I was too young to remember the early 90s, so just wondering...

[mwei924]

What was the atmosphere like during and after the 92' election? And how similar was it to Obama in 08'? The electoral margin ended being very similar but I'm wondering if it was THIS exciting.

Also, what was the general feeling about Bill Clinton back in 92' before all the Monica sex scandal stuff, Hillary's health care and all that started to weight down? Who was he being compared to? Obama's most repeated comparisons were always with JFK or Bobby. What was it with Clinton in 92'?

[apocalypsehow]

1. We'd had 12 years of Reagan/Bush I. The Cold War had ended.

It was a major shift in thinking. I remember the night Clinton won in '92 thinking what a corner had been turned - and being happy.

[NMDemDist2]

2. nothing like this at all, Clinton won't have made it in without Perot

we all thought Clinton might be a little shady even then. The women stories were already around.

Glad to done with Repukes, but no great wow factor IIRC

[apocalypsehow]

4. That, too. Sums it up perfectly.

Gawd, I feel old.

[NMDemDist2]

5. but he did give a damned fine speech

:hi:

[apocalypsehow]

7. I agree 100%.

:hi:

[Uzybone]

10. Agreed

He was already called slick Willy back then.

[wyldwolf]

32. complete bullshit. Rightwing myth that Perot won it for Clinton

[QC]

42. We've been seeing a lot of right wing myths on DU this past year or so. n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

44. A Lot Of Revisionism

Including the fact Clinton's election wasn't met with excitement...


I must have been hallucinating when I watched REM, Don Henley, and 10,000 Maniacs perform at the one of the Inaugural Balls...

[wyldwolf]

47. I must have been drunk and imaging the tears of joy on the faces at the party I was at.

[QC]

48. Yeah, and I must have imagined partying all night after Bush conceded

and weeping when I watched Maya Angelou read at Bill's inauguration.

None of that actually happened. It was all so ho hum, just another day. Yawn.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

45. A Lot Of Revisionism

Including the fact Clinton's election wasn't met with excitement...


I must have been hallucinating when I watched REM, Don Henley, and 10,000 Maniacs perform at the one of the Inaugural Balls...

[wyldwolf]

46. It really is a site to see

I remember when I first started coming to DU back in mid 2001. I had differences with some posters on policy and issues, but at least everyone here knew what had actually happened just a few short years ago.

[QC]

49. I think many of our loudest posters were still a gleam in Daddy's eye

during the 90s, given how eagerly so many of them have embraced the right wing version of that era's history.

[wyldwolf]

52. that's a good way of putting it

[QC]

53. It's the most charitable explanation for the prevalence of cigar jokes and "Billary"

cracks around here.

There are other possibilities, of course, but I prefer to assign it to ignorance rather than malice.

[NMDemDist2]

58. I call Bullshit on your Bullshit

While Bush didn't have solid support, it would have been a lot closer without Perot.

My hubby voted for Perot and he was a Republican back then

of the popular vote Clinton got 43.3%, Bush 37.7% and Perot got 19%, you do the math. and the turnout was only 55% nothing like we saw this time.

[wyldwolf]

64. oh, goody! Let's debate it! I have facts, figures, and exit poll data. Ready?

[NMDemDist2]

66. the OP asked for the 'mood' and excitment level compared to now

it was not the same.

do you think that's open to debate?

[wyldwolf]

69. your reply to me was in regards to Perot's influence in the outcome of the '92 election.

backtracking?

[NMDemDist2]

71. the numbers speak for themselves I think

Obama is a freakin phenom!

Clinton was great and I loved his speeches, was so glad he was in office, but it was nothing like the movement that is Obama this time around.

but as I said below, I'd love to look over the polling data, especially in California where I was at the time

[wyldwolf]

there are no numbers showing Perot cost Bush I the election

[NMDemDist2]

70. but you know, I'd love to see the polling data from that election

share it?

:hi:

[wyldwolf]

73. Sure

If number crunching makes your eyes glaze over, just skip to the end. Ready?

In 1992, Perot got 19,660,450 votes. The total turnout for the Presidential election was more than 13 million higher than in 1988. So even thought Perot’s vote tally was impressive, 13 million of the voters didn’t even vote in 1988.

Bill Clinton garnered 3.1 million votes more than Michael Dukakis did in 1988, but George H.W. Bush received 9.7 million fewer votes than he did in 1988. Finally, the two party vote fell by 7 million in 1992. So Ross Perot only took 7 million votes from Clinton and Bush.

If Perot had not been in the race, would those 7 million Perot voters who voted for Bush and Dukakis in 1988 have voted for Bush by a sufficient margin for him to overcome Clinton’s 3.1 million vote lead?

Those 7 million Perot voters would have had to favor Bush over Clinton by 5 to 2. Or, even if all 19.6 million Perot voters had voted for one of the major party candidates, they would have had to favor Bush by a 58% to 42% margin to overcome clinton’s lead and tie the race. Was this likely in view of the fact that the other 84 million voters were favoring Clinton by 7%, 53.5% to Bush’s 46.5%?

Usually, the presidential candidate runs far ahead of the rest of the ticket. Perot’s presence in the presidential race combined with an absence of running mates for lesser offices meant that Clinton and Bush ran behind their respective party’s nominees for Governor, Senator and the House. Consequently, it was easy to follow Perot’s voters as they voted for other offices. They voted for Democratic and Republican Governor, Senator and House of Representative candidates in sufficient numbers to give them higher vote totals than Clinton and Bush.

