What did Bill Clinton do for Democrats?

[BayCityProgressive]

Fellow DUers,

We often fight over whether or not Bill Clinton was a sellout. I have been hard on him in the past, but he did veto Welfare reform twice before finally signing a less extreme bill ( I do think some form of reform was neccisary and with the GOP in control of the house his options were limited) He also vetoed many vicious parts of the Contract with America which led the GOP to shut down the government. He signed NAFTA with no regulations which I think was terrible. What else good or bad did he do? What does everyone here think? I am looking for specific policies here.

[WildClarySage]

1. Vetoing PBA bill

very important, but also peace and economic growth. The elimination of the debt was huge. Trust * to screw it up.

[Spoon]

10. He balanced the budget and created a surplus, but our debt was never

eliminated. It started to "round the bend" in the '90s, but never decreased.

[kohodog]

2. I'm watching Frontline on WalMart

And Clinton signed the trade bill with China. Also NAFTA. He sold American workers down the river. He essentially started the DLC. Democrats became Republican lite. It will not be easy to recover.

[David Dunham]

3. He appointed lots of pro-choice judges.

[OrwellwasRight]

26. He also appointed moderate to conservative judges

such as Richard Tallman of the Ninth Circuit.

Moreover he wasted his picks on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a nine member body that is supposed to reach decisions based on interpretation of the law, not based on politics. However, the best way to come up with the with the "true" interpretation is to have a variety of voices and perspectives. Honestly, as much as I have the Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist triumverate, I would not mind having "a" Scalia on the court, if he could be balanced by "a" Marshall or Brennan.

What Clinton did was allow Blackmun and White to retire while replacing them with moderates. Because of this, there are views which are never heard in the chambers now, voices that have been silenced. The result has been a seismic shift the right on the court, which now has reactionary, conservative, center-right, center, and center-left members. There are no voice on the true left or far left. You know you're in trouble when the "liberal" on the court (Stevens) is a Ford nominee who was not considered far left when Blackmun, Marshall, and Brennan were on the court.

[Systematic Chaos]

4. I thought he was good but one thing I'll never forgive

is that China either gained or retained "most favored nation" trading status during his administration.

I know it's the corporations that are really in power, and I also know that our human rights record is sinking to the bottom of the ethical septic tank at the moment... but I really think somebody needs to stand up to China's human rights record.

[chatterboy]

5. HE WON

We need more of that talent.

[MasonJar]

6. You mean in addition to winning us the presidency for 8 years.

The earth trembles to contemplate what it would now be like if the Pugs had been in those additional years.

[Deja Q]

7. Good and bad:

Bad:

* DOMA
* DMCA
* Fired Jocelyn Elders at behest of repukes
* 1996 telecom act (say 'bye free media' b/c of that)
* Welfare reform (didn't stop government subsidy to big corporations)
* Monica
* Destroyed the 55MPH speed limit law (enacted by Ford as I recall in response to the 1970s oil crisis)
* didn't introduce legislation to balance the gulf between CEO and average worker that had started during Reagan's brainless and corrupt tenure (workers have been working far more and whose pay hasn't gone up between 1980 and now whereas CEO pay had gone from 40x to over 600x (at our expense). They got the goldmine, we get the flaccid shaft.)
* Worked with republicans in the name of bipartisanship (which we all now know means that, with bipartisanship, all Dems MUST bend over backwards and give total control to the repubs or else Dems are the evil obstructionists. Repubs just word their evil to sound good and make real good sound evil.)

Good:

* A true diplomat and could get people to talk together and make attempts to work at true peace. This should be a prime characteristic of any top politician.

* Balanced the budget.

* Managed to fight off most of the repuke lies. (after all, no good deed goes unpunished.)

[demosincebirth]

8. He had common sense...

and he supported labor

[burn the bush]

9. he did not start false wars

[4MoreYearsOfHell]

11. Put 100,000 more cops on the streets,

passed the Deficit Reduction Act which put taxes on the wealthiest Americans back to where they before Reagan gave away the store - only to be undone by the mental munchkin currently residing in the White House...Brought peace to the tinderbox in Bosnia/Croatia/Serbia...Was the dominant force (via George Mitchell) behind the Good Friday agreement which brought a tenuous peace to Northern Ireland...Went through a painful but necessary military base closing process to cut the defense budget...

Didn't he also bail out the Mexican economy by guaranteeing loans?

Came within inches of brokering a deal between Israel and Arafat...more importantly, during the peace process with the Israeli's and the Palestinians there was much less of the bullshit that happenned under Commander Bunnypant's watch...

Christ, I miss the Big Dog...

