Bill Clinton has done more to help the middle class than any leader in decades.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot - too much, in retrospect - about the rich.
But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.
Bill Clinton worked with a Republican Congress. They certainly had their differences on many issues, but look at what they also accomplished. Welfare reform - that was maybe the most significant social policy achievement in two generations.
The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.
It wasn't simply that Clinton created the greatest prosperity in the country's history. Or that we created 22 million new jobs, more than ever before. Under Clinton, poverty was reduced 25%.
The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.
In the run-up to the 1992 Democratic convention, Clinton's campaign realized that voters thought the young governor had a privileged upbringing. They didn't buy his alleged concern for the middle class.
Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That's not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That's not leadership. That's abandoning our middle class.
Big government doesn't help the middle class, it buries it.
Democrats don't relate to middle-class people.