinton’s sions. It’s quite another to claim, as foreign policy lay the notion of does Black Lives Matter, that it was America as the “indispensable a vehicle by which a racist criminal nation.” It is today quite dispensable, justice system destroyed the lives of indeed a nation in retreat — from young black men. Hillary Clinton, (Hillary’s) reset with Russia to the catching up to Sanders, has essen- Iranian nuclear negotiations (which tially endorsed that view, demanding Hillary initiated with secret meetings an end to “the era of mass incarcer- in Oman in 2012) to the disastrous ation” and the underlying maltreat- evacuation of Iraq in 2011. ment of blacks by police and the As has happened with another of courts. Bill’s major achievements: welfare For the man who reform. President Obama changed the image of essentially disman- There has the Democratic Party 25 tled its work requirements years ago by daring to (with Bill Clinton’s acqui- are challenge the reverse rac- escence, a sign of things to ism of Sister Souljah to only so come). No need for Hillary have to bow to this new to repudiate her husband’s many legacy. It’s been done for — false — orthodoxy, symbolizes perfectly how times her.How far has the party far the Democratic Party has traveled since the you can moved left? Under Bill Clinton era. Clinton, it gave up on flip- But the 2016 undo- gun control after sting- ing of classic Clintonism ing defeats in the 1994 flop. hardly stops there. Take midterms. Today, Hillary trade. It was Bill who pro- Clinton delights in attack- moted and passed NAFTA. Although ing Sanders for being soft on gun Hillary criticized NAFTA when she control. Malleable she is. And she ran in 2007-2008, as secretary of sure knows her party. state she returned to her traditional It is nothing like her husband’s free-trade stance, promoting and party. Which is why she campaigns H[WROOLQJ WKH 7UDQV3DFL¿F 3DUWQHU- as Bernie lite — they share the same ship as trade’s “gold standard.” goals, she says, but she can get things Now dross, apparently. She came done. Hence the greatest irony of all: out against the TPP, once again For the last decade and a half, the main stampeded by Sanders and the par- propellant for the Hillary-for-pres- ty’s left, i.e., its base. She may not ident movement has been the rosy have sincerely changed her view, but afterglow of Bill’s 1990s, the end-of- there are only so many times you can history era of peace, prosperity and ÀLSÀRS6KH¶VER[HGLQWRWKHSDUW\¶V balanced budgets. new anti-trade consensus. Want it back? Vote Hillary. That’s Other pillars of her husband’s the tease. Yet a Hillary victory would internationalism were already top- yield a Clinton Redux animated not pled, pre-2016, by the Obama pres- by Bill but by Bernie. The Pastrami Principle of real Americans ton didn’t win big in the tion of about 20 million. South on the strength of Meanwhile, Florida alone also has about 20 mil- conservative voters; she won by getting an over- couple of months ago, Jeb lion people — and Clin- ton won it by a 30-point whelming majority of Bush (remember him?) margin. black voters. This puts a posted a photo of his mono- To overtake her, Sand- different spin on things, grammed handgun to Twitter, ers would have to win the doesn’t it? remaining contests by an Is it possible that with the caption “America.” average 13-point margin, Sanders doesn’t know Bill de Blasio, New York’s a number that will almost this, that he imagines that Paul mayor, responded with a picture surely go up after the Clinton is riding a wave Krugman of an immense pastrami sandwich, New York primary, even of support from old-fash- also captioned “America.” if he does much better than current ioned Confederate-flag-waving Advantage de Blasio, if you ask polls suggest. That’s not impossi- Dixiecrats, as opposed to, let’s be ble, but it’s highly unlikely. blunt, the descendants of slaves? me. So the Sanders campaign is Maybe. He is not, as you may have Let me now somewhat ruin the joke by talking about the sub- arguing that superdelegates — the noticed, a details guy. It’s more likely, however, that text. Bush’s post was an awkward people, mainly party insiders, not attempt to tap into the common selected through primaries and he’s being deliberately misleading Republican theme that only certain caucuses who get to serve as del- — and that his effort to delegiti- people — white, gun-owning, rural egates under Democratic nomina- mize a big part of the Democratic or small-town citizens — embody tion rules — should give him the electorate is a cynical ploy. the true spirit of the nation. It’s a nomination even if he loses the Who’s the target of this ploy? Clippings from the press of the theme most famously espoused by popular vote. In case you’re rub- Not the superdelegates, surely. 