Rolling Stone magazine has published an editorial endorsing Hillary Clinton written by the prominent historian Sean Wilentz of Princeton University. Wilentz, reportedly a long time friend of the Clintons, praises Hillary in the strongest terms, saying she would "carry on the Democratic Party's progressive traditions and transform America." Wilentz goes on to give a highly selective account of what President Hillary Clinton would offer America.

My Gut Reaction: I suspect that Wilentz has a slightly different definition of progressive than I do.

More below the fold....

The most striking aspect of Wilentz's hagiography of Clinton is how little depth it really has. Although he describes a few of her political positions, he does not go into any detail about their real import for America. Disturbingly, in cases where the legacy of the last Clinton presidency is problematic or embarrassing, he either ignores the suffering caused or tries to portray it as unavoidable. For example, in describing the welfare reform enacted by Bill Clinton, he writes:

The left vilified him for signing a welfare-reform bill that he himself knew was severely flawed and would later try to correct - but which did help move millions into paid employment, instead of what FDR called "the pauperism of the dole."

At one point, Wilentz waxes lyrical about the representation of African American at the Democratic National Convention, writing, "The convention hall was a sea of brown and black and white faces as well as LGBT rainbows." However, the welfare reform he endorses several pages later has been found to have had a disproportionate effect on African Americans, despite the fact that black people make up less than a third of welfare recipients. Furthermore, as Michelle Alexander has argued, the Clintons have contributed mightily to the mass incarceration which plagues minorities in this country:

If anyone doubts that the mainstream media fails to tell the truth about our political system (and its true winners and losers), the spectacle of large majorities of black folks supporting Hillary Clinton in the primary races ought to be proof enough. I can't believe Hillary would be coasting into the primaries with her current margin of black support if most people knew how much damage the Clintons have done—the millions of families that were destroyed the last time they were in the White House thanks to their boastful embrace of the mass incarceration machine and their total capitulation to the right-wing narrative on race, crime, welfare and taxes. There's so much more to say on this topic and it's a shame that more people aren't saying it. I think it's time we have that conversation.

Even more disturbingly, Hillary Clinton's continued espousal of a militaristic foreign policy is nowhere to be found. At no point does Wilentz deign to consider the Americans who died fighting in Iraq after Clinton voted for war, nor does he consider the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in that conflict. One can only conclude that Wilentz elected to avoid this issue because he had no real defense to offer.