Clinton’s DNC address

Clinton’s DNC address: Fact or fiction?

In her acceptance speech, Hillary Clinton didn’t sweat all of the details.

By Timothy Noah, Jennifer Haberkorn, Ben White, Doug Palmer and Michael Crowley

Hillary Clinton ran much of her campaign on being a pragmatist, the candidate with the knowledge, experience and, above all, the detailed plans needed to usher in the progressive change her fellow Democrats pine for.

But while accepting the Democratic party’s nomination Thursday night, Clinton’s address long on aspiration and imagery, but was short on the facts, figures and nuance she has put at the center of her candidacy.

For many in the seemingly endless string of pundits offering Clinton public advice, it was the speech they’d been waiting for, one with touches of President Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric about change rather than a data-driven roadmap for getting there. But it also made for an odd contrast with one of her persistent critiques of Donald Trump, that he has big promises for what he’ll do but zero detail about how he’ll do it.

Still, even as she eschewed the data and details, Clinton’s address included several references to her love of both. “It’s true. I sweat the details of policy – whether we're talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs,” she told the crowd in Philadelphia . “Because it's not just a detail if it's your kid — if it's your family.”

Here’s POLITICO’s fact-check of Clinton’s Democratic National Convention address.

“More than 90 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent. That's where the money is.”

That’s no longer true, though it was true as recently as 2013. Clinton almost certainly based her calculation on a 2015 paper by the University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, who reported that during the first three years of the economic recovery from the Great Recession — that is, from 2009 to 2012 — the top 1 percent captured 91 percent of the income gains.

But since 2012 economic growth has been more widely shared. Saez’s latest calculation is that the top 1 percent captured 52 percent of income gains during six years of economic recovery from the Great Recession. That covers the years 2009 through 2015.

Since Obama took office, there are “20 million more Americans with health insurance.”

Since the ACA was passed in 2010, 20 million people got health care coverage through the insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion and other provisions, according to the Obama administration's statistics.

In that time, more than 6 million young adults got coverage by joining their parents' health insurance plans, one of the most popular pieces of the health care law. In 2014, the insurance exchanges opened and the Medicaid program expanded in many states. Since then, more than 14 million people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program and more than 12 million enrolled in the insurance exchanges. Those figures account for people who may have moved into and out of different kinds of health coverage.

The 20 million figure accounts for people who got coverage under Obamacare. It doesn't include those who lost insurance that was cancelled as the health law was rolled out and some insurance plans were eliminated -- a huge criticism lobbed by Republicans who question the coverage gains of the health law. And many more are still uninsured: The Gallup-Healthways poll shows that 11.5 percent of American remained uninsured as of the first quarter of 2016.

Since Obama took office, there are "nearly 15 million new private-sector jobs.”

That’s true only if you start counting in 2010; if you start counting in 2009, when President Obama took office, net job growth is closer to 10 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s because the country was still losing jobs through much of 2010 as the country struggled to recover from the 2007-9 Great Recession.

In Clinton’s defense, though, political scientists and economists often argue that it’s foolish to hold presidents accountable for economic performance during their first year in office, because their policies have yet to take effect.

"If you believe that we should say “no” to unfair trade deals... that we should stand up to China... that we should support our steelworkers and autoworkers and homegrown manufacturers…join us." 

Clinton here appears to be referring here to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with twelve Pacific Rim nations that has become a flash-point for progressive Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders's candidacy. But Clinton as Secretary of State once called TPP "the gold standard" for trade deals. And some progressive Democrats worry that if she wins, Clinton won't work hard to try and stop Congress from passing TPP in a post-election lame duck session.

Clinton has criticized the deal for failing to include enforceable rules against currency manipulation and complains the automotive rules threatens jobs in the United States. However, neither of those are likely to be renegotiated by the Obama administration and would be hard for her to achieve, because of resistance from Japan and other TPP countries. Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to push hard for TPP passage this year.

"I'm proud that we put a lid on Iran's nuclear program without firing a single shot – now we have to enforce it, and keep supporting Israel's security."

This is basically true, though she doesn’t mention that the lid comes off after a decade. Critics of the deal say that’s much too soon, and that the lid will blow off and Iran will very quickly develop a nuclear weapon. And as Clinton notes, the deal is only as strong as it is enforceable.