This assumes that all Clinton’s supporters voted for the other Democratic candidates and all Bush’s supporters voted for the Republican candidates for Governor, Senator and the House. Since Republican candidates for other offices received more votes than Bush, and Democratic candidates for other offices received more votes than Clinton, this is a statistically valid assumption. The higher vote totals for the non-presidential candidates had to come from Perot’s voters.

In the Governor’s races, Perot’s voters cast 18% of their ballots for the Republican candidates; 56% of their ballots for Democratic candidates, 17% for independent candidates, and 8% did not bother to vote for Governor. If Perot’s voters had voted for Bush and Clinton in the same proportion that the voted for the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor, Clinton’s lead would have increased by 7.5 million votes.

In the Senate races, Perot’s supporters voted 27% for the Republican candidates, 24% for the Democratic candidates, 23% for the independent candidates, and 24% skipped the Senate races entirely. (This does not include states that did not have Senate races.)

In the House races, Perot’s voters cast 22% of their ballots for Republican candidates, 19% for Democratic candidates, 18% for independent candidates, and 40% did not vote in House races.

Perot’s voters voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Governor candidates, and only marginally in favor of the Republican candidates for the House and Senate. Perot’s voters favored Republican Senate candidates by 2.28%, and Republican House candidates by 2.69%. Because Perot’s voters were only 1/5th of the total, that translates into about another 500,000 votes or 0.5% for bush if they had voted in a two way presidential race the same way they voted for the Senate and House. That is about 1/7th of the margin by which Bush lost.

http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm

So, from a popular vote perspective, Perot clearly did not influence the outcome. He took votes away from both Clinton and Bush. But elections aren’t won on the popular vote (as we were painfully reminded of in 2000.) How did Perot’s performance effect the electoral college results?

SwingStateProject has the answer.

Perot clearly did not cost Bush the 1992 election. The partisan index measures the degree to which a state favors a party relative to the way the rest of the nation favors that party. This being the case, it would follow that if more typically GOP partisans had indeed swung to Perot than had typically Democratic partisans, the 1992 partisan index would reveal and anomalous pro-DNC swing due to a temporarily eroded Republican base.

However, only a handful of states that Clinton won show such trends. Perot definitely seems to have caused Bush to lose Georgia, as the usually double-digit pro-GOP partisan index in that state cratered at +5.0 GOP in 1992. The same goes for Nevada, which relatively favored the GOP by 13.2 in 1988 and 7.5 in 1996, but only by 2.9 in 1992.

I’ll grant that without Perot, Bush probably wins both states.

However, only Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and Tennessee are other possible states that Perot swung to Clinton. Still, even if Bush had won all of these states as well as Georgia and Nevada, Clinton would have won the Electoral College 315-223. Further, there is no conclusive evidence that Perot actually cost Bush any of these other six states.

Of course, like I already noted, even if I am wrong about all of these states, that means Clinton would still have won 315-223. No other state shows evidence of Perot costing Bush victory. Perot did not cost Bush the 1992 election–not even close. That is one popular myth that can be put to bed.

Let’s go to several newspaper headlines from 1992 concerning exit polling:

Perot Seen Not Affecting Vote Outcome

DIONNE (11/8/92): Ross Perot’s presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters.

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot’s absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush “margin” without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

Also from the same author:

DIONNE (11/12/92): In House races, Perot voters split down the middle: 51 percent said they backed Republicans, 49 percent backed Democrats. In the presidential contest, 38 percent of Perot supporters said they would have supported Clinton if Perot had not been on the ballot and 37 percent said they would have supported Bush.

An additional 6 percent of Perot voters said they would have sought another third-party candidate, while 14 percent said they would not have voted if Perot had not run.

And finally, the Associated Press

Perot’s Voters Would Have Split In a Two-Way Race

ASSOCIATED PRESS (11/4/92): Exit polls suggest Ross Perot hurt George Bush and Bill Clinton about equally.

The Voter Research and Surveys poll, a joint project of the four major television networks, found 38 percent of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton and 37 percent would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the ballot. Fifteen percent said they would not have voted, and 6 percent listed other candidates.

The most hysterical revelation comes from DailyHowler.com, who discovered the myth came from the Washington Times in a piece where the writer drew the conclusion that Perot cost Bush the presidency based on the ethnic makeup of voters he saw on TV!

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh062905.shtml

[NMDemDist2]

78. thanks! that was very informative

I love DU for chit like this. :yourock:

I was a bit busy and off my game in 1992, had a lot of personal stuff happening and wasn't as politically active as usual in that election.

I just remember a lot of folks loving Perot and that Clinton was 'just another politician' and I remember being very pleased to finally get rid of stupid Rayguns/Bush. I lived in CA with Rayguns as Gov and he was horrible and didn't do any better as Prez

I do remember thinking "It's Over" when the famous supermarket scanner thing happened with Bush :evilgrin:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

61. Thanks for vomiting up completely baseless Republican lies

[NMDemDist2]

65. completely baseless??

I voted for the guy twice in blue California, I was 37 years old and the OP asked for the 'mood'

the mood was different. the country was different.

[wyldwolf]

76. why are you pretending you didn't write post #2?

[JCMach1]

63. Disagree 100%... the Reagan/Bush nightmare was over

Remember was an entirely different context as we had finally gotten rid of the legacy of one of the most popular repug leaders of the 20th century... St. Ronny.

'92 was a giant relief... We DID it!


Today is more of... THANK GOD the BOOT is off of our throat...!



Both felt equally as good...

