Overall, was the Clinton victory in '92 a good or bad thing for this party and its core supporters?

[Ken Burch]

Yes, it was a good thing to have a happy election night for a change. But were the policies that came of that victory actually gains for those most loyal to the party or not? Was the taking of the White House worth the Rise of Newt?

Can we be sure that was the only ticket and the only platform we COULD have won on that year?

Would a different result have saved us from the rise of right-wing hate radio and a rage-based political culture?

Would there have been a second Bush Administration if there hadn't been a Clinton Administration?

Would there have been the emergence of a Green Party and the split in the non-GOP vote?

I've wrestled with all of these questions and I'm still not sure myself.

[cboy4]

1. Are you asking whether it would have been better to have

had a different Democrat than Clinton, or are you asking whether it would have been better Poppy won?

[Ken Burch]

2. First, a different Democrat

Although I do wonder occasionally if the party would, in fact, have been worse off if Bush the First had somehow been reelected. He would have just have kept getting worse and worse, we would have had major if not massive gains in the '94 Congressional races instead of the Rise of Newt, and then in '96 we might well have had a much better chance of electing a non-DLC Democrat. It's possible this could have given us something like an Obama-size victory twelve years earlier.

In the same way, disappointing as it was that we lost in 2004, that defeat may have put us in a stronger position now. Kerry, good man as he was, would have just barely scraped in and was doomed to have a Republican Congress, a combination that would probably have consigned him to a landslide defeat this last fall after a term with no legislative victories.

While Clinton was a Democrat in name, can we necessarily say he actually showed much loyalty to this party or did much to defend its core supporters? Seems to me he pretty much abandoned working people and the poor.

Was what we got in '92 the best we had any hope of getting?

[Jim Sagle]

3. Clinton and the DLC/New Democrat syndrome may be a symptom, not a cause.

A symptom of global economic contraction and ruling-class reaction thereto.

I think Clinton was in fact the best we could get, even though that wasn't nearly good enough.

As for hoping life under Bush I would get so bad that we could undergo a hard left turn, the last eight years followed by the election of Clinton 2.0 suggests it doesn't work that way.

[EPIC1934]

13. I DIsagree with this assessemnt

I disagree with this assessment. Clinton adopted the rhetoric of economic inevitability rather than fighting back. It was the same message as the republicans. Theres nothing you can do its economic laws etc. It wasnt economic laws it was political passification. Today, not that everyone has been dumbed down way way more it only seems inevitable. Clinton turned the Democrats into a second Republican party (of course not him alone)0 PLEASE READ PARTNERS ON POWER BY ROGER MORRIS ON CLINTONS MORE RELEVANT TODAY THAN EVER.

[Jim Sagle]

14. Except for the book you're peddling, we are saying pretty much the same thing.

[cboy4]

4. As much as I hate to admit it, Bush 42 did not do anything

egregious enough, or were there any indications he was headed in that direction had he been elected, to have triggered major or massive gains in congress that we saw starting in 2006.

I happened to have supported the first Iraq War to get Hussein out of Kuwait. And while I couldn't stand Bush 1, he was a million times better than his idiotic son.

It took an initial six years of the worst president ever to generate the anger needed to have accomplished what we have since the '06 midterms.

I have many criticisms of Clinton .. not the least of which is Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act -- and his bonehead mistake with you know who.

But I thought he was an excellent president, and I'm obviously not alone considering he left office with an almost 70 percent approval rating ... one of the highest in modern presidential history.

I'll never sign off on the theory that it's better to have a Republican in the White House for any reason .. especially if it's only to roll the dice in hopes of picking up Dems in congress.

One last thing. Hillary Clinton is associated with the DLC. Obama may not be formally, but there's no question he's also a centrist. He and Hillary see eye to eye on practically every issue.

[zbdent]

7. Bush 41 not bad ...

well, in comparison to what failed to run down Barb's leg ...

[Ken Burch]

17. Not a bad line. It's comparable to something the '68 Democratic convention protestors said

Rumor had it that at one point they were shouting(at the absent LBJ) "Pull out, Lyndon! Pull out like your daddy should have!"

