OxBlog

Thursday, January 01, 2004

# Posted 5:41 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CLINTONOMICS AND ITS RIVALS: The NYT has a good round up of the Democratic candidates' economic programs and the differences between them. While the Times emphasizes the similarities between most of the candidates proposals, I think it is worth noting a couple of differences. (For a quick review, take a look at the handy chart provided here.

First and foremost, Dick Gephardt is a hardline old-economy man. He is for repealing all of Bush's tax cuts, for rolling back free trade and in favor of massive new health care expenditures. (What I didn't know was that Al Sharpton advocates almost all of the same things. Btw, Dennis Kucinich does as well, but no one cares.)

Second, Howard Dean is on the fence between the new and old Democratic programs, with his desire to reverse all the tax cuts and rethink free trade. However, his health insurance plans seem to be in line with most of his rivals'.

Third, Wes Clark's program is somewhat undefined. He's for keeping middle-class tax cuts and holding the line on free trade. But he has no health care plan yet. Also, he has what the NYT describes as a plan for a $100 billion stimulus package, which probably merits further research on my part.

That leaves us with Edwards, Lieberman and Kerry, who basically have identical plans.

So what does this all mean? My sense is that it heightens the importance of foreign policy in the primaries, because that's what differentiates the candidates. Moreover, given Gephardt's marginality, the economic divide once again casts Dean as the left-wing insurgent in a moderate liberal party.

I think that it is this dynamic which really drives the conventional wisdom that the party will eventually have to make a choice between Dean and Clark. The question in my mind is whether the also-rans will endorse Clark soon enough to prevent a Dean victory.

UPDATE: El Camino thinks that the differences are even more pronounced than I've made them out to be and that economic policy will become an important focus of the primary campaign. He adds that the details of Clark's stimulus package can be found here.
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