How Did Clinton Swing Right?

[George_S]

After hearing that Clinton advised Kerry to speak out against gay marriage and civil unions to gain more votes, I wondered what Clinton did to compromise liberalism during his presidency.

Any opinions? And are we paying for it now?

[hippiechick]

Welfare to Work, NAFTA ...

n/t

:hippie:

[sr_pacifica]

25. this would be my answer as well n/t

[DrWeird]

1. Gays in the military.

Student's with marijuana convictions can't get financial aid.

Peltier.

[lancdem]

2. Clinton did not advise Kerry to speak out against

civil unions. And Kerry himself came out against gay marriage, though he was against the constitutional amendment.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. We lost congress...several senate seats

and about 800 democratic party state seats across the nation while Clinton was president. Yes we are paying for it now.

and imagine bill Clinton advising the Kennedys in the 60's or LBJ

[ProfessorPlum]

4. Signing the telecommunications act of 96(?)

Led to the continuing consolidation and increasing corporate control of the media - ironically, it was this self-same media that then bashed the crap out of him for a blowjob.


Unfortunately, he was not the only victim of this bad policy.

[NYCGirl]

15. That's the one that's really killing our party. (eom)

NT

[sandnsea]

5. Support gay marriage amendments

That is what it is reported Clinton said. Kerry should support the gay marriage amendments in all the swing states. That's what Kerry said he would never do, support discrimination in a constitution.

[George_S]

7. You're right. Thanks.

[JI7]

8. when i read that

when i read that Kerry said he would never do that i just loved him even more and feel so proud to support him.

[JohnKleeb]

17. I heard about that

and if it's true, Kerry has my admiration more, and he was right on to vote against DOMA then.

[Beacho]

6. DOMA

as well as the Telecom Act

Communication Decency Act

et al.

while I recognise pragmatism in politics, the total abandonment of idealism ends up to be just a cynical exercise in winnig elections

[madfloridian]

12. Our Democrats led the way in the move to police home PCs and

entertainment centers.

[madfloridian]

9. Clinton helped found the DLC. Gore and others left them.

Dean left them, Gore did, Obama said they put his name on without permission, Corzine, others are not part.

They went after Dean and Gore with a powerful vengeance. You do not cross them and act populist. They are corporately funded.

The Third Way is Clinton. Read it here. I don't like it either. It is like a nicer imperialism.

www.ndol.org

[madfloridian]

10. Clinton called congressional Dean supporters, said he was unelectable.

Because of the civil unions bill in VT. Problem is, one he called was gay. He advised on these calls to support Clark, not Dean.

So maybe there are two sides to his mouth.

[Peter Frank]

11. Clinton got reelected mainly by...

...coopting the Right's agenda. Remember the '94 midterm elections? He told America, "I hear you." Then he went about implementing right wing reforms.

That's why it always cracks me up when I hear people describe Clinton as a liberal.

[George_S]

21. And maybe Dick Morris was a freep mole (found this)

With the help of consultant Dick Morris and a bevy of polls and focus groups, Clinton succeeded in marketing himself as a centrist considerably to the right of his liberal friends and his liberal past. He ran on such conservative themes as deficit-cutting, targeted tax cuts, job growth, welfare reform, school uniforms, youth curfews, and more cops on the street. An English observer recently mused, "If you imagine a president committed to a balanced budget, welfare reform, and a stronger death penalty, would you say conservatism was losing?"

http://www.policyreview.org/jan97/engler.html

[Merlin]

13. That is a LIE. Clinton was NOT talking about CIVIL UNIONS. Dammit!

Clinton urged Kerry to make it clear he opposed gay marriage--a proposal opposed by HUGE MAJORITIES OF THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE--by announcing he favored SOME of the amendment proposals banning gay marriage. Not ALL of them, because a couple of them lumped in bans against civil unions, too.

Efforts to conflate the two belie the kind of deceitfulness I would expect from the right.

