Thomas MacMillan Photo
Another U.S. president came to Connecticut Sunday to try to boost Dick Blumenthal’s sagging U.S. Senate campaign — and in a pep rally inside New Haven’s Wilbur Cross High School gym, the candidate welcomed him with no reservations.
This president was Bill Clinton, 10 years out of office but the hottest ticket in this year’s mid-term elections.
Clinton had a gymnasium accustomed to cheers for the Wilbur Cross Governors basketball team instead buzzing with enthusiasm for a would-be senator, Blumenthal, and a would-be governor, Dan Malloy.
The 1,300-capacity gym filled early Sunday morning with Democrats and with anticipation — of a glimpse of popular ex-president, and of some sign that Democrat Blumenthal’s candidacy, once considered a shoo-in, can regain momentum against surging Republican opponent Linda McMahon.
Clinton electrified the crowd with a folksy, fact-filled attack on the Republicans running for office this year and an unapologetic defense of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress. (He never did mention Obama by name, though, nor did he mention Linda McMahon’s name. Neither did Blumenthal.)
Blumenthal, too, was unapologetic in embracing his guest. “He met and faced and overcame some of the toughest economic challenges in the history of this nation,” Blumenthal said of “my friend President Bill Clinton,” whom he thanked “for his historic courage and leadership of this nation and this world.”
That embrace offered a stark contrast to a closed-door fundraiser current President Barack Obama held for Blumenthal’s campaign in Stamford on Sept. 16. Blumenthal held no public event with Obama. Instead, Blumenthal held a press conference beforehand to criticize Obama’s handling of bank bailouts, economic stimulus, and even parts of his signature health reform law.
The reception Clinton has been receiving from Democrats like Blumenthal across the country has also offered a stark contrast to 2000, his last year in office. That year Clinton’s vice-president, Al Gore, didn’t want to be seen with his boss on the presidential campaign trail.
And Clinton’s unapologetic and specific defense of Obama and Congressional Democratic policies Sunday stood in contrast to the efforts by many Democratic candidates this year. Blumenthal and other Democratic hopefuls have sought to distance themselves from their party’s incumbent leaders and instead vow to “change Washington” without taking positions that might anger conservative elements of the electorate.
In his speech to the crowd right before Clinton’s address, Blumenthal did not mention any specific policies he’d support if elected, beyond fighting “special interests.” He didn’t take any stands on the war in Afghanistan, say, or the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts, or Republican calls to undo the new health care reform law. (He has previously disagreed with McMahon on whether to extend the cuts for the top 2 percent of income-earners; he’s against the idea, while she’s for it.)
Clinton, by contrast, came out full-throated for health reform and the Obama response to the financial crisis. And he sought to pick apart the Republicans’ arguments.
Clinton told the crowd he knew he was “preaching to the saved” in New Haven. He said “the point” of his address was to arm attendees — especially young supporters — with arguments to convince other young voters to come to the polls. Analysts say that many first-time voters electrified by Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign might sit out this year’s elections.
Paul Bass Photo
“Citizenship is not a one-time deal,” Clinton instructed the young emissaries to say. “Look, I share your anger. But … any time in life you make a really important decision when you’re mad, there’s an 80 percent chance you’ll make a mistake.”
Clinton noted that the GOP has defined Congressional races this year as a “referendum” on Obama and the Democrats and the state of the economy. Clinton argued for casting elections like Blumenthal’s as “a choice between two candidates and two courses.”
Clinton also put in a plug for his own role in history. He spoke of balancing four budgets, of how 22.7 million jobs were created and the “bottom 20 percent” made income gains for the only time in decades.
“I paid $600 billion down on the national debt,” he said. “These crocodile tears the other party has shed over the deficit makes me want to gag. They doubled the debt of the country again—before the meltdown.”
He accused the Republicans, under the Bush administration, of putting the economy in a “$3 trillion hole” and now telling voters: “You gave us eight years to dig that hole. They’ve [the Democrats] had 21 months to dig out. The economy’s not roaring again. So put us back in so we can” put “our shovels” back in the ground.
