I remember that week back in 1992, when it felt like something really

[ScreamingMeemie]

huge was going to happen. I was a struggling single mom, dishing out half my paycheck each week to pay for health insurance for my baby girl. I remember that night, going out with my boyfriend and coming back to hear his mother say, "come and check this out!!!" We sat on the steps in the living room and watched the returns come in, the smiles on our faces getting bigger and bigger. The realization hitting that the majority of our fellow Americans are smarter than we gave them credit for. I remember hugging my daughter tight and thinking that all was right with the world.

Here's the best part:

I Feel The Same Way Tonight!!! :bounce:


Feel it!!!


Although I won't be able to hold my baby girl on my lap...it's not cool at 14. :hi:

[michigandem2]

1. YAY!!!!!!!

I remember 1992 too but I was 18 and wasn't really struggling yet...was it this bad back in 1992 this divided? sorry I know I sound misinformed...just hard to really look at the world back then thinking it was as bad as it is now..

but I do feel good...I feel very hopeful that our country will be ours again!! GREAT POST!

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. My father lost his job (30 years) as an executive in the beer industry

due to "trickle down economics". I watched him try to sell dictionaries door to door for commission. I watched him go off to work as a telephone market researcher for 5 dollars an hour. I watched him lose his house. I watched the beer industry fail in this city and in Milwaukee...much the same way our automotive industry is failing. While the people didn't seem as divided, the plight of the middle class was. 3 1/2 years into Clinton's presidency my father was employed again...gainfully. Now that employment is jeopardized for a 60 year old man who hasn't a retirement to look forward to.

[kanrok]

2. I was in San Fransisco on election night in '92

I was actually at a restaurant in Sausalito when Clinton was declared the winner. I was on the terrace with a perfect view of San Fransisco. My wife and I were dating at the time. She was back in Chicago. Car horns went off all over the place. It was sweet (yet I wish my "almost-wife" were there to share it with me). It was pretty cool. I also feel something in the air. We WILL win. (BTW, I am a Packer fan this week).

[ScreamingMeemie]

7. Yaaay you! I wish you lived close...I'd have you over for the traditional

Packer party at my house. :hi: :hug: I'll even root for the Bears for ya!

[Arugula Latte]

22. By that election I'd moved to DC from San Francisco

We got drunk as skunks and drove past the hotel where the national Rethugs were having their little election pity party. I remember rolling down the window and yelling at their surprised little faces very juvenile, immature things like "Ha Ha Republicans! You LOST!" Damn, that was satisfying!

[liberalmuse]

3. Clinton was my first...

I started late with voting. I had registered a couple years earlier, but had a baby and was preoccupied with her and never got around to voting in '88. I voted for the first time in 1992, for the Big Dawg, and I've never missed an election since.

[ScreamingMeemie]

9. Babies will do that!

:hi:

[ZombieNixon]

5. I was 5 at the time,

so I don't remember much. I do, however, remember interrupting my mother while she was brushing her teeth to ask her who won the election. She couldn't say anything with a mouth full of toothpaste, so she traced a letter "B" in the air, which I though stood for Bush (though it was meant to stand for "Bill"), but then she shook her head and said "Clinton," spitting toothpaste at me in the process. So there's my earliest political memory. Ah, the years. :)

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. Hehehehehehe....Great Story!

Thanks for sharing it. :hi:

[Gaffey Duck]

13. My earliest memory?

Hearing just about everyone I know parrot their parents' anti-Mulroney slogans when I was 9 or 10.

Oh...And cheering for Kim Campbell over Jean Charest in the 1993 Tory leadership race because I thought it would be cool to have a female PM. I am now far more fond of Charest than I am of of Campbell (I don't care how corrupt and entrenched Chretien has been throughout his political career: It's not cool to run ads ridiculing him for his facial disability. Besides, anybody who finished in a last place in a leadership convention won by Bill Vander Zalm (B.C. Socred, 1986) probably belongs in permanent house arrest.) although that's rapidly changing, given that his Quebec regime has been Mike Harris II (How he manages that in a leftist province with a federalist coalition consisting of people vote Liberal, Tory, and NDP in federal elections is beyond me.).

[Warren DeMontague]

16. I remember Hearing Watergate. Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.

I was a toddler. Silly me, I thought it had something to do with Water, and a Gate.

[Jackpine Radical]

41. "something to do with Water, and a Gate."

As they used to say,
Behind every Watergate is a Milhouse.