[NMDemDist2]

74. true, but it's nothing like the giddy goofiness we have today

Clinton was a breath of fresh air and Hope was everywhere, Obama is a phreakin phenom

[JCMach1]

89. It's different because the situation is so different...

With Clinton EVERYTHING was positive... End of an era and on to a better one...


Diety I am off the wall happy Obama was elected, but at the same time I am extremely fearful for the future... (no fault to Obama on this)... The shitty situation is what got him a mandate.

[blm]

91. Reagan/Bush nightmare WASN'T over - Jan1993 began the coverups for BushInc by a Dem president

and THAT is the reason why the MYTHS about Saint Ronnie and Bush's foreign policy achievements have been accepted as conventional wisdom.

Bush1 NEEDED to lose in 1992 - the BCCI report was due in Dec 1992, and he faced CERTAIN impeachment over its revelations and especially if the outstanding matters listed in the report gained the further scrutiny requested.

So his fellow BCCI partner, Jackson Stephens, had his boy in Arkansas prepped and ready to go. Poppy ran the worst campaign in history, Clinton took office, BCCI's outstanding matters somehow became deep-sixed and the further scrutiny requested would never get authorized by Clinton ally Senate Majority leader George Mitchell.

[LynneSin]

3. That's when it all started my friend

Never even heard of Rush Limbaugh until that election and then they all came crawling out of the woodworks thanks to scum like Richard Mellon Scaife who was willing to finance people like this to dig up any dirt they could find on Clinton.

[gaijinlaw]

37. I had heard of him... and actually thought he was quite funny.

In my naivete, of course, I thought it was an act. It was only after Clinton was elected that I began to realize that this ape was bellowing in earnest. He got a lot meaner after GHWB lost his re-election bid.

Ironically, I have a specific recollection that during GHWB's term he predicted the complete dissolution of the Democratic party if it didn't marginalize the "liberal wackos" and embrace more centrist Dems like... "Arkansas governor Bill Clinton." :D

[susanna]

56. That's how I remember it, too.

Rush who? That guy was nothing until Bill Clinton came along.

on edit to add: he's still nothing but hot air, though the dittoheads feel a need to believe his vile rantings.

[Jennicut]

6. I forget how young the Clintons and Gores were. Then again I was only 16.

It was exciting. Young families in the white house and vp's residence, Dems back in power. The inauguration was very cool to watch. Then the gays in the military thing happened, Somalia, white water, health care went bust. Clinton made a lot of miscalculations but he was interesting to watch.

[Rincewind]

8. Clinton 1992

I live in central Illinois, in the late fall, early winter, in tends to be overcast. It is not unusual for it to be sunless for weeks at a time. After Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, there was a letter to the editor in the local paper claiming that god hated Bill Clinton because it had been over cast for over 50 days since the election. The right wing hates everybody to the left of Attila the Hun, and will blame them for every thing, and fight them every step of the way. They will blame Obama for every earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and volcanic eruption. For the next four, or hopefully eight years, every thing that goes wrong in the world is Obama's fault, any good news is because of the inspired leadership of the Chimpster.

[obiwan]

36. That's right. I lived next door in Indiana and it was so bad I had to leave.

For my own sanity. (This was in 1981.)

[ben_meyers]

9. Usenet and IRC were much like today, just not as many people

same kind of stuff going on but not as loud. That plus a lack of cable "news" channels and the world was a different place.

[DangerousRhythm]

26. Yep, Usenet and IRC were shiny and new to me at the time.

Nobody in my real life knew a damned thing about the internet, or that it even existed. "So if you talk to someone in England do you pay for long distance?" Haha! Nobody I tried to tell about it could wrap their heads around the concept.

I remember the huge celebration my dorm had when Clinton was declared the winner. Great times! Nothing like what I've seen this year, but still fun times. :)

[gaijinlaw]

39. Hey! Remember that amazing browser, Spry Mosaic?

I know. OT post. I'm bad. I'll stop now. :)

[VPStoltz]

11. It was a little rocky but exciting...

Perot was the only candidate who opposed the Gulf War. I was at odd with friends who would not vote for Clinton.
However, getting rid of the Raygun regime was essential and we all did what we could.
I was working a fancy schmancy restaurant at that time and on the night of the election, when it was called for Clinton, we all cheered int the kitchen.
One of the waiters went into the dining room and said, "For all of you who are interested, we have a NEW president!"
The diners cheered.

[stevedeshazer]

12. We were happy. Then we were scared as hell.

Kind of like now, only much more so.

The stakes are even higher.

[Egnever]

13. Not even close

Bill was iffy at best from start to finish but he did give a damn fine speech.

[Truth2Tell]

14. I was as excited about Clinton

as you young Democrats are about Obama. Cant. Stop. Thinkin' about tommorow...

I remember hitch hiking from Boulder to Denver early morning on election day to see Clinton speak at the Denver airport. Powerful heady times. A brave new world, very exciting!

The new world never happened of course. It was mostly the same old shit. Which is why I blame Clinton for my inability to raise too much hope this time around. Thanks for the cynicism Bill. It's not nearly as much fun.

[TheDoorbellRang]

55. I wonder how many other cautious hopers there are because of Bill

In my family, I have a sister who's been a democrat for a long time, myself an independent, and a brother who's always been a republican. My sister was wildly enthused when Clinton won, then deeply embarassed and angry when all the Monica stuff was going on. I didn't vote for Clinton because I thought he was too smarmy so had nothing invested in him emotionally, but did vote for Gore over the idiot in 2000 and then for Kerry in 2004. My brother had always voted straight republican -- 2X for Bush.