[Wabbajack_]

5. "we lost in 2004, that defeat may have put us in a stronger position now"

The party, yes. The party is a stronger position because of Bush.

But the country and world is much worse off after 8 years of Bush rather than 4.

And their were 2 Supreme Court openings.

[Ken Burch]

6. Kerry wouldn't have been able to get his court nominees through a GOP Congress

He'd have been forced to go with justices those guys liked.

[Wabbajack_]

11. A GOP Senate hasn't voted on a DEM Supreme

court nominee since Grover Cleveland! So who knows what would have happened.

There were several moderate Senators. Specter Snowe Collins Chafee ect.

Ginsberg was approved almost unanimously. Breyer got majority support from republican senators too.

At worst instead of replacing a moderate conservative (O'Conner-Alito) with a conservative and conservative with a conservative (Renq- Roberts) they would have been replaced by moderates.

[mmonk]

8. As someone who worked as a volunteer for Clinton/Gore,

I would have to say bad. But back then, I didn't realize how big of a shift in the core values of the Democratic party would take place.

[annabanana]

9. It slowed the slide long enough for us to find each other. .

and for the netroots to begin to make itself felt...

[CommieCowboy]

10. Good, but just barely...

He appointed competent and fair-minded people to the courts and he partially kept the religious wackos in check. Aside from that, I don't have many good things to say about the Clinton Administration. They get my sympathy for having to deal with a GOP Congress for 6 years (a problem Obama does not have), but he completed the schism between the Democratic Party and the New Deal / Great Society ideals.

[saltpoint]

12. I had hoped Mario Cuomo would announce and run that year.

As wretchedly bad as Dubya certainly was his old man wasn't really a whole lot better, if any better at all. Which is to say I don't know which is worse -- a Bush with (i)ntelligence or a Bush with hardly any brains at all. Both were toxic.

I favored several Democrats for our nomination in 1992 over Bill Clinton -- Brown, Harkin, etc. -- but Mario Cuomo had my true heart.

[Greyhound]

15. Other is the best I can do. I worked for them once it was apparent that

they would get the nomination and I lived in Newties district, so you can imagine what a thankless task that was.

Just like Obama though, once in office he was almost immediately a great disappointment, providing nothing but platitudes to the base while supporting/enacting burdensome and anti-people policy.

[Ken Burch]

16. I'm not sure Obama has been quite that bad, though he could clearly be better

The main difference in today's situation(other than Obama getting a much larger margin of victory and actually receiving majority support, as well as having the Democrats gain seats in both houses when we actually lost a few in '92)is that Obama has said he's willing to listen to us and to respond if we build up the pressure. Clinton made it clear from the start that progressives were the enemy and had no right to expect anything from him.

[Greyhound]

18. Agreed.

Looking back, it's both sad and ironic that Ross Perot would probably have been the better President.

I'm still withholding judgment regarding Obama to see if he does listen and respond to the pressure that is building. So far his appointments alone make me skeptical, let's see what he does with the SCOTUS.
:fistbump:

[Occam Bandage]

19. No. Losing is best for both the Democratic party and America.

We should try to lose as often and as hard as possible, because the party and the country are better off when Republicans have the wheel.

[Ken Burch]

20. Not the argument. The argument is, it is really winning

When the "Democrat" who won was as indistinguishable from the Republican who lost as possible. If it's conservative policies being carried out(or almost-conservative, which is effectively the same thing)does it matter whether or not the less-conservative party is carrying them out?

A change in party control by itself doesn't mean much.

[Jennicut]

21. Neo con vs neo lib, some differences there

Bush was into huge tax cuts, allowed torture, took a hardline in foreign affairs across the board. Clinton was more moderate in these areas. I still say Rethugs are way worse then Dems any day of the week. The country paid for it.
I do not like neo libs but at the time it was Clinton vs Bush (and the crazy guy, Ross Perot).

