If we’re really staring down the prospect of having a Clinton/Obama/Clinton Democratic succession in the White House, it might pay to think about how these two political empires relate to each other. That’s what Steven Waldman tries to do in a brief piece in the latest issue of the Washington Monthly. Waldman argues that the two political clans have been good for each other. More controversially, he argues that there’s a misperception that Bill Clinton was the ‘canny pol’ while Obama is the visionary, when nearly the opposite is the case. In Waldman’s view, Obama should be seen as fulfilling Clinton’s vision and completing projects than Clinton and his wife could not.
It’s a testament to how much Clinton changed the Democratic Party that even a conventional progressive like Obama ended up being “New Democrat” on most issues.
Conversely, Obama completed and expanded on the Clinton presidency in key ways. The most obvious is passing health care when Clinton couldn’t. That’s a big what-Joe-Biden-said. There’s more: Clinton started a modest-sized “direct lending” program that allowed college students to borrow straight from the government, bypassing banks; Obama got the banks out entirely, saving taxpayers billions in the process. Clinton proposed raising fuel efficiency standards for cars from 27.5 mpg to 40. He failed. Obama has successfully raised them, with a target of 55 mpg by 2015. Clinton moved the military from being actively hostile to gays to the milder-but-problematic policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”; Obama allowed gays to openly serve.
One can debate the extent to which these achievements happened because of Obama’s skills or his timing.
I could nitpick this in a number of ways, but parts of it are undeniable. I think it’s an important debate to have because I don’t think we’re really sure how to think about Clintonism. How much of it was purely situational and designed to win elections in an environment where conservatism was ascendant? How much of it was a true ideological break with post-war liberalism? And where will a Hillary Clinton presidency fall on these spectrums?
To really engage in this debate, you’ll want to read Waldman’s whole argument.
I believe this article from a decade ago would be insightful as well – told me everything I needed to know/remember about the origins of the DLC and Clintonism…
This:
Two decades later at the eleventh hour, “they came” to Iowa and arm-twisted enough locals pols into supporting Kerry. That’s all she wrote for Democrats in 2004.
The inspiration for the DLC was Reagan slaughtering Mondale and winning a second term.
Jackson came in third in popular vote in the primaries but won few delegates. Reagan would have been hard for any Democrat to beat in 1984. I don’t believe Jackson was a viable candidate. The national campaign is a lot different from Democratic primaries. I don’t know what Democrat could have beaten Reagan in 84.
The DLC logic was, I suppose, to win back some of the Reagan Democrats. It worked for Clinton because Clinton had charisma. Which Hillary Clinton does not, in my opinion, but don’t get me started.
Jackson was always strongly critical of the DLC, but I find the premise of this article contrived.
Cars are only going 55 miles per hour in 2015? Or could that be a typo…
yeah, that should be mpg.
Unfortunately this ridiculous standard gives us the choice of two cylinder kiddie cars and behemoth trucks and vans which are excluded from the standards. Most people opt for the Expeditions and the like. I wish gas was $5 per gallon just to screw these tank drivers.
I have a 56-mile a day commute, in a 30 mpg vehicle.
I can’t replace it — my Chapter 13 bankruptcy trustee won’t hear of it.
You are welcome to your $5.00 gas.
How many people are on the road with you in Expeditions, Navigators, Armadas, Silverados, et cetera?
Democrats need to internalize the lesson of the last 30 years: The Republicans didn’t hate Clinton/Gore/Obama because of anything they did. They hated them because they were the Democratic nominees and therefore stood in the way of their God given right to the White House.
Any Democrat who gets the nomination in 2016 will face the exact same onslaught of bullshit.
If you don’t want to support Hillary because you are already tired of having to deal with this crap and think someone else will be safer then you are deceiving yourself.
I want a Democrat that can roll with the punches and make the Republicans and their lapdogs in the media to look like fools. Obama and to a lesser but still noticeable extent Mr. Clinton were experts at playing the game. I’m still amazed at how good Obama is at working the narrative when he feels like it.