3DFL¿F1RUWKZHVWDQGWKHQDWLRQ Sarah Palin, who told small-town bing your eyes: Yes, not long ago Think about it: Can you imagine Southerners that they represented many Sanders supporters were ful- Democratic Party insiders decid- the “real America.” You see the minating about how Hillary was ing to deny the nomination to the same thing when Ted Cruz sneers going to steal the nomination by candidate who won the most votes, having superdelegates put her on the grounds that African-Amer- arl Warren once said that he read SRLQWVLQKLV¿QDOJDPHLQFOXGLQJ at “New York values.” over the top despite los- ican voters don’t count as much as De Blasio’s riposte, the sports section of his newspa- the game-winning shot. ... the primaries. Now whites? On the baseball diamond, 42-year- celebrating a character- SHU ¿UVW EHFDXVH LW UHFRUGHG PDQ¶V Who’s ing the Sanders strategy is No, claims that Clinton wins in accomplishments, whereas the front olds Bartolo Colon of the New York istically New York del- to win by doing exactly the South should be discounted are page reported only failures. That was Mets and Ichiro Suzuki of the Miami icacy, was a declaration the that. really aimed at misleading Sanders certainly true during his tenure as Marlins are still productive players that we’re also Amer- But how can the cam- supporters, giving them an unre- Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, DQG ¿HUFH FRPSHWLWRUV $QG 3H\WRQ icans — that everyone target paign make the case that alistic view of the chances that and it’s true in the Obama-Trump Manning of the Denver Broncos won counts. And that, surely, of this the party should defy their favorite can still win — and era of polarized politics. Fortunately, a second Super Bowl in February. He is the vision of America apparent will of its thereby keeping the flow of money Americans can turn their eyes to an retired last month only weeks before that should prevail. ploy? the voters? By insisting and volunteers coming. Which is why it’s dis- inspiring group of aging professional turning 40. that many of those vot- Not since last year’s mania over turbing to see Palinesque athletes. Just to be clear, I’m not saying This week, Kobe Bryant of the the dad bod have middle-aged guys attempts to delegitimize large ers shouldn’t count. Over the past that Sanders should drop out. He Los Angeles Lakers retired after 20 had such reason for simple, nonpolit- groups of voters surfacing among week, Sanders has declared that has the right to keep campaigning, Clinton leads only because she has in the hope either of pulling off some Democrats. seasons in the National Basketball ical optimism. Quite a few people seem con- won in the “Deep South,” which is huge upsets in the remaining pri- — The Wall Street Journal Association, but not before scoring fused about the current state of a “pretty conservative part of the maries or of having influence at the the Democratic nomination race. country.” The tally so far, he says, convention. But trying to keep his But the essentials are simple: Hil- “distorts reality” because it con- campaign going by misleading his lary Clinton has a large lead in both tains so many Southern states. supporters is not OK. And sneer- As it happens, this isn’t true — ing at millions of voters is truly avid Ben-Gurion, Israel’s found- “There comes a time,” said Bernie pledged delegates and the popular ing father, said, “Peace is more Sanders, “when if we pursue justice vote. (In Democratic primaries, the calendar, which front-loaded beyond the pale, especially for a important than real estate.” Yitzhak and peace, we are going to have to say delegate allocation is roughly pro- some states very favorable to progressive. portional to votes.) If you ask how Sanders, hasn’t been a big factor Rabin came to the same conclu- that Netanyahu” makes mistakes. Remember the pastrami princi- A growing number of Americans that’s possible — Bernie Sanders in the race. Also, swing-state Flor- ple: We’re all real Americans. And sion and, derided by Netanyahu, was just won seven states in a row! — ida isn’t the Deep South. But never African-Americans are very defi- assassinated by a messianic Israeli believe that time is now. — Roger Cohen in The New York you need to realize that those seven mind. The big problem with this nitely real Democrats, deserving fanatic. Netanyahu’s government is Times states have a combined popula- argument should be obvious. Clin- respect. a don’t-give-an-inch government. FYI: Veterans Days E Bernie’s Israel Heresy D By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times News Service A
