Maybe ....

I don't know, Greg. Clinton seems, as time goes on, like a better and better president, but that's partly because I'm comparing him to Bush (though Clinton was a good president in his own right.

One thing to remember, though, is that liberals in the party did have issues with Clinton and some of them were really legitimate. I think the war in the Balkans was, at least, debatable. And while he presided over a great economy for which he deserves more credit than he gets, it was also an economy that increased wealth disparity in the US and that was never addressed.

So, during his Presidency, we saw the rise of the green party. I think complacency had something to do with that -- there were Dems who maybe thought it was safe to vote Nader in 2000 because Gore would coast in on Clinton's record. Maybe they thought that, as Blair did with the Tories, that the Republicans, especially after embarassing themselves with the impeachment fiasco, were neutered. Well, it wasn't safe and Bush squeaked and clawed into office in 2000.

But, who's fault is it, really, that a more liberal third party was able to become a factor in 1996 and a spoiler in 2000? Clinton did let down a segment of the party and that group of people turned to the greens. Smart? Heck no, as we've now seen for 8 years. But mistakes were clearly made.

I guess what I'm saying is... the party should be big enough for all of us. The far left might not win elections for the dems, but they can surely lose them by voting third party or by staying home, if they're ignored.

This is Jerome Armstrong, in his initial post:

Did the Republicans come up with a plan when the Clintons tried to reform Healthcare?

Of course they did.

Whatever Happened to Health Care Reform? an article by Paul Starr in The American Prospect:

In 1993, 23 Republican senators, including then-Minority Leader Robert Dole, cosponsored a bill introduced by Senator John Chafee that sought to achieve universal coverage through a mandate that is, a mandate on individuals to buy insurance.

Nearly every major health care interest group had endorsed substantial reforms--grandiose ones, in fact. The American Medical Association (AMA) and Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), the two great, historic bastions of opposition to compulsory health insurance, both went on record in support of an employer mandate and universal coverage. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed an employer mandate, as did many large corporations.

. . . .

But for health care reform, the season of opportunity was ending. . . . The opponents of reform were organizing their forces, concentrating first on groups with ideological affinities. . . . The AMA qualified its endorsement of a mandate limiting it to firms with over 100 employees and thereby excluding most private doctors, the majority of whom do not cover their own employees. Senator Dole and other Republicans abandoned the Chafee bill and the individual mandate. Dole then cosponsored a bill with Packwood and within weeks abandoned that, too, saying that this the second bill he offered had "too much government."

As of this moment, none of the posters at the MyDD site has called Jerome on this.

I don't know if "these people" are in the wrong party or whether I am in the wrong party. I wish I did not have to share a party with the likes of "these people". Indeed, I would never switch to the Republican Party. However, I do wish I could bring back the party of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, HHH, LBJ and Scoop Jackson. "These people" would think that all of the above Democrats were too Hawkish, disagree with their Liberal democratic internationalism, and think that they were too Conservative on social and cultural issues. "These people" embrace the foreign policy philosophy of Henry Wallace and George McGovern. They combine it with the counterculture of the late 1960s. "These people" would be Greens, but believe that the "path to power" lies through the Democratic Party, which is still regarded as a mainstream party.

"These people" may say what they want about Bill Clinton, but he took the White House for the Democratic Party and held it for eight years. The post-Vietnam Liberals, which includes "these People," never achieved such a feat. These post-Vietnam Liberals had their chance with Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (who posed as a moderate on Defense and Foreign Policy but wasn't), Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. "These People" want to go even farther out of the mainstream with Deanism. Well, Deanism would not resuscitate the Liberalism of my youth. It also is not the path back to power.

MYDD attacks Bill Clinton for saying that the Democratic Party should say "what it is for" and not simply "what it is against" on Social Security and the other great issues of the day. Well, the great icons of the Democratic Party from Woodrow Wilson through JFK led by providing the American people with a vision of where they wanted to lead the country. To oppose is not enough. The Democratic Party must look to the future. The Democratic Party should not adopt the negative rhetoric of the ultra-Conservatives in the Republican Party, who lead by inspiring fear and appealing to bigotry. As Hubert Humphrey used to say, the "politics of joy" has a certain poetry and lifts people up, showing them the possibilities rather than focusing on the perils.