And while I’m sure that any post-Carter Democrat is going to be subject to the same amount of vitriol no matter who it is, there’s a difference between how Obama handles attacks and how, say, Dukakis handles them. One of the reasons why I think that people are overselling Hillary’s appeal is because her response to media hostility and pushback and ability to capitalize on her opponent’s mistakes is at best satisfactory. Like with Benghazi.
…still noticeable extent Mr. Clinton were experts at playing the game.
Except for the small matter of his impeachment.
He was excellent at having his team participate in the crafting of GOP legislation to screw the little guy and signing it.
Hmm? Clinton handled the impeachment scandal masterfully. His sexual trysts with Lewinsky (especially after knowing that Starr was relentlessly going after his dick) was amazingly stupid, but how he and his team responded to the scandal was well-done. The Democrats faced a structural disadvantage going into 1998 and gained seats after all.
105th Congress:
Senate – GOP 55
House – GOP 227
106th Congress:
Senate – GOP 55
House – 223
So, yes, Democrats gained four house seats in the 1998 midterms.
It was the 106th congressional House that impeached Clinton in 1999.
The actual trial happened right after the 106th Congress was seated, but the debate over Clinton impeachment proceedings was a campaign theme for the 1998 U.S. Congressional elections.
The Clinton-Lewinsky relationship was definitely a news and political issue during the 1998 election cycle. Not exactly a campaign theme. In part because there was disagreement in the GOP House as to whether impeachment was appropriate. Newt wasn’t gung-ho on the idea which is why the actual impeachment debate didn’t occur until after the election.
The articles of impeachment were passed in December 1998. You’re correct that the trial was conducted by the 106th Senate — but it was essentially unchanged from the 105th in 1998.
The 1998 election was neither a win nor loss for the House crazies nor Clinton. Not that it has stopped either from declaring that it was a win for them.
Nonetheless that was an historically impressive “win” for Clinton and the Dems in the 1998 midterms, the best showing by an incumbent, iirc, since FDR in 1934. Comparable to the good showing by Kennedy and the Dems in 1962.
And I don’t recall a bigger issue in 1998, or more prominent one, than how the GOP House was dealing with the Impeachment matter. If I’m right, then it seems the people did seem to vote to side with Clinton and against the GOP. The House then rushed to impeach during the lame duck session so as to ensure they entered that black mark against Bill in the history books, not wanting to give a slightly less conservative new House a chance to rethink things.
So I’d probably agree w/the poster that Bill handled the impeachment matter about as well as he could. It was several things he did, including the fling itself and his agreeing to contest the Paula Jones lawsuit, allowing himself to be put under oath on delicate personal matters, that I found incredibly stupid.
It’s worth noting in this timeline you document here that the vote to impeach Clinton was actually made by the lame-duck 105th House (the 106th House wasn’t seated until January 1999).
Which is pretty fucking incredible, given the fact that indeed, there was disagreement about impeachment both in the House and with the public at large during the ’98 campaign. The public reacted to the impeachment storm clouds by doing something which was highly historically aberrational, handing additional Congressional seats to a President in his sixth year. And the turmoil-laden House impeached anyway on their way out the door, even persisting while essentially having no functioning House Speaker during this time.
Another point — misreading/misinterpreting polls and election results is how candidates and parties flub.
Had 1998 been half as resounding a win for Clinton as his supporters claimed, GWB’s 2000 campaign theme “restoring honor and dignity to the White House” would have had no traction. In early 2000 campaigning with Clinton, team Gore wouldn’t have learned that Clinton was toxic for his poll numbers after those joint appearances.
I read that situation this way: the voters in 1998 voted to disapprove of how the GOP was handling Bill’s personal indiscretions, abusing the Constitution by elevating it to an impeachable offense. In 2000, they merely retained their disapproval of Bill’s private conduct.
