David Brooks Provides His Views On Hillary's Economic Platform

This is classic David Brooks.  He begins by telling us that Clinton's platform is less shrill than Bernie Sanders attacks on the top 1%.  Rather than attacking Wall Street, and raising taxes on the super rich, Clinton offers programs that are designed to increase social mobility.  He calls this "Paleo-Liberalism" because most of her ideas are warmed over liberal ideas that have been tried, and have failed, in the past.  They can't work because government interference in markets is always bad.  The market is smarter than government.  We might call Brooks' critique "Paleo-Conservatism" if we wanted to be clever like Brooks.  He is trendy enough to have picked up on the use of "Paleo" in the social media to justify the return to diets that are more consistent with our genetic makeup.  Our digestive system is still in the dark ages where hunters and gatherers ate meat instead of grains.

Brooks then turns to what he really doesn't like about Clinton's platform.  He realizes that Bernie Sanders attack on the rich won't appeal to the electorate and he is concerned that Clinton's approach may have some appeal to an electorate that has become increasingly concerned about rising inequality and the direction of an economy that provides diminishing security for most Americans.  He simply dismisses her ideas as old fashioned liberalism that has not worked in the past and can't work in the future.  For Brooks the liberalism of the New Deal and the post-war years, which raised the standard of living for most Americans, does not exist.  It was an aberration that should have been extinguished by Reaganism  and Thatcherism which restored the conservative ideal that he worships.