The letter summarizes that while the US economy has seen gains under Democratic administrations like Clinton's and Obama's, Tomasky and Rattner fail to acknowledge important points in their analyses. Specifically, they do not mention how both Democrats and Republicans have adopted Reagan's legacy of reducing social services. They also do not discuss how Clinton, Obama, Bush, and Trump all helped bail out Wall Street. The letter argues that since the 1970/80s, both parties have embraced neoliberal policies of deregulation and free trade that have led to problems like rising inequality and the rise of far-right politicians. While not disputing Democratic economic growth, the letter says Tomasky and Rattner should consider why figures like

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To the editor:
I write this letter in response to two op-ed articles in The New York Times:
Michael Tomasky’s “Why Recent Republican Presidents Have Been Economic Failures”
(August 20, 2020) and Steven Rattner’s “The Economic Recovery That Isn’t” (August 23, 2020).
While I do not disagree that the U.S. economy has made gains under Democratic administrations
such as Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s and that President Donald Trump’s boasting of
economic progress during his administration is based on little or no evidence, such facts do not
indicate that the Republican and Democratic parties have diametrically opposed economic
policies. Those facts do not indicate, either, that the Democrats have economic policy proposals
that will help working-class and lower-middle-class people in the U.S.
Neither Tomasky nor Rattner note that Bill Clinton restricted social welfare services and
introduced “workfare,” thus indicating that the Democrats have, just like the Republicans,
adopted the economic legacy of Ronald Reagan as their own. Likewise, they do not mention how
Barack Obama, as with George W. Bush, helped bail out Wall Street during the 2007-2009
financial crisis. Even more tellingly, they do not write about how Clinton and Obama could have,
like Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s, instituted assorted
social-democratic, Keynesian, and public works programs like the Works Progress
Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. They
don’t mention Clinton’s negotiating and signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement
and Obama’s negotiating of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, either—“free trade” deals that are not
dissimilar to Bush, Jr.’s Central America Free Trade Act and Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada
Agreement. I can also add that Obama and the Democrats could have, if they were sincere about
effective healthcare reform in this country, successfully advocated for single-payer healthcare.
Needless to say, that did not happen.
Tomasky’s and Rattner’s reticence as to the aforementioned examples should be of no
surprise. Ever since the late 1970s and 1980s, the Democratic Party became as wedded as the
Republican Party to neoliberal economics. That meant a bipartisan consensus dedicated to
shibboleths like “free trade,” “free markets,” “free enterprise,” and “privatization.” In practice,
that meant deindustrialization, deregulation, regressive taxation, and reduced unionization. In
political terms, the Democrats ran as “Republican lite” against Republicans. The results are now
obvious: the Democratic Party is oriented to the center-right and right wing of the political
spectrum while the Republican Party became a quintessential far-right party.
There are similar trends elsewhere: Tony Blair, at roughly the same time Bill Clinton
came to prominence, introduced “New Labour” in the United Kingdom, which is to say a Labour
Party that betrayed its left-wing, working-class, and trade unionist heritage in favor of the
neoliberal economic ideology of Margaret Thatcher. Social-democratic and labor parties in other
parts of the world acquiesced to the same neoliberal agenda. We see the dire consequences of
this mainstream and establishment-oriented neoliberal consensus now, not to mention in recent
years, with deepening wealth and income inequalities as well as the rise of far-right politicians
and movements throughout the world. Those politicians include Marine Le Pen, Jair Bolsonaro,
and….. Trump.

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Tomasky and Rattner are not wrong to argue that economic growth under Trump is a
mirage and that the Democrats have been better neoliberal administrators than the Republicans.
However, they would do well to consider the public anger at neoliberalism’s consequences.
Perhaps thorough examination of how and why Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn became so
popular can help.
Sincerely,
Stephen Cheng
Friday, October 2, 2020