What did we learn the second night of the Democratic convention?

In the second night of the Democratic convention we were treated to 48 minutes of Bill Clinton at his finest. Former President Clinton started his DNC speech career praising the virtues of Michael Dukakis (who won only ten states losing to George H Bush).  This time Clinton was supposed to convince the undecided to vote for President Obama just because Obama was nominated by the same party as Clinton.

 But President Obama is not Bill Clinton.

While Clinton worked with Republicans to reform welfare, Obama works to dismantle that same reform. Clinton, who apparently will support anyone or say anything to get a Democrat elected, says Obama is not removing the welfare work requirement.  But the fact remains that now the Secretary of Health and Human Services has the latitude to drop the work requirement with no input from Congress.    

While Clinton found ways to work with Republicans and actually balanced the federal budget, President Obama can’t even get his party to pass a budget. The President sent a budget to Congress in 2012 and not one single member of Congress, from either party, voted for it. The Democrats have not passed a budget since Obama became President. We should trust a President to solve the financial crisis of our government that can’t even pass a budget?  Let me say that one more time, the federal government of the United States has not had a written budget since President Bush left office. Since the Republicans took control of the House in the last election, the House passed a budget only to have it not even get to the floor of the democratic controlled Senate.

President Clinton championed government health care.  But when he saw how unpopular things like a government mandate for health insurance would be; abandoned the effort. Obama pushed legislation through a totally democratic Congress without one Republican vote, even though members of Congress admit that no one had actually read the 2000 page bill. Some type of health insurance reform might be needed but the 2000 page Obamacare bill failed to consider the 88% of the population that had health insurance and the vast majority that were satisfied with the insurance they had.

When Bill Clinton’s wife Hilary was running for President, she referred to Obama as “Elitist and divisive” now, Bill paints the President as a friend of the average worker and a builder of bridges. We already know that Clinton has no problem with lying.  That must be the only explanation from a former President who knew how to work with the other party,  would imply this President does.

And the most amazing thing is President Obama, who during the 2008 primary scolded past Republican and Democratic administrations of banking deregulation and blames the whole recession on Bush era bank deregulation, now has the biggest deregulator of all time speaking on his behalf at the convention. It was Bill Clinton who signed the Glass-Steagall law repeal. This depression era banking regulation had out lived any usefulness and was correctly repealed by the republican Congress and that repeal was signed by Clinton. Obama who makes a habit of accusing President Bush of causing the financial melt-down with bank deregulations, was now being championed by the President who really did de-regulate banking. Bush on the other hand signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley's Act that substantially increased the regulation on the financial industry.  The ability for Obama, Clinton and the Democratic Party to ignore history is beyond amazing.

And Clinton, who really did govern during a time that the country recovered from a recession (even if the recovery was more from a tech bubble that from any government policy) now supports a President whose polices prolong the suffering. Clinton justifies this support by proclaiming the often repeated but never explained message that this is the “worst recession since the great depression”.  Yet in length,  this recession does not even make the top five. The recession in 1979 was longer, with higher un-employment, lower GDP and higher interest rates.  The parrots that repeat the depression comparison to this recession are correct in one respect. Never since the depression has the economy stayed so weak even years after the recession ended. And both times liberal Presidents were pushing an ultra-liberal agenda that prolonged the economic slow-down.

If you are a Liberal you may find good reason to vote for President Obama, but it is hard to see how support from Clinton would be one of them. If you are supporter of Clinton era policies the new found support from Clinton hardly seems reason to support Obama. If you are a thinking person it is hard to see how you could support either.