[Occam Bandage]

23. Bush was both neoconservative and neoliberal.

Clinton was moderately neoliberal and not at all neoconservative.

[Occam Bandage]

22. Nope. It's definitely better for the Republicans to have 95% control than for

the Democrats to have, say, 70% control. Heck, even Democrats who vote over 95% party-line get lambasted as DINOs here (see: Gillibrand, Kirsten; Clinton, Hillary). So really, unless the Democratic candidate is going to be the absolute most liberal candidate possible, it's not remotely worth it. I mean, if you think about it, the country did get a lot worse under Clinton than it did under GWB, so it's not like you're being ridiculously purist or anything.

Oh, but wait. You're not looking at it from the perspective of the good of the nation. You've denied you're looking at it from the perspective of the party (since you say party success isn't important), and you're obviously not looking at it from the perspective of the good of the nation, so it seems you're more looking at it from the perspective of the far left. I do agree that Democratic control is a bad thing for the far left vis-a-vis other factions in the Democratic party.

When the Democrats are in opposition, the far left, the moderate left, the center left, and the center right are all united in opposing whatever the Republicans are doing; this is when the far left can most easily recruit membership from the other ranks, as there aren't any policy differences to drive wedges. As you can see now and under Clinton, when the Democrats are in power, many Democrats realize that there are necessary compromises in governance, and many Democrats are willing to give the President the reasonable benefit of the doubt. The far left, on the other hand, does neither, and so friction is inevitable, causing the far left to solidify its membership but also to engender a loss of respect for its views among the party at large, diminishing their voice. So yes, it is bad for the small minority of membership you call the "party core," but which would probably more accurately be described as the "party fringe."

I find it mildly ironic that you would prefer a mild advantage in in-party infighting to Democratic control of the White House and Senate, and yet declare your viewpoint that of "the most loyal to the party"--especially when you tacitly admit that increasing your bloc's voice and membership would increase the Green vote, potentially resulting in more Naderesque electoral giveaways.

[Ken Burch]

26. How would increasing "my bloc's" voice and membership help Ralph?

If anything, it would hold him down.

There's a difference between compromise(which even progressives like myself can accept)and wholesale abandonment of core values(which is what the Nineties was about). There was no excuse for a "Democratic" president to betray the poor with Rush Limbaugh's welfare bill(a betrayal that didn't gain us a single vote)or the labor movement with Nafta(which also didn't gain us a single vote).

And we didn't have 70% control in the Nineties. If you hold power but are carrying out the other party's policies, it doesn't matter that you're a Democrat carrying out those policies. A Democrat bashing the poor is just the same as a Republican doing it.

And the good of the nation was hardly maintained by a Democratic president signing everything important the Republican Congress signed, or by that same Democratic president, when running for reelection, refusing to try to help his own party regain control of Congress(taking back the House should've been a gimme in'96).

It's not about a "mild advantage in in-party infighting". It's about those who elect Democratic presidents(and the overwhelming majority of those who do so will always want a clear break with what the Republicans are doing)having the say in the policies of the administration they helped elect that they should have.

If those people had not been locked out in the cold(and even you would have to admit that the poor, the unions, and party progressives had no say at all under Clinton)you wouldn't have had the rise of the Green Party. It was never reasonable to expect those people to watch the president they worked as hard as anyone to elect totally ignore and disrespect them and then still demand that they go on giving the party unquestioning support.

There was never a good reason for there to be a "separation wall" between Democratic progressives and a Democratic president. Progressives(not "the far left", the "far left" would be the ten or twelve Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade types that are hanging out in the last McDonald's in Berkeley that will sell them small orders of fries on credit) never deserved being treated as the political equivalent of lepers.

[upi402]

24. 59% clueless YES voters

it figures


even a blind man could see... corporate control of both parties is a democracy killer.

[LWolf]

25. What question, exactly, are you asking for a yes/no answer on?

I'll respond when I can tell, lol.

[rug]

27. He defeated a sitting Republican president who had an 89% approval rating the year before.

He ended 12 straight years of Reagan/Bush.

Yes, it was a good thing.