Did you get angry with Bill Clinton when he signed NAFTA?

[kentuck]

Or the Welfare Reform Bill? Or the Telecommunications Bill?

Why do you think he did it? Did he really believe it was good for working America? What did you think at the time? Did you think NAFTA was bad?

Or did you agree with President Clinton on most of those issues?

Do you see any comparison between President Clinton and President Obama?

Is "triangulation" good for the Democratic Party and/or America?

How angry did you get with President Clinton?

[Warren Stupidity]

1. It was shit then and it is shit now.

The leaders sold out to Thatcherism.

[Betsy Ross]

2. Furious. n/t

[struggle4progress]

25. Likewise

[jtrockville]

63. Ditto

[kentuck]

64. I wonder if these are the same folks that are now angry at Obama?

I think it probably is?

[SharonAnn]

68. Me too! I was furious.

[Taverner]

3. At the time I didn't know how harmful it would be

It was promoted as the 'Americas EU' which sounded awesome to me

Unfortunately, it was just a money grab - it could have been so much more...

[Ohio Joe]

19. Same here

I also admit I was working 24/7 at the time and was paying little attention to politics.

[Taverner]

24. I paid attention, but it was sold as the American EU

What's not to like?

Well, unless it's NOT....


Honestly, I don't beleive in repealing it, just changing it and adding requirements on a common Minimum Wage (read:ours) and stricter Environmental Protection policy.

Sure, everyone pays no taxes - YAY!

Now how about everyone has the same min wage, the same job protections, and the same unions.

Workers of the world, unite!

[2Design]

4. too ignorant to know better - I voted Ross Perot AND he was against NAFTA

[sakabatou]

5. I wasn't into politics back then

[Teaser]

6. I don't angry with people I don't know.

waste of my energy.

I got annoyed, and then I moved on.

As for comparisons, Obama has accomplished more liberal goals than Clinton ever did.

[Hello_Kitty]

7. It was during the Clinton admin. that I came to realize

The elite in the Democratic Party are white collar wealthy professionals who share the same disdain for common working people as their elite counterparts in the GOP.

[OHdem10]

8. I was apoplectic back then and I have been proven correct.

Why I think he passed it????

The Power and Pressure of Wall Street along with MultiNational
Companies.

This is the same reason, Obama will end up signing all
those Trade Agreements Republicans and Chamber of Commerce
are pushing.

Our country has reached a point where Business Rules.

[KT2000]

9. I recall reading in Harper's

about the Republicans belief in one world government and it would be realized by treaties, staring with GATT.
When Clinton signed NAFTA I could not believe what I was seeing. For me that was the beginning of the end. I kept waiting for the Democrats to stand on their principles over it but they did not. Since that time, I support our Democratic presidents because they will keep the much worse Repubs out of office.

Clinton has said that he saw this as a way to assure world peace if all countries share in the wealth. But as he admitted in Haiti - it can backfire when countries keep looking to the cheapest countries to supply their needs and lose ther self sufficientcy in the process.

Clinton and Obama are very similar.

[babylonsister]

10. I wasn't paying attention. All I heard was about a stain, and yet

the economy was going well after the previous fool. My dad to this day praises Clinton, and wishes his wife was Prez because we'd have two. :eyes:

[snooper2]

11. no, we didn't have the intertubes

:P

[doc03]

12. Sure did and still haven't forgiven him. n/t

[DJ13]

13. It was his position on NAFTA that kept me from voting for him

It was the one issue Ross Perot was right about.

It was that triangulation that also prevented me from supporting another Clinton in 2008.

Sadly, it made no difference, we ended up with Clinton v.2 in Obama so far.

[HuckleB]

14. My answers.

Re: NAFTA: Yes.
Welfare Reform: Somewhat.
Telecommunications: I don't remember.

I suspect that Clinton thought he was doing the right thing, which, IMO, means he was squandering a huge opportunity. I disagreed with him on NAFTA, on part of welfare reform, and I can't remember my views on telecommunications, if I even formed any.