Gore should have handled it that way too — stepped up and boldly announced his feelings about it, and the personal versus the public conduct — and not kept Clinton so much on the campaign sidelines. By saying almost nothing, and keeping Bill quietly campaigning only late in a few appearances in Arkansas, the Gore team allowed Bush to take the high moral ground and run with it uncontested. No wonder Junior came so close to defeating Al in the popular vote.
Eh. I don’t really find this explanation compelling. I feel that by then, voters really didn’t give a shit either way about campaign appearances and the 2000 election (like pretty much every post-Ford election that was not 2008) was more of a function of brute demographics than minutiae like this. Viewed in context of the 1996 and 2004 elections, 2000 didn’t really have any surprises. It was close enough so that minutiae really would’ve had an effect, sure, but Gore doing stuff like picking a different VP or campaigning closer to Clinton or harping on the good economy would’ve changed numbers by the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands.
What’s the difference? Every True Progressive knows the answer. It’s simple.
Obama sold us out; Clinton couldn’t, because he wasn’t one of us in the first place. Which is why we scorn Clinton — doesn’t matter which Clinton, incidentally — but despise Obama. There have been no actual Democrats in, or running for, the White House since George McGovern.
The margin by which McGovern was defeated, and Obama won, is all the proof you need.
What you mean “we”?
She give the impression
Nobody can know what Hilary will do. She may have an extraordinary amount of freedom, if people turn out and give her the congress, and it could happen.
But one thing you can say is, she’s been around the block. She will not believe, as Obama did, that it is possible to make a deal with republicans. She will know that it is war, from the time the votes are counted.
She may decide that she can leave the greatest legacy ever, if she just does a few simple things, right away. Such as get money out of politics, and secure a real right to vote for everyone.
Domestically she’s likely to make her biggest impact with her one or two Scotus appointments in her first term. Those picks will decide whether we can get rid of Citizens United and Buckley and bring sanity and democracy back to our electoral system. And I would like to see her boldly advocate for a clear simple amendment on the right to vote.
A little more problematic is her FP approach: will she continue more of Obama and Shrub — America big-footing it militarily around the globe — or will she chart a different course. I’m skeptical unless Dems get more of their leaders to begin forcefully advocating for less intervention abroad and more diplomacy with Russia and China as a way of tempering or checking some of HRC’s more hawkish tendencies.
Her FP is probably the biggest misgiving I have about Clinton. To be cynical, stuff like assisting in Libya and unrestricting drone warfare, while evil and misguided, really doesn’t enter the thoughts of the American voters. Hundreds of people needlessly dying in Pakistan doesn’t register in their thoughts. I am concerned, however, that Hillary might end up picking a fight with a power (like Iran or Syria or Ostessia, to speak nothing of Russia) in which things escalate to the point where pwecious American soldiers start dying and she’s forced to keep sending them in to save face. She’s conspicuously silent during this whole ISIS debacle, but I wonder if she would’ve had the wherewithal to say with Obama’s infantry-free approach.
I’m also extra-afraid that in the process of being more warhawky, Clinton will try to get support from the Republican Party over the heads of the Democratic Party. I was actually kind of surprised that the Democrats were not only able to stop Obama from escalating his commitment to Syria but that Obama actually listened. If it was Hillary in the hot seat would she have let herself be reigned in like that? I doubt it.
That seems a bit too cynical towards Hillary. I doubt if she would be so reckless as to charge into any of those countries you note. A serious direct US military involvement would just seem too easily to provoke Russia and set off WW3. Hawkish or somewhat so, she is. But probably not too different from Obama’s tough but not insane attitude.
As for Syria and Obama, I suspect the Brits saying no to partnering on regime change was most influential in Ibama backing off.
Yes, especially if she appoints people like Rahm Emanuel and Robert Rubin.
pundits to diminish Obama’s legacy which is the most impressive since LBJ by either pretending that any Democrat could have achieved what he did or better or by giving credit for his accomplishments to a white politician. It’s been a real eye-opening experience to watch white liberal punditry do this for the past 6 years almost sneering at Obama for being naive, etc. Yet, over and over again he has proved them wrong and they still can’t give him credit for his accomplishments. Racism is not just on the right.