Reply #34: I found this: [View All]

[county worker]

Certainly the 1994 elections -- which gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years -- served as a wake-up call for the Democrats, who-lost 10 governorships and control of several state legislatures. No one is more awake to this than the president. Clinton is leading the pack away from the losing-party line; his "triangulation" strategy (separating himself both from Republicans and rank-and-file Democrats) was emphasized in his remarkably centrist State of the Union address, mirroring a technique conservative critics of President Dwight D. Eisenhower once dubbed "me-tooism."

"The speech pointed the country -- and the Democratic Party -- toward a new political era," says Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, or DLC, in a recent newspaper column. "The New Deal's approach to both politics and policy no longer works."

A November 1994 study conducted by the DLC showed a nationwide trend toward the "me-too" New Democrats. Within the party, 75 percent said they thought of themselves as a New Political activists include organized labor on the side of the Democratic Party and the Christian Coalition with the GOP Democrat (one who believes government should help equip people to solve their own problems) as opposed to 20 percent who said they thought more like a traditional Democrat (one who believes government can solve problems and protect people from adversity). Fifty-six percent of the electorate described Clinton as a New Democrat while 37 percent thought he was a traditional Democrat.

The president now enters an uncontested primary season -- the first Democratic president to do so since Roosevelt. Political consultant David Doak says that's a sign of how well the party is adjusting to Clinton's shift to the right. "There aren't as many liberals around in this town anymore," he says. It's really sort of a changing generation."

Clinton learned "me-tooism" while serving as governor of Arkansas. He started his political career as a liberal but reworked that image when he realized what it took to be elected as a Southern Democrat. Such Democrats usually stand for more-moderate economic policies while clinging to conservative social issues, Doak explains. "It takes the same thing to get elected president as a Democrat. So it's natural for him."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n9_v12/ai_18047709/