So we know the nominating process is almost over, and Hillary Clinton won't be the nominee. There is a 90% chance it will be Barack Obama as the nominee this year. He may win this election, because not only do the current issues favor him, the issues which were once used to demean black people like him, and galvanize white support for the Republican party, like crime, welfare, and the death penalty have been neutralized and taken off the discourse table on the national political scale. The Democratic Party is now trusted on economics, after having its economic legacy near destroyed by Jimmy Carter, and while even tho the Bush economics are really bad, the American people are more likely to trust us not just because we can complain about Bush, but OUR party has had a President to show what good economics, like balancing the budget and keeping the dollar strong look like.
Peter Beinart wrote a great piece in Time which says what needs to be said:
...As it shows Clintonism the door, however, Obama Nation should remember something: without that pair from Arkansas, it wouldn't be here. The 1990s weren't always pretty, but for Democrats, they were deeply necessary. Because Bill Clinton threw his body into the line, wrecking the Republican Party's intricate defenses, Obama today has the political room to run.For starters, Clinton deracialized American politics. He didn't deracialize it completely, of course. But knitting together a coalition of blacks and whites is easier today because Clinton restored the Democrats' credibility on economic issues and took three of the most racially toxic issues in U.S. politics--crime, welfare and affirmative action--off the table.
When Michael Dukakis ran for President in 1988, crime was perhaps the biggest issue in the campaign. It splintered his coalition, pitting blacks who saw the death penalty as racially unfair against blue-collar whites who demanded a hard line against crime and too often associated that crime with blacks. Today, by contrast, roughly 1% of Americans say crime is their top issue, and no one even knows what Obama's position on the death penalty is. For Obama, that's an enormous boon, and Bill Clinton deserves a lot of the credit. His policies--especially his bold proposal for 100,000 new cops--helped bring down the crime rate. And by embracing the death penalty, he eliminated one of the GOP's best wedge issues. That embrace was ugly at times, as when Clinton flew back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man. But it was politically shrewd. And because Clinton did it then, Obama doesn't have to now.
Clinton also removed the word welfare from America's political lexicon. In the mid-1980s, when pollsters conducted focus groups with Reagan Democrats, they found that when they talked about government help for the needy, voters saw it as welfare: taking money from whites to give to undeserving blacks. That attitude was hugely unfair, but it was a political reality. Clinton changed that when he reformed welfare in 1996. By making it brutally clear that people who didn't work wouldn't get much help from Washington, he made it harder for Republicans to tag Democratic antipoverty programs as handouts to "welfare queens."
...The Clinton presidency restored the Democratic Party's reputation for economic management, which Jimmy Carter had nearly destroyed. By almost 20 points, according to the Pew Research Center, Americans today trust Democrats over Republicans to guide the economy--a huge boon to Obama in what looks like a recession election. Obama owes much of that advantage to George W. Bush, of course. But he owes some of it to Clintonism too.If Clinton had been more principled, if he had been less of a panderer, if he had tried to be purer than his political opponents--if, in other words, he had been more like Obama--he might have opposed the death penalty, vetoed welfare reform and unambiguously defended affirmative action. He might also have gone with his liberal base, not Wall Street, and chosen economic stimulus over deficit reduction in 1993. And had he done those things, Barack Obama would probably not be in a commanding position to become the next President of the U.S. So as they bid Clintonism goodbye, Obama fans should show a little gratitude. If Bill weren't the person they revile, Barack couldn't be the person they love.
I hope you Obama supporters remember that. For all of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton's faults, they restored our party's credibility that Carter destroyed, and neutralized the racebaiting issues like crime, welfare, and death penalty the GOP once was able to use. Those issues are no longer used against Democrats, which is why they fight now for elections, and had to steal an election in 2000 even after a bogus scandal, losing the popular vote. They only barely beat us in 2004 because Kerry didn't do what Clinton told him to do on gay marriage: triangulate, and he also ran a horrendous campaign. Yes, the third way was very necessary to getting elected in 1992 so we could take the GOP issues away and end the era of Republican landslide elections, because this is politics, and sometimes, one cannot stick to principle and win. We didn't need a repeat of 1988, with Willie Horton and being soft on crime. People voted for Bill because they didn't want Bush back, but didn't want another Jimmy Carter either. Triangulation was VERY necessary as it helped to ensure for future elections, and give Bill Clinton a commanding victory against Bob Dope. This is why no matter who you supported in this primary, we MUST honor the Clinton's political greatness.
PS: don't use the Perot myth, exit polls show the pro-abortion pro-gays anti-Nafta candidate took equally in both '92 and '96. And being moderate is not why we lost in 1994, those were congressional scandals, and the GOP only kept Congress past 2002 because of 9/11. Dems got back seats in 1996, 1998, and 2000, a record.
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