This year, it was my brother who has been the most excited about Obama winning. He said it was the first time in his life he was actually voting FOR someone instead of just choosing between the lesser of two evils. He has supported Obama since 2007. I became enthusiastic about Obama in February of this year, and have only gotten more enthusiastic and hopeful as time went on. It's been my democratic sister who had so much invested emotionally in the Clintons back in the 90's who's had the hardest time getting her hopes up about Obama. Strange, eh?

[Truth2Tell]

81. I fully understand.

Maybe this time your sister and I can be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

We'll see.

[FrenchieCat]

15. No cable news!

Those were the days.

It wasn't until the OJ trial, that it all kind of went totally out of control.
Think it was that 1996 Telecommunications Act that got us into that "we'll make the news up" situation.

Shortly thereafter, in 1996, the shit hit the fan, and we got the Clinton Impeachment.

[Thothmes]

34. There was cable news. CNN made its reputation

covering the first Gulf War.

[onenote]

40. yep. and the 1996 Telcom Act, for all of its flaws, it had no direct impact on cable news

CNN was launched in 1980 and was fully distributed (i.e., carried by essentially every cable system) by 1992. Other cable news channesl, such as FoxNews and MSNBC, came into existence in 1996, but not because of the 1996 Act. Fox News and MSNBC were part of a wave of new cable channels launching during that period in large part because of changes in the rules governing cable rates that allowed cable operators more flexibility in setting their prices when they added new channels. The 1996 Act took things a bit further, by providing that regulation of the expanded tier of service would sunset in 1999, but it was the ability to add new services under the FCC's rules that really opened the door.

[Quantess]

16. I was very enthusiastic to vote for a Democrat after enduring Poppy Bush.

I liked Bill Clinton when I voted for him, and I thought he was a good president all through the 8 years. I always thought the Monica / BJ stuff was ridiculous, inane, and none of anyone's business. The rest of the world laughed at the US for making such an overblown (no pun intended) deal out of it.


The overall excitement of the 1992 election was not as intense as this year's election. I have never witnessed a presidential election as important as 2008. The 2008 election was huge.

[Dr Fate]

17. No internets-maybe only one all day news channel.

So it's not even comparable.

[xenussister]

23. Yeah, there was Internet

My husband and I got on the net in 1989. I was very active on mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups during the Poppy Bush/Clinton election. I used to get into some terrible flame wars with Libertarians and Perot supporters. That was before the world wide web, but word about goings on still traveled fast and people talked about issues. Articles could be found via Gopher, images could be downloaded. The web (which started in 1994, ish) opened up more of that interaction and was politically active by 1996.

I HATED Reagan. I HATED Bush. I didn't much like Clinton, understood but never saw myself the charm that others did, but he was a Democrat and so got my support both times. I started to hate him when he began acting like a Republican-lite, and by the time the Monica thing happened, I *LOATHED* him. I think the Republicans/right-wingers spent far too much money and time and effort in unjustly smearing Clinton, and then going on and on and freaking on about Monica (which wasn't anybody's business except for him and Hillary) but I still couldn't help but be pissed off that he gave them the means by toying with her in the first place, and then made it worse by lying. For somebody so smart (something I highly admired about him) he was damned stupid regarding his pecker. He could have had a pretty good legacy if he'd kept his pants zipped, or maybe at least come clean at the beginning. He just handed his legacy to the bastards on a silver platter.

On the other hand, I think *he'd* make a damned fine Secretary of State, with his intelligence, knowledge, contacts and charm.

[Dr Fate]

82. Sure- and there were airplanes in 1911- but that doesnt mean many people flew in them!

;)

[political_Dem]

18. Everything was centered around the handshake a young Clinton gave to President Kennedy.

Furthermore, there was the message that Clinton came "from a place called hope" (Hope, Arkansas). He seemed so young and optimistic compared to the stagnant and staidness that Bush 41 represented. He also was rather cool because he played saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show (something else probably before your time ;) ). That appearance demonstrated Clinton's youth and vitality compared to Bush 41.

The town hall meetings (that Perot started) were quite a new phenomenon. People were rather taken with that format back then because it meant that they participated in the process instead of being told what to think. This was before the Internet began to make a true impact on how society communicated.

The other thing I remember is Fleetwood Mac's song playing in the background of the 92 DNC. That was great.

(I admit that I disliked Tipper Gore for her support of the PMRC, so I was rather lukewarm about her.)

I also remember Clinton visiting the survivors of Hurricane Andrew that year as well as dealing with the Los Angeles Riots. Bush 41 wouldn't visit the people affected. That was one of the important things that people remembered when voting.

The night of the election was rather subdued compared to what happened in 2008. People celebrated, but it didn't spill into the streets in the major cities. What happened in 2008 was rather unprecedented on many levels.

Bush 41 (and Reagan as well) was hated, but not as hated as Bush 43. I think Bush 43 broke the mold in that regard.

Hope that helps.

[BlooInBloo]

19. Excitement levels were nowhere near what you're seeing today.

[Life Long Dem]

20. Bill was the comeback kid.

But that's only what stood out during the election, and maybe the media kept saying it all time helped prolong this nickname.

[blogslut]

21. Personally, Clinton's election was a grand relief

I watched the election results with my roommate and my boyfriend. When he was declared the winner, we drank champagne, danced for joy and giggled like fools. It was the end of a nasty 12 years - made worse because most of the people in my life had no idea how despicable the Reagan/Bush administrations really were.