[Placebo]

12. The Democratic Party Would Be DEAD If Not For Clinton!

After one, two, three, four straight losses in Presidential races, do you think we'd still be here? I doubt it.

If you're going to hate him for his policy, fine, but at least acknowledge that he gave the Democratic Party a much needed injection of enthusiasm and life. We owe him everything.

[m berst]

18. yes

But at the expense of badly - maybe fatally - crippling liberalism for at least a generation. If the Democratic party winning is the only thing we care about then Clinton is wonderful. Howver, there was a time when the Democratic party was a means to achieve certain ends, and success was measured by how well those ends were achieved, not by "wins" by "our team." We have experienced 30 years of being asked to abandon progressive goals for the sake of winning. Now we aren't even winning. And what is the rap on the party from the public? We seem wishy-washy, we seem weak, and our positions seem vague.

If you go back and read the words of great liberals from the past - very successful they were, too, in terms of "wins" - you can see that we are now the party of Rockefeller Republicans and the whole population is voting for positions to the right of Dewey, Eisenhower and Nixon Republicanism of the 50's and 60's.

Perhaps a true liberal party would fail, as the centrists have been saying. But if you never field a team, you are sure to fail, and we don't field a liberal team anymore.

Had we embraced true liberalism over the last 30 years, how could we have done any worse than we have?

The Democratic party philosophy has become win first, and then we will take a stand. We can't win, though, without first taking a stand. This doesn't mean be radical. It means represent the people instead of corporations and be a true opposition party and offer people a true choice.

[floridadem30]

20. now you want to debate?

[m berst]

30. no

Now I want us to get tough, take a stand, and fight for liberalism and for the people's democracy instead of worrying about our team winning next time.

[OrwellwasRight]

28. Word. It gives me hope

to know there are many other voices out there crying for our party ti take a visionary, progressive stance.

What did Clinton do for us? Not much.

What did he do TO us?

1) Made a significant number of us think that the only way to win is to run to the center. This has killed us for 8 years now.

2) No reform of grazing and mining fees to the Bureau of Land Management as promised.

3) No equal rights for gays in military.

4) No universal healthcare.

5) Complete abdication of our right to make environmental regualtions to protect ourselves, oour children, our air, land, water, and wildlife by allowing Chapter 11 in NAFTA to give more rights to polluters than to state and local governments.

Please, no more trying to emulate Clinton. Please.

[AdollarTwoNintyEight]

13. Don't ask, don't tell?

That was a real winner. :sigh:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

31. Not a Clinton fan?

Judging by your other posts, you may not be comfortable here on DU.

[sangh0]

14. He cured us of the image of "tax and spend, soft on crime"

.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

15. besides setting up the infrastructure for one-party GOP rule?

NAFTA and GATT wrecked the economy and killed unions. those of us on the left who opposed them were ridiculed as being 'isolationists'

the 96 telcom bill set things up for clear channel and the expansion of rw talk radio to limits never imagined-those of us on the left who criticized it were ridiculed as being opposed to competition

the permanent mfn for china did the same as nafta and gatt

welfare deform threw working mothers off assistance-bill still brags about 'ending welfare as we know it"

--clinton's problem is that he always weighed the personal political gain for himself in favor of the longterm consequnces for the country. maybe a regulation-free nafta was a good start, but he knew that eventually the GOP would come back to power and he did nothing in the meantime to try to help labor or the environment, leabing the pact unchanged til dumbya took over

between losing both houses of congress and not being able to keep his dick in his pants for his second term and thus fueling the current 'moral values' nonsense" (sure his private life was his own business, but when you know you have the rw hounding you, maybe you should think about the political implications of getting that blowjob) this man did us no favors

[Kahuna]

16. Bill helped the whole country. That's what a president is supposed..

to do. Regardless of party affiliation.

[mitchum]

17. Jack shit

[mark414]

19. he signed the telecommunications act of 1996

which led to the media we have today

[ibegurpard]

22. ROFL

see below

[ibegurpard]

21. He signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996

Which started the media merger frenzy that has fucked us over worse than almost anything else. That was forward-thinking of him, all right.

[UpsideDownFlag]

23. he finalized the DLC's road to the center, further assuring our doom. nt

[UpsideDownFlag]

24. oh, i forgot his inaction in rwanda. that was nice too. nt

[floridadem30]

25. He protected Roe V. Wade

[LSdemocrat]

27. Economic improvement for ALL classes

Plus he was the best President since Harry Truman.

[KG]

29. his self-indulgent sex life cost al gore a landslide election in 2000

bill clinton is the worst thing that happened to the dem party in 20 years.