Clinton then spoke of the current Democratic-led Congress and White House. He credited them for passing a law that lowers the costs of student loans and enables borrowers to pay back a fixed percentage of their incomes over 20 years. Cutbacks in student loans helped prevent the U.S. from rebounding faster in this recession, he argued, because people weren’t trained for new-economy jobs. He noted that the latest U.S. Labor Department figures showed that posted job openings rose twice as fast as new hires last month. Too many people either can’t move to take those jobs because they can’t sell their debt-laden homes, or they haven’t received the needed retraining, Clinton argued. He proposed analyzing those job postings by state, then targeting new federal education and retraining money to those states by job category. If such training were in place now, he argued, five million more people would have jobs — and the unemployment rate would stand at 6.9 percent, not 9.6 percent.
On health care reform, Clinton attacked Republicans for trying to roll back the new law. He praised the law for enabling children to stay on parents’ health plans until reaching 26 years old, for mandating free preventive screenings, for subsidizing coverage for small businesses and uninsured individuals.
He criticized the Republicans for seeking to repeal a provision of the law that requires 85 cents on every premium dollar to go to actual care, not to profits or marketing. He also defended another provision opposed by Republicans, the requirement that everyone have insurance. “Until everybody’s covered, you can’t get the cost down,” he argued.
He noted that Americans spend 17.2 percent of their income on health care. “No other big rich country spends more than 10.5 percent,” he said, yet other industrialized countries all have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates than the U.S.
“The gap is $1 trillion a year” in higher U.S. spending, Clinton said. “The people making that trillion — some of them are loathe to give it up.”
McMahon’s Spokesman: Voters Know Differently
Anti-Blumenthal protesters set up across Mitchell Drive from Wilbur Cross.
A spokesman for Linda McMahon, Blumenthal’s Republican opponent, was asked if McMahon favors repealing the 85-cent provision. McMahon has called for pulling the plug on the new law and “going back to the drawing board” by reviewing each provision.
“I don’t believe we can look at it point by point. You have to balance every point against the effectiveness of the bill as a whole,” Patru said. “The effectiveness of the bill of the whole has been the exact opposite” of its stated intention of lowering costs and premiums.
“This was a partisan power play that shut out half the country in the debate,” Patru said of the health bill. “Today we know health care rates are rising partly because of this legislation while at the same time over half a billion dollars were slashed from Medicare, which hurts seniors. It was a broken process … The product is also broken.”
Patru criticized “the Democratic campaign strategy” of “talk[ing] endlessly about the virtues of one or two components of the bill while ignoring the fact that the legislation as a whole failed to lower costs and today is being rejected by the American people. It’s akin to buying a lemon that doesn’t run and won’t start and expecting compliments on the fact that it has a nice sound system.”
Patru was asked as well about Clinton’s argument that he slashed the deficit, Republicans ballooned it, and now the Democrats are slowing digging the country out of the mess.
“I think the people of Connecticut understand that for the last two years Washington has had a policy of spending billions and billions of dollars that it doesn’t have,” Patru responded. “The results of that have been the highest debt in American history, deficits as far as the eye can see, imminent tax increases on small businesses in order to accommodate more and more federal spending. The only way we are going to get this economy turned around is to start controlling federal spending and to allow small businesses to do what they do best — which is to create jobs. That will never happen if Washington continues to pass programs that it can’t pay for and borrow money that it can’t pay back.”
Inside the Cross gym, meanwhile, the Blumenthal campaign to enjoy a welcomed feeling of excitement after weeks in which poll numbers have slipped and party regulars have privately groused that they’re waiting for some signs of energy and spark on the trail. Clinton’s pending arrival had attendees, arriving hours before the 11 a.m. rally start, buzzing in anticipation of what almost seemed like a historic opportunity.
“I want her to get a feeling of what these parties are about,” said New Haven developer Angelo Reyes, one of several parents who brought teenaged daughters to the event. (He’s pictured with daughter Staysha Reyes, a Sacred Heart Academy junior.) “Let her decide what to do. She wants to be a lawyer. She needs to know the system.”
It was also a must-attend event for statewide Democratic politicians like secretary of the state candidate Denise Merrill and State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney of New Haven.
Students got to meet and pose with politicians present. Wilbur Cross senior Faith Kim got face time with Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz.
Meanwhile, some elected officials got their brief moments on stage to cast this election season in their own words. “They [Republicans] think the best is behind us,” New Haven Mayor John DeStefano (pictured) said in one of the warm-up speeches. “We know the best is in front of us.” Added U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro: “The Republicans are battling for Wall Street, the super-rich and their lobbyists … We’re going to fight against the big banks and the corporations that put profits before people.”