I see some comparisons between Clinton and Obama, however Obama still seems to be the more progressive of the two.

As far as triangulation, I'm not a fan.

I was angry enough with Clinton to offer up tirades on a regular basis. With Obama, my tirades are fewer and less intense.

[Gold Metal Flake]

15. I left the party and remained an independent until 2004.

[misanthrope]

16. Yes, yes and yes...

...I thought it all stunk and verified the misgivings I had about Clinton.

"Did he believe it was good for working America?" I can't tell you though my hunch is that he could convince himself of whatever position he felt he needed to take to save his political career by falling prostrate to the puppet masters of mammon. I feel he's little more than a typical politician.

Triangulation has helped destroy this nation by abandoning the progressive wing to conservative principles and aims.

[bluedigger]

17. I wasn't following such things that closely then.

I now consider Clinton the best Republican President the Democratic Party ever put in office.

[Marr]

18. Yes, but it was a hell of a lot harder to find information about it then.

I was in college at the time and chose NAFTA as the subject of a paper in one of my classes. I remember how hard it was to find information on the legislation that wasn't essentially a sales pitch.

[X_Digger]

20. Stomping mad. n/t

[tularetom]

21. As a matter of fact I got very pissed off at him for a number of things

Most had to do with the fact that he always seemed to crave approval from the opposition party, most of whom more or less hated his guts.

And I guess it worked. Clinton, who came to the White House relatively poor, was able to cut a fat hog in the ass as a result of the connections he made and is now a very wealthy man.

There are days I experience terminal deja vu.

[Motown_Johnny]

22. NAFTA....OH HELL YES!!!!!

Welfare a little

Telecom, no not really



No I didn't agree with him on most of those issues


I don't compare the two and IMO Clinton was never in Obama's league.

Triangulation is sometimes necessary but only if you are thinking 3 moves ahead.

If we exclude NAFTA (which I was always against) I never got very angry with Clinton. Disappointed many many times, including the failure with health care reform. I eventually just ended up tuning him out.

[tavalon]

23. That was a what the fuck moment indeed

I wasn't paying nearly as much attention then and even I knew he had done wrong.

[housewolf]

26. I was too apolitical to have an opinion

at that point in time.

[Sirveri]

27. I was willing to give it a chance. Not like I had a choice, I couldn't vote yet.

[pa28]

28. No. I was too much of a blind loyalist at the time.

I'd read and considered the counter arguments but I really respected and liked Clinton and his brain trust. In a way it was faith based politics and I'll never make that mistake again. I bought into the idea that we were ensuring global competitiveness for our economy, modernizing and evolving for the next century. I look back on it now and I'm stunned at how little critical thinking went into my viewpoint.

I guess I can chalk it up to a college indiscretion because at the time because the negative outcomes were nothing more than guesses. Things are a little different now as the results of Clinton age policy experiments are now in the book; trade and tarriff (NAFTA GATT), light taxation of capital and corporations, the destruction of Glass-Steagall and deregulation of financial institutions.

The entire package has been proven by experience to be nothing short of a disaster. The response of our current Democratic President? Double down on these failed policies.

[obxhead]

29. Angry would be an enormous understatement.

I see a lot of similarities between Obama and Clinton. Unfortunately I also see Obama pushing much harder to the right and corporate desires than Clinton and doing so at a much faster rate.

[clyrc]

30. I was mostly neutral over NAFTA,

although I was concerned because Unions didn't seem to like it, and I am pro-Union. Welfare Reform made me cry, I thought it was such a bad idea. I felt betrayed, I thought it was a bad decision, but I still liked Clinton and hoped it would work out for the best.

[MrSlayer]

31. Yes and I still haven't forgiven the bastard.

Decimated the middle class.

