Hillary Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal bashed President Obama’s economic recovery, calling it a failure, and criticized policies such as the stimulus and Obamacare, according to leaked emails.
"The economy story has three acts: Bush’s recession, followed by Obama’s attempted recovery, followed by Obama’s failed recovery," wrote Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton in September of 2010. "Blaming Bush has a fading political half-life. In September, we’ve concluded ‘Recovery Summer,’ which curdled into Slowdown Summer."
"Obama put his brand on "Recovery Summer" and now he owns Slowdown Summer—that’s his brand for the midterms," he said. "The slowdown is on Obama’s watch; it’s charged to his credit card."
Blumenthal then went on to criticize some of President Obama’s signature economic policies.
"Obama’s most devoted pundit apologists echo talking points that he’s achieved health care, the stimulus and financial reform," Blumenthal said. "Unfortunately, the stimulus was inadequate, financial reform is perceived as abstract, and health care has not gained broad public acceptance with its main benefits yet to be delivered. We are now at the place in the story that is about a false dawn and a false messiah."
In September of 2009, a few months after the recession ended in June of 2009, another email shows that Blumenthal wrote to Clinton advising her to read an economic article while criticizing the jobless recovery.
"See this mild, reasoned piece below by the former editor of The Economist, a hardline conservative free trader," Blumenthal wrote. "In light of the upcoming, mostly vacuous G-20, and the supposed mystery of the jobless ‘recovery,’ not felt by 95 percent of the country (over 10 percent unemployment rates in CA, FL, Midwest, etc.), still rampant home foreclosures, and various health care ‘reforms’ that would significantly jack up rates on the working and middle classes without insurance company cost containment, leave tens of millions uncovered, and be depicted by the GOP as tax hikes (super-Prop 13), the most underlying issue is China’s currency the source of much of the jobless ‘recovery.’"
"If I were a Democrat running in MI, OH, PA, etc next year, and I didn’t want to be drowned attached to Obama, I would run on it," he continued.
Clinton praised Obama’s economic policies after the recession in her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination.
"Now, I don’t think President Obama and Vice President Biden get the credit they deserve for saving us from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes," Clinton said. "Our economy is so much stronger than when they took office. Nearly 15 million new private-sector jobs."
Blumenthal also went on to call illegal immigrants the "undeserving poor" and called out the Democratic Party for being the "party of Wall Street."
"The political story is that the undeserving rich and the undeserving poor (illegal immigrants) have been rewarded while the deserving, hardworking middle class has paid the price," Blumenthal said. "If the Democratic Party is the party of government and government is owned by Wall Street, the Democratic Party ipso facto has become the party of Wall Street."
Blumenthal told Clinton that since Bush has already been "repudiated" for the economic malaise, effort to cast blame for the economic crisis should be put on the GOP.
"Bush was already repudiated when Obama was elected," Blumenthal said. "The effort to place responsibility for the economic crisis on the GOP therefore has to be renewed and remade, beyond Bush. The story has to be recast, using a new image."
The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests for comment.