Just the same, 92 is nothing like this year.

[CreekDog]

22. I was 21 in 1992 when Clinton was elected

there was excitement when he won in 1992, but nothing like what we saw this year. Clinton was a terrific candidate but Obama has been spectacular.

also Bill Clinton's transition was much less organized, much farther behind than what we are seeing from Obama now.

Clinton's focus during his first moves was erratic and Republicans capitalized on it and on some less than well vetted cabinet picks and did so successfully. Add to that Bob Dole's statement after the 1992 election that "57% did not vote for Clinton" and that Republicans would represent them.

Much, much different.

[rvablue]

87. And you know why his transition was so erratic?

He explained it himself and said that it was a mistake.

Instead of focusing on his cabinet at first, he was 100% concentrated on the gender and racial diversity of his own White House staff. And after that search, he hastily picked people for his cabinet.

I think it's different times now for Obama, as far as easily finding people with that profile who are best suited for the job as well. But as you can see, it's all because of the opportunities that Clinton gave people....Obama, after all, has been dippping into the Clinton administration again and again and again to fill his staff and Cabinet.

[sandnsea]

24. I was 35, it was nothing like this

The economy was quite similar, no surprise. We desperately needed relief, like we do now. We were hopeful, but it was nothing like how people feel about both Obamas, and the kids, and the real hope to get our country back, all the way back. Then we needed a glass so we could get a couple of drinks of water. Now, we are dying of thirst and there doesn't look to be any water in sight, let along a glass to drink it with.

[NMDemDist2]

67. exactly! I was 37 and the Repukes were gone but they hadn't left

a bombed out crater in their wake like today

[No Elephants]

25. I turned 21 (voting age then) the year Johnson ran. I voted for LBJ, even

thought I thought he may well have been involved in getting JFK killed. Because I had been too young to vote for JFK, this was the first time in my life that I was that excited to vote for a Presiential candidate and I am 65 I am so grateful for that experience!

[styersc]

27. back in those days when you cast a vote in a voting booth....

... a baby Pterydactyl pecked your choice onto a stone tablet that was sent by courier in a car run by foot power to the Grand Pooba who counted the vote. It took quite a while so excitement abated before the count was finished. Yaba daba doo!!!!!

[secondwind]

28. I worked for the Clinton campaign in NY, we were very excited about....

getting a genuine "wordsmith" (like Obama, someone with superior intellect), after 8 years of a doddering idiot.

Did you know that Nancy sometimes sat in on cabinet meetings? Reagan would fall asleep, and wake up and say "honey, what did I miss?"

Did you know that Reagan (typical Republican to the core) declared KETCHUP a vegetable to reduce spending for schools?

Bill Clinton had a sexual scandal BEFORE he was elected in 1992. Her name was Jennifer Flowers, and she was his lover for over ten years. We forgave him for that and voted him in.

In 1996, we had the Paula Jones scandal, and we forgave him for that and voted him in.

[Connie_Corleone]

29. I was 20 years old. I didn't care who was president back then.

I didn't even know who Clinton was until the Gennifer Flowers scandal happened. I didn't even vote in 1992.

He seemed more of a president for the baby boomers. That was my perception of him. My aunts just loved him. I had a more "Eh" feeling for him. I did vote for him in 1996.

[alwysdrunk]

30. Nothing like 08

Clinton was still "the lesser of two (and a half) evils to most people. Nothing like the enthusiasm for Obama. It was interesting because there was a serious third party contender. Mostly Bush took himself out of the game with his "Read my Lips" promise four years earlier.

I was young then though. Maybe I forget.

[happychatter]

31. I said the same thing I said in 76

The only difference between a Southern Democrat and a Republican is the used car salesman...

SMILE

Then I gritted my teeth and voted for the lesser of evils...

when nothing changes, nothing changes

[DemocratSinceBirth]

51. If It Wasn't For A Southern Democrat Named Lyndon Johnson There Would Have Been No Barack Obama

The civil rights laws passed under his administration sped up racial reconciliation by about fifty years...


Oh, and Jimmy Carter and Al Gore were Southern Democrats...

[happychatter]

57. I caught your act months ago... you need to take that show on the road

you're out of the bin since the end of the primaries only

I know what you said, what you did, and what you are

yeah, thank god for white people eh?

oh, that's levity to convey certain, unstated truth... don't strain a brain muscle

there was only mildly more reason to trust a Southern Democrat in 76 than there was in 65 and as far as Bill Clinton goes?

NAFTA, CAFTA and the War on the Poor

I defended him with flame throwers for eight years and he threw us ALL under the bus

never lecture me... not.fucking.ever

in Dolly Parton's voice, "yoo've gawt mail."

[Alcibiades]

88. Not all southern Democrats are/were bad

I would have preferred someone to the left of Clinton myself, but unfortunately he was one of the few Democratic elected officials of national stature who realized early on that Bush was vulnerable. It was a failure of imagination on the part of the nation's leading progressive politicians that led to the victory of Clinton as much as anything else.

I'm sure you didn't mean to, but you seem to paint southern Democrats with too broad a brush. There were plenty bad ones back in the 1960's and 70's, but by 1976 they had already started to leave the party. Back in that era, here in NC, we had folks like Sam Ervin, who did a great job on Watergate but was shit on civil rights. Yet we also had Terry Sanford, a smart, progressive Democrat who was the enemy of Ervin and folks like him. The Democratic Party in the south was not quite as monolithic as it is sometimes depicted. There were a good many who sympathized with the civil rights movement, folks such as my mom and my grandparents. Here in North Carolina, it was the coalition between black Democrats and progressives that finally caused the racists to leave the party. The irony for me is that there are actually more of those sorts of folks in the Democratic Party up north.