[Urban Prairie]

32. Yes, No, Yes

Considered Clinton to be a mainly Blue Dog Democrat, (but I am very left-leaning) and had wondered if we would ever again elect a Dem POTUS from the North, since there had not been any elected since JFK. LBJ, Carter, and Clinton were from the South, and Southwest.

Then Obama was elected, but how much of his difficulties since assuming office are self-created, and how much of it is due to the mostly rightward momentum that had been gradually built up for 30 years, ever since Carter was in office?

[rko_24550]

33. oh definitely

[Liquorice]

34. I liked Bill Clinton (still do) and trusted that he was making good decisions

for the country. I know that probably sounds naive now, but I was young and he was the first person I ever voted for. I will always love Bill Clinton, but I know he didn't always make the best decisions. Still, I think he tried his absolute best to do all he could for the country, and he did do a lot of good.

[hfojvt]

35. I actually got mad at him during the 1992 campaign

when he ran on Reaganomics, promising a 'middle class tax cut' and attacking Bush Sr. for raising taxes (like the Congressional Democrats demanded). I was really hoping that Jesse would run again, and I was so disgusted by Clinton that I didn't vote for him, although I knew that by doing so, I might be helping Bush Sr. to win re-election. I didn't see a whole lot of difference anyway.

As it turns out, it seems like the Democratic Party might have been better off if Clinton had lost. Instead, the rightwing of the Party just got stronger. The message received was "moving to the right wins!!!"

Never mind that it wins NAFTA, welfare reform, Republican control of Congress and tax cuts for the rich, at least it wins!!!

[OnyxCollie]

36. I was pissed when he signed the Telecommunications Bill.

I graduated from Kent State in '92 with a B.A. in telecommunications. in '94, I got a job working at a commercial modern rock station in a top 20 market and didn't even have to relocate. In '96, Clear Channel bought my station and grouped it with two other stations. Things were good for a year, then Clear Channel decided they would bleed us dry and sell us off. By May of '99 we had been sold off and had changed format.

I never worked in radio again.

I hate that fucker.

[saras]

37. No, it was too late

It was obvious to me that Clinton was a corporatist from the getgo. Whatever social policies he supported, economically he was 'corporations uber alles', and there wasn't much point in getting angry at him for behaving entirely in character.

I WAS angry at the American public, and the Democratic party, for not offering anything better, but...

[Golden Raisin]

38. Yes, but not as much as

when he signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

[inna]

39. I wasn't into politcs at the time and wasn't paying attention. I thought everything

was going just fine (little did I know), and I could not help but root for Bill - mostly because of the rabid insanity of the right wing who hated him with such inexplicable passion.

As for comparisons between the two Democratic presidents, obviously they are in plain sight to see for anyone not willing to be blind.

Obama is a whole new level beyond Clinton, and I don't mean it in a favorable way.

[Le Taz Hot]

40. Very angry.

It was the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party of FDR. The ENTIRE triangulation/Third Way/DLC concept was to raise money because the Republicans were out-fundraising Democrats by something like 3:1. The idea was to be more corporate-friendly which meant they had to sell out their core constituency to achieve their goal of fundraising parity.

The result, of course, is a general rightward movement within the government even though polls consistently show Americans are actually MUCH more liberal than they think they are. Do I think this has been good for America? How could it be? The Democrats, the supposed Party of the People, have effectively purged the real liberals from their midst. The Party now actively works AGAINST any progressive primary challengers to ensure the corporate status quo.

Did Clinton believe it was good for working America? Clinton believed it was good for Clinton. Period. To this day he defends his rightward movement and abandonment of the Core Principles of FDR's Democratic Party. Obama is just the latest incarnation of Clinton. It's why it really didn't matter if Obama got in or Hillary Clinton got in. Politically, they're the same person.

[malaise]

41. I got angry with Bill when he sold out the Caribbean

to US banana corporations.

[BanzaiBonnie]

42. I was furious

What he did was wrong on all counts. It was a betrayal of the American people and helped dig a deeper hole.

