Yes, he was “triangulating” to get reelected in 1996, but he didn't have to sell out liberal principals.
He could have told Fig Newt and the rest of the House GOP something like, “Fine, you want real welfare reform? I'm OK with that as long as we have some sort of partial replacement social safety net — i.e., an increased minumum wage.”
Now, I’m not talking about that small move from $4.25 to $5.15. I’m talking about a bigger, multi-year, increase.
And then, as the piece de resistence, Clinton should have pulled a page out of the Reagan tax-reduction playbook and said:
“There’s one more condition. We index the minimum wage to the inflation rate, just like tax brackets.”
But he didn’t.
And we are the poorer for it.
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