[The_Counsel]

14. You Are Aware That Clinton Has ALWAYS Had Right-Leaning Tendencies, No...?

Clinton has always been, what I call, a "right-centrist." He's a centrist, but tends to lean right on many issues. Think "Joe Lieberman" and "John Breaux" if you want more shining examples...

People like Al Gore and myself, I'd consider "left-centrists": we're moderate Dems, but we have a populist liberal streak in us. We think like DLC-ers (and are often accused of being one of them), though we'd long since dismissed the DLC concept. I think we can probably put the likes of John Edwards in this group as well.

For years, having so many different KINDS of Dems was a good thing. Now I'm not so sure anymore, given that less of us are willing to hear a different point of view. Just my $0.02...

[DemPopulist]

16. Clinton at heart

I think Clinton at heart is a left-centrist, like Gore and Edwards. I frankly think that he's been around so many wealthy people in the last ten years that his perspective has been distorted. I think he really enjoys hob-nobbing with the well-to-do. Maybe because his upbringing was more working-class than guys like Gore or even Edwards and he's somewhat self-conscious about it; people still make the double-wide jokes. Whatever the case, I think this has made him more sympathetic to corporate interests than he was initially. I think the "real" Clinton is something of a populist, as he was in his early political career and in the pre-Republican takeover years of '93-'94. But he moved right for political reasons and then gradually became too much a friend of the Denise Rich hoity-toity types. Again, he's lost perspective.

But no way would I put him in the same camp with the Joe Lieberman or John Breaux quasi-Republicans. He's a centrist-centrist, I would say.

[The_Counsel]

22. I Want To Believe That... I Really Do...

...but the Big Dog's support for things like NAFTA and the GOP version of Welfare reform lead me to believe otherwise. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has a distinctive "right-wing" smell to it as well.

Note how I mentioned Lieberman and Breaux, and not Zell Miller and Ed Koch. Those guys may as well be Republicans. At least Lieberman and Breaux (and Evan Bayh, BTW) can at least be MISTAKEN for Democrats every once and again... :)

[The_Counsel]

23. I Want To Believe That... I Really Do...

...but the Big Dog's support for things like NAFTA and the GOP version of Welfare reform lead me to believe otherwise. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has a distinctive "right-wing" smell to it as well.

Note how I mentioned Lieberman and Breaux, and not Zell Miller and Ed Koch. Those guys may as well be Republicans. At least Lieberman and Breaux (and Evan Bayh, BTW) can at least be MISTAKEN for Democrats every once and again... :)

[colonel odis]

18. he merely took his penis from the left side and moved it to his right.

[samtob]

19. Crude, tasteless yet

funny.
Man I question my sense of humor at times.

[jzodda]

20. He wanted to win...

Clinton wanted to win, and gave him honest and truthful advice on some of the best means of doing so. It has nothing to do with Right or Left, but strategy. You can not accomplish anything if you do not win and that has to be the most important thing. Kerry could have come out stronly against gay marrigae to win then moderate later on. Its a tried and true political tactic. It would have been just a supression tactic to keep evangelicals at home.

[Cat Atomic]

24. Clinton treated the left the way Republicans used to treat fundamentalists

That is, offer them little symbolic things while reaming them in every way that really matters. NAFTA , Welfare Reform, the Telecommunications Act... Clinton took pro-corporate, anti-people positions repeatedly.

He's always been more of a socially liberal Republican, IMHO.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. One of my friends said that Clinton's problem was that he wanted

the Republicans to like him more than he wanted to stand up for any principles.

That's why he backed down on gays in the military (he could have just issued an executive order and said that anyone who resisted it would be court-martialed for insubordination, which is what Truman did when he integrated the armed forces) and produced a muddled, easily attackable plan for health care. Instead of proposing a single-payer system, like almost every other industrialized nation in the world, he tried to appease the insurance companies with his managed care concept.