[RB TexLa]

43. Didn't think NAFTA went far enough. Should have been Free Trade of the Americas

We should push for hemispheric free trade

[HughBeaumont]

44. Yep, I don't know why he's still here either.

Tell me, is there a right-wing economic policy you WON'T defend?

[TBF]

45. +1 nt

[Nye Bevan]

47. So you wouldn't allow Bill Clinton or Al Gore to join DU? (nt)

[HughBeaumont]

50. It's not up to me who joins DU.

However, I and many other posters aren't going to sit idly by while right-wing economic talking points get praised on a Democratic site.

I don't think either Gore or Clinton, looking back, would deny the harm their past economic positions have caused American workers of all stripes.

Well, maybe Clinton would.

[Nye Bevan]

51. "Right-wing economic talking points"? So Paul Krugman is right-wing?

Krugman has usually been supportive of free trade and globalization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman

Ah, Nobel Prize Schnobel Prize. What does he know, anyway.

[HughBeaumont]

56. Right. That's where he loses me.

Appeal to authority arguments notwithstanding, I agree with a lot of what he says, except that.

And, sorry, but living in NE Ohio, you get to see first hand how corporate greed under the "kind" blanket of globalization and outsourcing can rot an entire area, if not a state or a nation.

Yes, I'm a bastard about it.

[Nye Bevan]

58. OK, there are different opinions on the subject.

But the point is that being in favor of free trade is not necessarily a "right-wing" position. And there is no need to make comments like "I don't know why he's still here, either" when a DUer happens to agree with Paul Krugman and Al Gore on this issue.

[HughBeaumont]

60. Sorry, but "free trade" has been antithetical to the progress of the American worker.

"Free exchange of goods" sloped into "Freer exchange of labor and capital", which quickly translated into "wealth inequality" and "race to the bottom". Destroying one's livelihood to barely enhance someone elses while a parasitic investor class reaps a lion's share of the benefits is hardly what I would call "Democratic", much less a recipe for sound economic policy. What's been happening to wages and well being in this country since the notion was instituted is hardly what I would call "progress".

My opposition to said poster goes farther than just economics.

[bvar22]

71. Deregulation of Trade,

and forcing the American Working Class to compete with 3rd World Slave Labor for our jobs
IS
"A Right Wing Position."

[Luciferous]

46. I was a kid so I didn't pay attention to politics, but I think NAFTA

was a horrible idea, and I think Obama's trade deals with China and South Korea are horrible as well.

[Vinca]

48. I had no idea how bad NAFTA would be. Now that we know,

it's time to rethink our trade agreements, not rubber stamp more agreements that will result in our jobs going overseas.

[WCGreen]

49. I wrote an Op-Ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer against NAFTA

[Bluenorthwest]

52. The telecom act was an attack on the nation

Bill was so popular Al Gore refused to appear with him on the trail. That is how people felt about Bill back then.

[robcon]

53. It was the best job creation and economy growing bill of the 90's.

NAFTA and WTO are triumphs of the Clinton administration.

[CanonRay]

54. Damn straight I was angry

It was as un-Democratic a move as anyone has ever done. Stupid, stupid, stupid and short sighted.

[ScreamingMeemie]

55. Super angry. At the time I lived in Detroit, and my husband and I

were just settling in. He worked in the automotive/aerospace industry and we were sick about NAFTA. We knew it was going to be a "make hay while the sun shines" decade, and then all would start to erode.

[seabeyond]

57. yes. i didn't think they could be so stupid to not see consequences. but figured i didn't

know something and they all knew better.

i was right

they were wrong

[RegieRocker]

59. YES

[kentuck]

61. Did you get angry with the Waco incident...?

...and the Branch Davidians? One thing that Janet Reno could not tolerate was child molesters so they killed them all? Did that make anyone angry or did they ask for it? Or did they kill themselves? Or was it an accident?