Progressive white southern Democrats do exist, and have existed for many years. We have fought the good fight, and will continue to do so. As for the George Wallace types, we hate those fuckers every bit as much as you do.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

92. "...a tale told by an idiot , full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

You know as much about me as Joseph Ratzinger knows how to please someone in bed...


Since you intended to drag me into the gutter I will play...My mom died on September 28th at ninety years old...I took care of her in my own home for the last twelve years of her life... Her best friends were an African American couple; Mary and Nate...Mary said my mom was like a grandmother to her...I said that makes me your son...They now introduce me to their friends as their white son... They and another couple were at my Obama victory party...Nate and I spent the whole afternoon together hanging a door...

I don't know what the fuck you are intimating but if I ever uttered an intolerant remark around my saintly,departed parents I would have had my ass handed to me...


KISSES
DSB

[wyldwolf]

33. very similar among mainstream Democrats

[onenote]

35. it felt good, but nothing like this.

Clinton's election felt good. There was some optimism in the air, and events like the MTV inaugural ball made it all feel very cool. But the feelings that I associate with the Clinton campaign and election do not really compare to the feelings that have been and are being expressed, worldwide, about obama's election. Like it or not, the Obama campaign had the feeling of a movement -- or at least more of that feeling than any time since Eugene McCarthy's run in 1968.

[Kind of Blue]

38. Pure excitement! Finally a viable Dem who

spoke directly to and for the people. All I knew was that Reganomics was not even supposed to work for me. I hated Reagan and couldn't stand Daddy Bush. They were totally and unequivocally out of touch with the masses. Further, I knew the repubs were desperate when Bush picked Dumbo Dan Quayle as his running mate. What? Because he's a young guy, like Clinton, I'm supposed to vote for him? Sheesh! It was insulting, as Palin was this time around. I just entered my early 30s and Clinton, like Obama spoke to issues concerning younger people, jobs, using the new technology (The Internet), the family leave policy, universal health care, gays serving openly in the military, and I just remember the incredible feeling of hope. I will forever love Clinton for the family leave act of '93, that literally saved my life, as the hospital I worked tried to fire me for using up all my sick time when I was battling a tumor. Another thing that was great was that I was living in D.C. at the time where the crime rate was so high, and within a year of the election the crime rate just dropped. This was one of Clinton's promises and he delivered. Life for me in the '90s, after Bush, was sweet. Today, pushing 50, I have the same hopeful feeling about Pres-elect Obama.

[AtomTan]

41. I remember Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant singing "To Sir With Love"

On the MTV inaugural ball. There was a lot of hope and excitement among the Gen X first-time voters, but besides a generic relief at the end of the long, long Reagan era, I don't think Clinton inspired the kind of cross-generational hope that Obama does.

Of course, the stakes are way higher now, too.

[QC]

43. I remember being much more excited in 1992, but then I was much younger

and still could believe in politicians.

Now I am just pleased if they don't screw us over too bad.

Cynical, I know, but the past few years have justified it.

[treestar]

50. It was very exciting

A wonderful time. It was the end of 12 years of ridiculous Presidents.

Clinton was compared to JFK, in fact, a teenaged Clinton had met JFK at the WH, and there was a pic of him shaking his hand.

The RW was going nuts over Hillary just for having a career. They could not stand a First Lady that was career woman and were full of crap about how she wore the pants in the family (you know, those career woman must be like that). They had a joke about how they hated the President, and her husband, too.

[calico1]

54. Yes, I remember that.

And how they went nuts over her comment about not standing behind her man like Tammy Wynette. Remember that?

And a lot of right wingers didn't care for the fact that she wasn't "traditional"--that is, staying home, being mostly seen and not heard. She had a career! Oh horrors!


What personally impressed me about Clinton was his performance in the town hall debates when he would get close to the audience and seem to be having a personal conversation with them. I liked that. He came across as very warm.

I wasn't much interested in politics in the early 90's. But when I saw that crazy group of evangelical nuts on the stage during the GOP convention I knew then I had to get my butt in gear.

Perot was too "out there" for me, though I remember several of my coworkers at the time being impressed by him.

Like others, I thought the whole Monicagate thing was much ado about nothing. I thought then and think now that Bill Clinton was a very good President. He is a flawed individual but he was a good President. And after 12 years of Reagan-Bush, he was like a breath of fresh air.

[treestar]

96. I remember than convention. The Repukes always have hateful

conventions, don't they? Wasn't that the one where Marilyn Quayle, a lawyer, chided career women for violating their essential nature, or something like that?

[Skwmom]

59. Clinton was the perfect guy to push the corporatist agenda.

He pushed through NAFTA, media consolidation, and deregulation (which is the reason our financial system is on the brink of collapse).

But he was very charming and many people thought Clinton would be a defender of the working class. After it became obvious that he was anything but, many became disillusioned and anti-Clinton. However, many others just refused to look at Clinton through anything but rose colored glasses.

[Clio the Leo]

60. We were happy and hopeful .....

... but it was NOTHING like this.

This feels darned near revolutionary. Magical, surreal.

It's gone suck superbad when I wake up from this lovely dream with the sounds of Cheney taking the oath of office.

[slackmaster]

62. I had a low-paying job in a small company that was spiraling downward due to falling real estate

Lots of foreclosures in Texas, Arizona, California and the Rust Belt.

