this is a short one… but none the easier to digest…
wmtriallawyer has an essay on the rec list at dKos that states “Bill Clinton is becoming a Republican.”
c’mon… you’re just registering that President Clinton left OPEN ROAD for Bush 43???????
let’s see now. there’s NAFTA… telecom act of 1996… and arms deals… and, just to punctuate it all, strong-arming 3rd world countries to benefit the industrialized resource rapers…
for me, this reinforces exactly WHY the presidential race is of little consequence. mainstreamers have mutated into corporatists. what we need to do, imo, if we are serious about restoring our broken governmental infrastructure, is to concentrate on CONGRESS… that’s were the work gets done. or is supposed to get done. and all it takes is some sturdy, hard-to-shut up Americans in Congress to upset the ability of corporate dominance over our country.
so i’m thinking there ought to be some consideration of funneling all this fabulous energy we have into recruiting americans interested in restoring our Constitution. and stop obsessing over whether they are democrats or republicans.
we need people who can deal with reality, sincerely have the interests of the country at heart (and that means republicans, libertarians, democrats, greens, indies), and help them get to Washington.
a good place to start is in state houses where legislators have been calling for impeachment or trying to invoke article V to hold constitutional conventions. these are the strong-minded types we need to seek…
i beseech all of you to stop thinking that a democrat in the white house is the answer to our prayers. it will not be because it is in no way enough nor can mainstream candidates be completely trusted (case-in-point, President Clinton).
the longer we take in seeing where the real work needs to be done, the farther in this hole we will be. we don’t have time to be wrong. and i’m telling you, this is soooooooooo much bigger than a democratic presidential win.
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it’s just the way i see it…
… I don’t see it that way at all. Not even a little.
A Republican wouldn’t have raised taxes on the rich … a gamble that led to many good Dems losing their seats in Congress, but which also led to millions of folks being lifted out of poverty. We had a dot-com good economy — but as we have seen since Bush came to the White House, a good economy doesn’t always benefit everyone — the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. When Clinton was in office, the poor benefited, were lifted out of poverty. That didn’t happen by accident.
A Republican wouldn’t have pushed through the Family Medical Leave Act, again, something that helped millions.
When Clinton was elected we had gone through 12 years of Republican bullshit, and the Democratic party in Congress had been pretty exhausted when it came to new ideas.
Clinton had new ideas and he pushed a lot of them through.
His way is no longer new and no longer works.
I don’t want to go back to that time because times have changed.
But no, I don’t think Clinton was ever a Republican.
won’t solve many of our problems, but I still think they would do better than any Repub, and cause less “new” damage.
I totally agree with you on getting good liberal candidates in from the bottom up, in the state houses. I’ve always thought thats the smartest way to go. Most of the Reps. that end up in Washington come from the state houses, (or governor ships) so it really makes sense to get good people in there so they can move up.
I mentioned to my State Rep, (who I know) who I think is running for State Senate this year, that she should try some online fund raising. My local Dem club doesn’t seem to “get” the power of the internet. I find it very frustrating, and am trying to bring them out of the dark ages, and conventional party thinking.
…and another person…or party…comes along and wrecks it, “It must have never been good in the first place.” I think that reflects thinking about past times as if they were today and as if the same circumstances were present then as are present now.
Example: NAFTA was crated to improve the economy and social situation of our neighbors to the south. The hope was that by lifting them up, there would be less pressure for mass immigration into this country that followed.
The Republicans stripped out the social engineering provisions. Off course things went bad from that point on. But was that the fault of the initial idea?
Clinton ran for President by bashing Democrats, and then governed as an Eisenhower Republican.
Quiz: Which President, Democratic or Repoublican, triumphantly proclaimed,
Shorter Bill: YOYO
And people wonder where Bush got the idea for “compassionate conservatism”….
But McCain will surely answer my nightmares.
It does matter
oh, and don’t forget about ‘workfare.”
although I think the operative issue is that we’re further to the left of the Democratic party, and with very rare exception there isn’t a serious contender for the presidency that we’d consider sufficiently left for most of our concerns. That’s one of the reasons that the single most important thing we can do is grassroots/local work: build a strong foundation to push everything to the left.
So I do agree with you that a Democratic President, in and of itself, is not the answer to all our prayers. Quite frankly, we haven’t done the necessary hard work to earn the answer to all our prayers. Every Democrat in this country should be persistently up in arms over Iraq, and we aren’t. Why do we expect more of our Congress?
