#Triangulation

In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s administration championed a set of financial reforms that would come to haunt America. The most pivotal of these was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a law originally passed during the Great Depression to separate commercial banking from investment banking. By tearing down this firewall, Clinton allowed the fusion of consumer banking with Wall Street speculation—creating “too big to fail” institutions armed with depositors’ money and a green light to gambleš.

This deregulation was cheered on by Wall Street, neoliberal economists, and bipartisan majorities in Congress. It fit Clinton’s vision of “modernizing” the Democratic Party—by abandoning its working-class roots and embracing corporate America. Yet when the 2008 financial crisis came crashing down, it was clear: those reforms didn’t protect Americans. They endangered them.

Wall Street banks, now swollen from mergers made possible by deregulation, had gone on a frenzy of speculative lending, shady mortgage-backed securities, and derivatives gambling. When it all collapsed, ordinary Americans lost homes, jobs, and savings. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz noted, this crisis was built on the foundation laid by Clinton-era deregulation policies².

President Barack Obama entered office in 2009 with an opportunity to break the cycle. But instead of holding Wall Street accountable or rethinking neoliberal assumptions, his administration doubled down on them. The banks got bailouts. The people got foreclosures. And the architects of the financial collapse—Larry Summers, Tim Geithner—were invited back into the White House.

Obama’s failure was not simply pragmatic. It was ideological. He, too, was a product of the Clinton school of triangulation: governing from the center, cozy with corporate donors, wary of genuine populist energy. His administration chose not to prosecute financial crimes, declined to nationalize or restructure failed banks, and rejected bold investment in housing relief or jobs programs³.

And when Americans—especially young ones—saw this betrayal, they rebelled.

In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement erupted in Zuccotti Park. People finally called out the grotesque imbalance between the 1% and the rest of us. “We are the 99%” became not just a slogan, but a rallying cry against neoliberalism, corporate domination, and the cynical politics of both parties. This spark lit fires around the world—Occupy movements bloomed across Europe, Asia, South America, and beyond.

While the media dismissed Occupy as disorganized, and the Democrats quietly distanced themselves, the movement’s critique struck a nerve: the system was rigged. And neoliberal Democrats like Clinton helped rig it.

Clinton, for his part, had the audacity to dismiss the people demanding justice as lazy. In a 2012 speech, he waved off protestors and progressives, saying “they just want to be given something.” That smugness—echoed by Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who once labeled liberals “retarded”⁴—was not just offensive. It was dangerous.

It revealed the rot at the core of the post-Reagan Democratic Party: a contempt for the Left, a comfort with power, and a disdain for people demanding more than crumbs.

And that contempt helped pave the way for Donald Trump.

Let’s be real. When Democrats decided to become “Republican-lite,” they didn’t just disappoint their base—they broke it. By refusing to challenge corporate power, by failing to deliver meaningful economic reform, and by sneering at their own activists, Democrats opened the door for a phony populist demagogue to hijack working-class rage.

Trump didn’t win because people loved his cruelty. He won because millions felt abandoned by a political elite that had promised hope and change, and delivered handouts to Wall Street.

So today, as we reflect on Clinton’s legacy, let’s not mince words: deregulation helped cause a global economic meltdown. Obama’s deference to neoliberalism prolonged the suffering. And the progressive movements that rose up in the face of this betrayal—Occupy, Bernie’s campaigns, mutual aid networks—are the only ones who’ve consistently told the truth.

#Triangulation wasn’t strategy. It was surrender.

And we’re still paying the price.

Footnotes