The good news was that job made me officially a systems admin and no longer primarily a technical writer/systems analyst.

That was about all I had on my mind, actually. Things did get better over the next couple of years. Home prices bottomed out in 1994. My then-wife and I both happened to have jobs, and we were able to buy the home that I now own.

Lack of major problems to fight together (landlords, unemployment, etc.) contributed to the demise of my marriage starting about that time.

[electron_blue]

68. Elation, yes, but not as much as we had with Obama.

My take on it was that there was great excitement after finally getting the repubs out after 3 terms, and nipping Bush 1 after 1 term, but I wasn't overly hopeful about Clinton, like I probably am about Obama. And ultimately, Clinton was not the first Af Am President, so no way did his election offer a new worldview to the nation like the Obama election has.

[tabbycat31]

72. I was 12

when Clinton was elected. I remember that our school had a mock election, and an electoral college based on homerooms (each homeroom was a state), and that I was the only person in my homeroom that voted for Clinton (Perot carried our homeroom).

I also remember pulling the lever for him in the voting booth with my dad that year. And I remember watching the returns with my parents and how excited they (and I) were that they had finally voted for a winning president for the first time in a long time (Carter was the last winner they voted for). It was the first time that I was very into politics, and I thought it was very cool that there was going to be a kid my age living in the White House (Chelsea's a month older than I am). It was also the first election that I watched the debates for.

I vaguely remember 1988 but nothing beyond campaigning in my school for Dukakis.

[AlCzervik]

75. Not even close, 41 wasn't the wrecking crew his son is and there was the Perot factor.

[wyldwolf]

77. there was no Perot factor

[AlCzervik]

79. not true, check the numbers.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=1992&fips=0&f=0&off=0&elect=0

[wyldwolf]

80. everytime I check the numbers, I get the same result: No Perot factor

If number crunching makes your eyes glaze over, just skip to the end. Ready?

In 1992, Perot got 19,660,450 votes. The total turnout for the Presidential election was more than 13 million higher than in 1988. So even thought Perot’s vote tally was impressive, 13 million of the voters didn’t even vote in 1988.

Bill Clinton garnered 3.1 million votes more than Michael Dukakis did in 1988, but George H.W. Bush received 9.7 million fewer votes than he did in 1988. Finally, the two party vote fell by 7 million in 1992. So Ross Perot only took 7 million votes from Clinton and Bush.

If Perot had not been in the race, would those 7 million Perot voters who voted for Bush and Dukakis in 1988 have voted for Bush by a sufficient margin for him to overcome Clinton’s 3.1 million vote lead?

Those 7 million Perot voters would have had to favor Bush over Clinton by 5 to 2. Or, even if all 19.6 million Perot voters had voted for one of the major party candidates, they would have had to favor Bush by a 58% to 42% margin to overcome clinton’s lead and tie the race. Was this likely in view of the fact that the other 84 million voters were favoring Clinton by 7%, 53.5% to Bush’s 46.5%?

Usually, the presidential candidate runs far ahead of the rest of the ticket. Perot’s presence in the presidential race combined with an absence of running mates for lesser offices meant that Clinton and Bush ran behind their respective party’s nominees for Governor, Senator and the House. Consequently, it was easy to follow Perot’s voters as they voted for other offices. They voted for Democratic and Republican Governor, Senator and House of Representative candidates in sufficient numbers to give them higher vote totals than Clinton and Bush.

This assumes that all Clinton’s supporters voted for the other Democratic candidates and all Bush’s supporters voted for the Republican candidates for Governor, Senator and the House. Since Republican candidates for other offices received more votes than Bush, and Democratic candidates for other offices received more votes than Clinton, this is a statistically valid assumption. The higher vote totals for the non-presidential candidates had to come from Perot’s voters.

In the Governor’s races, Perot’s voters cast 18% of their ballots for the Republican candidates; 56% of their ballots for Democratic candidates, 17% for independent candidates, and 8% did not bother to vote for Governor. If Perot’s voters had voted for Bush and Clinton in the same proportion that the voted for the Republican and Democratic candidates for Governor, Clinton’s lead would have increased by 7.5 million votes.

In the Senate races, Perot’s supporters voted 27% for the Republican candidates, 24% for the Democratic candidates, 23% for the independent candidates, and 24% skipped the Senate races entirely. (This does not include states that did not have Senate races.)

In the House races, Perot’s voters cast 22% of their ballots for Republican candidates, 19% for Democratic candidates, 18% for independent candidates, and 40% did not vote in House races.

Perot’s voters voted overwhelmingly for Democratic Governor candidates, and only marginally in favor of the Republican candidates for the House and Senate. Perot’s voters favored Republican Senate candidates by 2.28%, and Republican House candidates by 2.69%. Because Perot’s voters were only 1/5th of the total, that translates into about another 500,000 votes or 0.5% for bush if they had voted in a two way presidential race the same way they voted for the Senate and House. That is about 1/7th of the margin by which Bush lost.

http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm

So, from a popular vote perspective, Perot clearly did not influence the outcome. He took votes away from both Clinton and Bush. But elections aren’t won on the popular vote (as we were painfully reminded of in 2000.) How did Perot’s performance effect the electoral college results?

SwingStateProject has the answer.

Perot clearly did not cost Bush the 1992 election. The partisan index measures the degree to which a state favors a party relative to the way the rest of the nation favors that party. This being the case, it would follow that if more typically GOP partisans had indeed swung to Perot than had typically Democratic partisans, the 1992 partisan index would reveal and anomalous pro-DNC swing due to a temporarily eroded Republican base.