Where I disagree with you is that you seem to consider Bill Clinton’s presidency as something unique to him (that is, he wasn’t acting like a Republican instead of a Democrat). Oh, he was definitely a Democrat. Your problem is with the Democrats, not Bill Clinton.
I should mention – although I’m not sure how popular an opinion this will be – that Bill Clinton governed not much differently than Hillary Clinton would and not much differently than Barack Obama would. They’re all pretty middle-of-the-road Democrats once you get past the superficial sheen, and since the Democratic party is already pretty middle-of-the-road, it should be no surprise that they’re all further right than we are. If you consider Bill Clinton a Republican, you might as well consider the majority of the Democratic party Republican, including our two remaining candidates. The best we can hope for it to keep pushing and try to get through the things that matter to us most. But it’s never going to be easy.
The main difference between President Clinton and these two nominees? They’ll likely be working with a Democratic Congress, which will make it a little easier to get some issues past.
It isn’t interesting to me whether Bill Clinton was or was not “always a Republican” (though I agree that he was basically Eisenhower in the Oval Office). The point is that the Democratic Party is going to be the new Republican Party–the party purchased by corporate America to do corporate America’s bidding. Corporate America–having perceived (correctly, in my view) that the Republicans will no longer be nationally electable for a while, if ever–has already made the down payment and several installments on the purchase price of the Democratic Party.
Yes, an Obama and/or Clinton presidency beginning in 2009 will be distinctly preferable to the alternative. This does not mean that an Obama and/or Clinton presidency is going to do anything serious to stop, settle, or solve any of the messes corporate America has made in the world. We must not delude ourselves about this, and we must not waste valuable time acting surprised and betrayed when serious change fails to happen under the next Democratic president.
American voters need to take back the Democratic Party so that it serves our interests, or we need a new party. To begin with, every Democrat in Congress should be getting primaried as well as facing a third-party challenger, as is happening to Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. This of course won’t happen this year, but it needs to start happening next time.
Bill Clinton wasn’t a Republican while he was President. I don’t know what the hell he is now since bedding down with Poppy and Babs, but while in office, he wasn’t a Republican. Newt was, however. “Contract for America”
but hey, hindsight and/or provocative statement, does it really matter today?
Hands down! He left office with a budget surplus and a strong economy. He made good on the Republican free trade stance for better and worse. He treated the non-white, non-straight communities with respect. He didn’t diss on anyone’s religion. He appointed some good Supremes.
In my adult life I’ve lived under the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the two Bushes. Those things aren’t the Republicans I grew up with. My childhood was the Eisenhower Era. Republicans back then were Yankees. Bankers. Businessmen. With the coming of Nixon something vile began to mutate the Republican gene pool. The fundies got their feet in the door. The Oil Cowboys bought the party out from under the Yankee Banker Businessmen. They used the fundies as their foot-soldiers and have been plaguing the entire human race since then.
Kennedy was the future. Most people don’t remember that he was very centrist on most issues. LBJ was a conservative Democratic leg-breaker who did more good than a lot of people give him credit for (see Civil rights Act 1965). Jimmy and Bill were the mainstream ConservativeDemocrat LiberalRepublican SouthernGovernors that the Democratic Party was streamlined to deliver after the McGovern pasting in 1972.
The majority of Americans – and especially of posters – have grown up knowing only the Oil Cowboy brand of Republicanism. There used to be a better strain up here in New England. I’m not saying they were great. I’m Boston Irish, raised Catholic and Democrat, in a union family. I was taught from birth to vote a straight Democratic ticket. I’ve since dropped the party and the pope and I go my own way.
Bottom-line, Clinton style Republicanism was something I could live with. Obama is an inspiring leader but there are one hundred senators, four hundred and thirty-five congress critters and nine black robes that have all got to be fine tuned to get the real work done. One man alone will not be able to do it.
Behind Reagan and W.
Swept the Democrats from power just about everywhere. Media consolidation, financial deregulation, got money gushing up to the top couple thousands Americans toward the end.
Now we can all form factions too.
I will try to understand why it is so important for you to continuously attack Democrats instead of Republicans. But I have been trying for a while now and it hasn’t worked yet.