[myrna minx]

37. What a sweet story. n/t

:hug:

[MassLiberal]

6. I remember that night in '92 the same way

Came home from the polls after helping with the count and rushed up the stairs yelling "We're gonna win!!!" I too had a baby girl at the time, and she too is now 14. :) Feeling hopeful that her world is about to improve big time.

[ScreamingMeemie]

11. To baby girls (and boys) getting their country back!!

:toast: I love it that so many of my contemporaries are here. :)

[bushwakker]

8. 1992 election night felt so good

[sunnybrook]

14. I remember that week in 92

I was on the road (used to travel and play music) and Bill and Hillary were working their butts off! Hillary stayed at the same hotel as me (Holiday Inn, Gallup New Mexico), she just flew in and made a speech and Clinton was covering so much ground in those last days and he got laryngitis so Hillary had to speak for them. You just knew that this was a guy willing to work his butt off for us. I am getting that feeling too. Thanks for starting this thread

[bushwakker]

38. i never believed a dem could win until that night

[AimeeMM]

12. I was 16 - Junior in High School -

and we campaigned our hearts out. That was so much fun and so exciting. My only regret that year was actually going to school instead of skipping the morning Bill gave a speech in Daytona. I should've gone to that dang rally! Getting to vote him back into office in 1996 was fantastic, too.

I feel the same excitement now as I did in '92. I knew we were a part of something big then and I feel it now. Though Clinton will forever and always be my *first*. :)

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. Those 8 years were the greatest. I have a feeling we are on the verge

of the same thing!! :hi:

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I wore a Bush (G.H.W.B.) Mask for Halloween That Year.

With a sign around my neck that said "Four More... DAYS"

I remember going to a bar in Chicago and getting in a shouting match with a hard core right wing young woman. She lost it and started sputtering incoherently at me, when she saw my costume. They were starting to come unglued, sensing something was wrong...

Dare I say, much like what we are seeing right now.

Exciting Times, Indeed.

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. You Bet! And talking with people while canvassing today only

reinforced it for me! :hi:

[fujiyama]

19. That was the first election

I remember, and while I didn't know much about the election, I didn't really like Bush Sr very much. As a young person (around 10), Clinton seemed very cool and I thought it was cool that he played the sax on Arsenio. The night Clinton won, I was pretty pleased. I was also glad to know that my state (MI) went to Clinton, because I had a friend at the time that mouthed RW talking points (probably because his parents were pukes).

[Lex]

20. Good story about the 1992 election:

In 1992, on the eve before the Presidential Election, my friend and I were driving through a section of town where there is a large African American neighborhood. At a stop light, three African American teenagers came up and gave the hood of the car a knock (like knocking on a door), I sort of jumped at the noise, and one of the kids smiled really big and nicely shouted "Vote for Clinton, tomorrow! Okay?"

I shouted "Okay!"

Everytime I drive through that intersection, I remember that night and all the positive energy.

[ScreamingMeemie]

29. Great story. That's how I felt last night out talking to people. Just

really positive. :hi:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

21. Ahh yes, the Clinton Campaign...

Those were good times. It was my first vote and I went all out and worked the campaign. I lived in Houston then, I was young, idealistic, energetic and full of hope! Gawd, it was great! I am still in love with him.

I do have a similar feeling this time around, I'm just not as young and more tired!

[ScreamingMeemie]

28. Me too! I got three hours of sleep last night after canvassing and then

doing some paperwork. I am dragging with the kids this morning. :hi:

[GingerSnaps]

23. My Mom and I felt it

We both knew that Clinton was going to win and we both cried at the same time when he won the election.

[ScreamingMeemie]

27. It was an incredible day, and I think we have another one coming

up! :hi:

[waldnorm]

24. Love These Stories, But Please Keep in Mind . . .

For those of us in Colorado remembered. Clinton won the election, including Colorado, and that same year, Amendment 2 was passed. It wrote hate right into the Constitution of Colorado, saying that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals had "no protected status," regarding what the Religious Right from Colorado Springs called "special rights."

In this election, hate will be written into a number of states' Constitutions. In a couple of cases, the hate includes not just no right to marry, but even no civil unions, no domestic partnerships, and scaling back a number of rights. While cheering for Kerry (as I REALLY hope does happen), keep in mind that a lot of good, decent people will have their rights taken away and have the majority of voters in their states declare hate against them through the ballot box. Sorry to be preachy, but the night of Clinton's win was mixed with a lot phlegm and the tendency to wretch in response to what Democracy did against a minority. And for all who care about this, all the more reason to GOTV. We have the damage of four years of court appointments from Shrub, and the last we want are Supreme Court appointments approved through the screening of a religious right organization.