However, only a handful of states that Clinton won show such trends. Perot definitely seems to have caused Bush to lose Georgia, as the usually double-digit pro-GOP partisan index in that state cratered at +5.0 GOP in 1992. The same goes for Nevada, which relatively favored the GOP by 13.2 in 1988 and 7.5 in 1996, but only by 2.9 in 1992.

I’ll grant that without Perot, Bush probably wins both states.

However, only Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and Tennessee are other possible states that Perot swung to Clinton. Still, even if Bush had won all of these states as well as Georgia and Nevada, Clinton would have won the Electoral College 315-223. Further, there is no conclusive evidence that Perot actually cost Bush any of these other six states.

Of course, like I already noted, even if I am wrong about all of these states, that means Clinton would still have won 315-223. No other state shows evidence of Perot costing Bush victory. Perot did not cost Bush the 1992 election–not even close. That is one popular myth that can be put to bed.

Let’s go to several newspaper headlines from 1992 concerning exit polling:

Perot Seen Not Affecting Vote Outcome

DIONNE (11/8/92): Ross Perot’s presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters.

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot’s absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush “margin” without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

Also from the same author:

DIONNE (11/12/92): In House races, Perot voters split down the middle: 51 percent said they backed Republicans, 49 percent backed Democrats. In the presidential contest, 38 percent of Perot supporters said they would have supported Clinton if Perot had not been on the ballot and 37 percent said they would have supported Bush.

An additional 6 percent of Perot voters said they would have sought another third-party candidate, while 14 percent said they would not have voted if Perot had not run.

And finally, the Associated Press

Perot’s Voters Would Have Split In a Two-Way Race

ASSOCIATED PRESS (11/4/92): Exit polls suggest Ross Perot hurt George Bush and Bill Clinton about equally.

The Voter Research and Surveys poll, a joint project of the four major television networks, found 38 percent of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton and 37 percent would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the ballot. Fifteen percent said they would not have voted, and 6 percent listed other candidates.

The most hysterical revelation comes from DailyHowler.com, who discovered the myth came from the Washington Times in a piece where the writer drew the conclusion that Perot cost Bush the presidency based on the ethnic makeup of voters he saw on TV!

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh062905.shtml

[WCGreen]

83. The best part about it was that MTV was still playing music videos...

[Lautremont]

84. I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.

[Liberal_in_LA]

94. lol.

[rvablue]

85. It was my first time voting and I think a lot of the ambivalent or negative responses

you are getting are from baby boomers who think nothing was like the 60s, etc....

It was kind of like this. But just not as much.

Young people got out and volunteered. You couldn't go into a Clinton HQ without it being buzzing with people.

Given, at the time I was on staff of the campaign of a state representative, volunteered for a Senate race and the Clinton campaign, so maybe I was a little more involved.

But when people try to tell you that Dems weren't completely over the moon at the idea of the Clinton's going in to the White House, they are not giving you an accurate picture of the mood then.

Yes, Clinton won probably b/c of Perot, but the thing is people were not thrilled at all with Bush and I would think a lot of the Perot people would have stayed home or maybe voted for "change" back then, which was Clinton.

There is a reason despite all of the cynicism on the board that one of our most esteemed authors, Toni Morrison, called Bill Clinton the "first black president."

Most likely I will get flamed for reciting that here. It's not that I'm endorsing her statement, or feel it to be true, but she did say it.

All I ask is if you can't remember there are many resources you can pick up....even go look at old Time magazines from that time....but simply using the voices of DU will not give you the proper perspective on "general feeling" back then.....there are too many disappointed people here.

[tigereye]

86. Congress fought him every step of the way, as i recall

everyone loved him out here in the real world, except folks in Washington. (still, people were excited after the election)


It was a big PITA and led to all that 94? Contract with America/ GIngrich had too much power, crap.

[demokatgurrl]

90. For me, it was a lot like now

I worked very hard on the Clinton campaign, and even watched all the Sunday Morning TV shows just to get a glimpse and hear a word from him or someone on his transition team(something I no longer do, no matter who is on them). I follwed everything he did while putting together his cabinet and other posts.


And I was really happy with most of his tenure.
I didn't get all worked up over the Monica thing. In fact, for a long time I thought she was a Repuke plant, and I thought way too much was made of it. I hated Lieberman even back then, for his self-righteousness in voting to impeach Clinton. The only thing I was really critical of Clinton for was "I did not have sex with that woman". I wished he had said, "Yes, I did, and so what?"

[Radical Activist]

93. A lot of hope followed by a lot of disappointment.

That was the Clinton Presidency for me and I think most Gen Xers. After young people turned out in large numbers to help get him elected on a progressive platform from a place called Hope, he turned his back on youth issues to go chasing after suburban soccer moms and seniors. Then came the monica lies. So many opportunities wasted.

My greatest fear is that Obama will repeat Bill Clinton's mistakes by abandoning the progressive platform he ran on, forgetting the support young people gave him, and not deal honestly with the American public. When Bill Clinton did those things he nearly destroyed the future of the Democratic Party by turning away Gen X and most progressives. Campus Green chapters were larger than College Democrat chapters on most campuses I visited in 2000 because the Democratic Party had just spent 8 years ignoring and disappointing young voters. I hope Obama won't be another Clinton.

[Liberal_in_LA]

95. Can't remember the 90s. Gosh you are young!