Ad I will try to understand why you had to feed into the candidate wars here, too. But I doubt I will have much better luck. There is not enough Clinton attacks in the rest of the blogosphere, we needed some here too….now that she has all but lost, is that it?
So I will try to understand. Unless I am just correct about you not grasping the dynamic of people having emotional investments that they don’t like having prodded. After they have been prodded everywhere else for months now until it is such a sore subject that people have lost rationality over it. And that they come here to get away from this shit, the same shit that is going on the rest of the blogs that is the only thing that can threaten a Dem victory…..Oh wait,but you don’t care about that, the Repubs are better than the Dems…i forgot.
Why was that again?
Oh yeah, because the Dems haven’t done a good job of stopping the folks who are responsible for fucking everything up.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Is McCain is better than Barack or Clinton too?
I have tried to be patient but this shit is getting old.
i’ve been thinking (i know, scary) and what might be happening is.. you might already be writing for Feedback, you know? this essay really has the bones of an editorial.
you do like grand statements, and there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s sort of the essence of an opinion piece. or a commentator, ala our dear departed Molly Ivins.
it is (to me) designed to hit those who may not have thought of these things before, may not have had the experiences that many of us battle-scarred/weary here have had. the kinds of things you would like to say to the people in the dentist’s office as they’re waiting to get their teeth cleaned, wondering if their new insurance policy covers dental.
you know? hope i’m making sense. i think maybe you’re discovering/refining your commentator voice. and you know i think we need as many ‘voices’ out there in as many venues as we can find. 🙂
who knew enough about PNAC to be concerned either, NPK. later on of course, learned that they were Team B in BushI reign… and when you think Cheney was the BushII’s ‘veep vetter,’ and then he nominated himself, well, hey. they just waited Clinton’s two terms out before turning Team B into Team A. and no one i knew or read at the time at the slightest inclining about PNAC.
A few thoughts….
I don’t have my citizenship so I can’t vote. I am going to get off my ass and do it. I hate paperwork and the paperwork is a pain.
I think I am a bit more pragmatic and I see that what needs to happen is a two pronged approach. You vote for the Dem in the presidential election even if they aren’t your best buddy AND also work for grassroots candidates.
HRC is NOT going to appoint a pro lifer to the Supreme Court and P you and I are almost finished with the whole fertility thing but that kind of shit does matter. Minor policy differences actually matter to ordinary people in every day life. Do I like HRC? No. Am I in love with Obama? No.
I am not discouraging you from thinking on your big canvass P, but the revolution is not going to happen tomorrow. Actually, I really hope it doesn’t because the Tigers are playing in the elite eight.
I think you are in a passionate mode and perhaps frustrated because everybody else isn’t quite there yet?
Nobody. Nobody. Nobody here in this place thinks a Dem candidate is going to ride in on a white horse and save the country, honey. Nobody. Some feel more strongly than others but nobody is that naive.
emotional investments in both candidates and party, I feel that we tend to hold on to misconceptions about the American people. They are not, excepting the hard core 30%, right or left. They are tired of being jerked around by the government. They are not stupid, but misinformed.
I’m a Deaniac, even though I’m way to the left of him. I was pretty ambivalent about partisan politics because of the lack of a difference between the parties. I watched the merging grow over decades until, I watched in horror the merging of both parties culminate in the DLC and the Third Way. I voted for Clinton even donated, but I knew that this was merely a more palatable version of the ‘what’s in it for me’ offered since Ragean’s ascendency.
‘I am taking my country back and the vehicle I’m using is the Democratic party.’- Howard Dean
These words at a speech in 2003 brought me back across time to the realization that this was the only way change in the government could be affected. It is important to participate actively in this primary. It is not the candidate but what that candidate offers. Policy is cannot be applied if there is no principles, change can not occur if we think of ‘experience’ in positive terms disregarding what that experience wrought and where it took us.
‘The fierce urgency of now’ is real it’s just not a pretty speech.
Of course any Democrat is beeter then McCain, but the thing is we don’t have to take any Democrat. We have a choice. We have a primary. I worked hard for Kerry all the while once again, as I canvased having to answer to the people I approached the there is no difference, Coke or Pepsi, I had to agree. This time I have the oportunity to actually have a candidate who while not a knight in shinning armor, has the ability and heart to affect a new approach, and gives people both right and left Hope! Making that hope a reality is up to us. At least he can engage people in participating and out of cynicism.
Whats so funny about peace love and understanding.