[Kalun D]

62. Yes, Angry

Living in Seattle during the protests.

Clinton is an insider corporatist

Obama is worse, specifically on the debt

[Chemical Bill]

65. Yes, I was pissed. n/t

[mod mom]

66. Still furious enough to snub a meet & greet in '08 out of respect for those

who invited me. I would have asked him about his ties to Jackson Stephens and how he caused irreparable damage to the environment & grade school children's lives to to East Liverpool WTI Toxic Incinerator:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/31/21045/9822/688/446786



Here is a portion of activist/mother, Terri Swearingen's acceptance speech for the Goldman Environmental Prize, given April 14, 1997:



I am not a scientist or a Ph.D. I am a nurse and a housewife, but my most important credential is that I am a mother. In 1982, I was pregnant with our one and only child. That's when I first learned of plans to build one of the world's largest toxic waste incinerators in my community. When they began site preparation to begin building the incinerator in 1990, my life changed forever. I'd like to share with you some of the lessons I have learned from my experiences over the past seven years.

One of the main lessons I have learned from the WTI experience is that we are losing our democracy. How have I come to this sad realization? Democracy is defined by Merriam Webster as "government by the people, especially rule of the majority," and "the common people constituting the source of political authority." The definition of democracy no longer fits with the reality of what is happening in East Liverpool, Ohio. For one thing, it is on the record that the majority of people in the Ohio Valley do not want the WTI hazardous waste incinerator in their area, and they have been opposed to the project from its inception. Some of our elected officials have tried to help us, but the forces arrayed against us have been stronger than we or they had imagined. Public concerns and protests have been smothered with meaningless public hearings, voodoo risk assessment and slick legal maneuvering.

Government agencies that were set up to protect public health and the environment only do their job if it does not conflict with corporate interests. Our current reality is that we live in a "wealthocracy" big money simply gets what it wants. In this wealthocracy, we see three dynamics at play: corporations versus the planet, the government versus the people, and corporate consultants or "experts" versus common sense. In the case of WTI, we have seen all three.

The second lesson I have learned ties directly to the first, and that is that corporations can control the highest office in the land. When Bill Clinton and Al Gore came to the Ohio Valley, they called the siting of the WTI hazardous waste incinerator next door to a 400 student elementary school, in the middle of an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood, immediately on the bank of the Ohio River in a flood plain an "UNBELIEVABLE IDEA." They said we ought to have control over where these things are located. They even went so far as to say they would stop it. But then they didn't! What has been revealed in all this is that there are forces running this country that are far more powerful than the President and the Vice President. This country trumpets to the world how democratic it is, but it's funny that I come from a community that our President dare not visit because he cannot witness first hand the injustice which he has allowed in the interest of a multinational corporation, Von Roll of Switzerland. And the Union Bank of Switzerland. And Jackson Stephens, a private investment banker from Arkansas. These forces are far more relevant to our little town than the President of the United States! And he is the one who made it that way. He has chosen that path. We didn't choose it for him. We begged him to come to East Liverpool, but he refused. We begged the head of EPA to come, but she refused. She hides behind the clever maneuvering of lawyers and consultants who obscure the dangers of the reckless siting of this facility with theoretical risk assessments.

-snip

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/wti/et0897s17.html


AND THEN THERE IS THIS-THE SELLING OUT OF DEMOCRACY:

After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton

By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

-snip



"Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent."

"Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy."

-snip

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

LINK:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html

I HAVE NOT AN IOTA OF RESPECT FOR THE MAN!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

67. I was a "True Believer" --

back in those days and was politically uneducated.

I am ashamed to say I wsa fairly OK with what went on under Clinton -- he was a Democrat and I trusted him to do the right thing.

Now I look back with horror at much of what he did, and at what I supported in supporting him.

Never again.

[fadedrose]

69. I can't understand why he's so popular eom

[Lydia Leftcoast]

70. Because of those acts, I voted for Nader in 1996

I was furious.