Bill Clinton: "The Democrats ought to stand up and fight" ... stop "mealy mouthing around"

[Emit]

The More Things Change...

In an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Clinton offered some tidbits of advice to Democrats:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said his fellow Democrats should stop "mealy mouthing around" and start taking the fight to Republicans in the final weeks before this year's congressional elections.

"The Democrats ought to stand up and fight," Clinton said in an interview for Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt," airing this weekend. "The Democrats have 30 days to sort of stand up, embrace the challenge, and offer a worthy alternative," he said. "If they lay down and let it be a referendum, our side is going to get whacked."

For the last month or so, I've been (slowly) making my way through The Clinton Tapes by Taylor Branch. (...) I just finished the chapters that dealt with the 1994 midterm elections, and it's striking how similar the circumstances are, right down to the pervasive cowardice among congressional Democrats...

~snip~

...here is Clinton a few days after the election, discussing the Democratic Party's disastrous performance (208):

Worse, he said, the Democratic candidates steadfastly refused to unite behind a campaign message. Blaming him for their unpopularity, they all demanded to tailor their own individual campaigns, but their disparate slogans seemed puny against Gingrich's unified call for smaller government and lower taxes.
(...)

The voters were hurting, and they wanted their government to hurt, too. Republicans were channeling widespread anxiety into resentment of minorities, cities, and government.

Even better, is what Clinton had to say about his left-wing critics (76):

He told (William) Gredier he had done things already that no other president would do. He had raised taxes on the rich and lowered them for the working poor. ... He had proposed fair treatment for gay soldiers. He was fighting for national health care coverage, and more, but liberals paid very little attention to any of these things because they were bitchy and cynical about politics. They resented Clinton for respecting the votes of conservatives or the opinions of moderates. They wanted him to behave like a dictator because they didn't really care about results in the world.

While some of these issues -- like gun control -- have fallen out of the political conversation, you could take each of these statements, replace a few proper nouns, and emerge with the Obama administration's likely views on congressional Democrats, Republican opposition, and liberal criticism. This isn't to make a point about anything, but to say that it's surprising to see the extent to which our politics haven't changed much since Bill Clinton entered office in 1992.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=09&year=2010&base_name=the_more_things_change

[JI7]

1. is he still complaining about Rachel MAddow

the funny thing is that many have said the thing about how he was the best republican president before but it seems to make him more upset coming from rachel.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. "Democrats couldn't sell Lindsey Lohan on a rum & coke" - Bill Maher

We need to OWN the (limited) progress we have made, not apologize for it.

Washington is so tone-deaf, it is like being in a Rod Sterling episode.

[DJ13]

3. it's striking how similar the circumstances are, right down to the pervasive cowardice

Kind of like they're following a well worn script, one that was designed to give the GOP a larger number of victories than they otherwise deserve.

The real power brokers behind our current political system arent very creative, they saw what worked to get a Democratic President to sign off on a lot of GOP plans in the 90's and they are trying to engineer a repeat this year.

The real cowardice isnt in Dems not standing up against the Republicans, its the Dems not standing up to those who have funded them.

[old mark]

4. This administration is Clinton Lite, but without the economic success -

so far.

They have no balls among the whole lot of them, and it's very sad-we could have used some real Democrats in power...


mark

[Recursion]

6. The economy still sucked in 1994

Though, like now, the recession had already technically ended.

[Pirate Smile]

5. Wow: "liberals paid very little attention to any of these things because they

were bitchy and cynical about politics. They resented Clinton for respecting the votes of conservatives or the opinions of moderates. They wanted him to behave like a dictator because they didn't really care about results in the world."


"Democratic candidates steadfastly refused to unite behind a campaign message. Blaming him for their unpopularity, they all demanded to tailor their own individual campaigns, but their disparate slogans seemed puny "

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. The same fights over again.

[gratuitous]

7. No, we resented Clinton for selling us out

And yes, in spite of the cynicism of the Villagers, there is a difference between "respecting" conservatives and what's actually happening. Or are we finally going to get those long-promised "side agreements" to NAFTA that protect workers and the environment? Tell us, Bill. Were the liberals right that NAFTA was a massive shell game, or were we right that it was a massive shell game?

[JackRiddler]

8. Yes, amazing that the exact same fantasy slurs are slung at the left today.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Teh irony it hertz!

So says the champion master triangulator.

[blondeatlast]

12. And the guy who sold the Fourth Estate for--well, whoever had money to buy it at the time. nt

[izquierdista]

10. Even better...

So....Bubba didn't listen to his "left-wing critics" and got led around by the nose for 3/4 of his term in office? Maybe the solution to that is to LISTEN to those critics instead of blowing them off. But noooooooooo, corporate money wouldn't gush into their pockets them.

[Bitwit1234]

11. This has been cry from the people in this country who ARE

Democrats and all like minded people like Bill Clinton since the day the congress of this country gained a Democratic majority. But it seems almost as if the republicans are still in charge of congress because these bunch of Democrats are scared to death to take a stand.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

13. Bill has been consistant on the "referendum" thing

and i suspect he's right.