[NYCliberal]

32. Never forgave Clinton for the Defense of Marriage Act...

[Oak2004]

25. '92 was the last election I had a Republican to campaign for,

with the exception of one town election where the "Republicans" were, mostly, registered Democrats, and the "Democrats" were a bunch of corrupt carpetbaggers who, deservedly, lost big.

That campaign, I had worked for the reelection of my local moderate Republican state senator (by the standards of today he'd be a raving liberal). He was a good man, pro-choice and very strong on the concerns of senior citizens. He had just barely survived a vicious primary attack from the extreme right, and I was determined to see him reelected.

But my state senator was the only Republican on the ballot that day who I could stomach, and I cast all but one of my votes for Democrats. I remember pondering throughout the day whether I had any reason left to be a Republican, and, in the end, deciding that if all the people like me bailed out, there'd be no one left to fight the extremists in the primaries. After the polls closed here on the east coast, I pulled out my television out and rigged up one of my convoluted longwire antennas I'd need whenever I wanted to get a TV signal in the small rural town I was living in. My neighbor, an Islamic man from New Jersey, came by, and we drank tea and cheered the results. I remember saying to my friend that I thought Clinton had the potential to be one of the greatest American presidents.

And I still do think he would have inarguably been that, had the extremists not obstructed him at every turn. Historians may yet consider him to be the great man I thought he would be, but instead of listing the constructive accomplishments I expected, they'll be speaking of him as a man who held back a dangerous and powerful neofascist movement for eight years, and who undid damage done to the economy by the reckless economic policies of the previous two administrations.

[ScreamingMeemie]

26. Wonderful story Oak! Good on you for voting your conscience!

:hi:

[Cooley Hurd]

30. So do I...

When the networks started calling it for Big Dog (still have it on videotape - all 4 called it for him at almost the exact same moment), I called my wife at work (she was covering local returns for the newspaper she worked) and exclaimed, "this is a truly a GREAT DAY FOR AMERICA!!!!"
I won't be calling her this time, though (divorced 6 months after the election of '92), but I might drop to my knees in my front yard and h-o-w-l!:thumbsup:

[NYCliberal]

31. I'd feel better...

if a third party candidate like Perot was siphoning 15+% of Bush Jr's voters away

[DemocratSinceBirth]

33. I Wish This Was 1992...

The die was cast...


The final poll of polls in 92 had Clinton with a substantial lead...


I'll bet in Vegas he was a 10-1 favorite....

[ScreamingMeemie]

34. From last week to this week, here in Michigan, Kerry has gained

10%...to regain the lead over Bush by 5%. Believe! :hi:

[WolverineDG]

35. Clinton stopped in McAllen

on his "campaign around the clock" tour the night before the election. i went on a spur of the moment, we had election day off, so what the heck? of course, he was extremely late (i didn't get home until close or after midnight, but i didn't care). the atmosphere was electric, everyone was excited, even though we had to stand for hours before any of the speakers or the plane arrived. i had already decided to vote for clinton based on what i saw in the debates (bush sr checking his watch, blowing off the question from the lady at the town hall debate & clinton walking down to put his arm around her--that stunned the absolute hell out of me, i'd never seen that from a politician before), but wanted to see him in person anyway. i can't remember what was said, or who all spoke (ann richards & a few others), but i do remember the crowd's excitement as the realized clinton was going to shake everyone's hand if they wanted him to. :) i got to shake his hand, then waited around to see how long he'd keep it up...about 30 minutes later, i swear the secret service had to drag him back to the plane! :P the only reason he stopped shaking hands is he reached the fence line at the airport & there was no room left for folks to que up.

:) i feel the same way now as i did back in 1992. whoo-hoo!!

dg

[ScreamingMeemie]

36. And it's great! Isn't it?

:hi:

[Blue_Roses]

39. I remember thinking without a doubt Clinton would win.

For some reason I knew poppy was toast. He was a cranky worn-out has been. Change was inevitable. :D

[davepc]

40. Lets not forget

The help we got from Ross Peroit siphoning off lots of likely Bush voters.

Bill 43%
Bush 37%
Ross 19%