We Democrats would do well to remember the example of the Happy Warrior, a sobriquet by which both Al Smith and Hubert Humphrey were known. In 1928, FDR nominated Al Smith by quoting from the famous 1807 William Wordsworth poem, "The Character of the Happy Warrior." With what qualities did Wordsworth imbue the Happy Warrior? Here is what Wordsworth said:

"WHO is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
--It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright."

We Democrats should carry in us that spirit of the Happy Warrior. Rather than seeking to emulate Newt Gingrich or Karl Rove, we should be appealing to the best in the American people. Like Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK and Hubert Humphrey (my age's Happy Warrior), we should be the beacon of hope in a world shrouded by fear and hatred. The Deaniacs want to appeal to the fears of the so-called base to rally it against the extremists of the now ultra-Conservative Republican Party, using the same attack politics and fearmongering that Conservative extremists use. If we must imitate Republicans, we should be looking to a Republican like Ronald Reagan, who was sometimes called the Happy Warrior of the right, not to Darth Vader-like figures such as Gingrich and Rove. Reagan did not quote Republican Presidents. He quoted the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy and spoke of Winthrop's Shining City Upon a Hill. Reagan's politics were the politics of the right, but his rhetoric was filled with poetry and sought to give Americans the sense that we as a people had an important destiny to fulfill. This is the sort of rhetoric that our Democratic standard bearers used to employ in inspiring Americans to noble purposes. This is the political language that we should reembrace.

I'm never sure if I'm one of "these people". I'm definitely to the left of center and I've got serious gripes with "Clintonism" as a coherent ideology or even as a beginning of a platform for the national party. But I'm also not one of the hawkish types that are always alluded to.

I'm for a grand vision from our party. I think we won't regain power unless we do project some sort of vision or scheme that shows we understand America's place in the world and where it should go.

But that vision does not and should not sprout from the Republican vision. Why do we have to offer up an alternative plan for Social Security? Isn't our plan Social Security? We can offer up a proposal if and when it needs fixing, not when Bush says it does.

I also agree that Clinton left the party in shambles when he left. Too many people got their place in power because they were "Friends of Bill", not because they were actually effective policy makers or strategists. Economic populism can work as a strategy, but only if we actually DO something about the erosion of the middle class. Since Clinton we've seen two groups who are working their way through the middle class to the upper class, Hispanics and Blacks, moving slowly out of our party and into the GOP. If no one will look out for their economic interests, then surely they will vote based on cultual issues.

As for parts of our base, "Clintonism" did ride roughshod over labor. Free trade has eroded the power of unions and most people view them as ineffective means of speaking for their members. I think free trade will probably be good in the long run, but it has seriously hurt our manufacturing base and probably did not need to be rushed along. I think its also important to note that unions were the most effective means of GOTV in Ohio in the 2004 election. If labor unions were a little stronger and had members who were more enthused, it might (and I say that cognizant of the fact I have no facts to support it) might have made the difference.

We already don't have a majority; hacking off bits of our base will not solve the problems we face in regaining power as a party. Only when each group within the base is willing to give up something and work hard to help others' agendas will we have a unified coalition and a unified party that is able and willing to regain the majority.

I think we all have a lot to work on together. That doesn't mean we're all in agreement. Lieberman ticks me off. The Dems in the House who supported the bankruptcy bill tick me off. But... there's more good that people like me can do with them (and them with folks like me) then there is bad. I'm willing to compromise if they are.

Nate-N:

The Democratic Party suffered an ignominious defeat in the 1994 elections and the so-called "Republican Revolution" occurred. Why? This would probably serve as most of the basis for your claim that Clinton left the Democratic Party worse off than he found it. The Republican Revolution took place because of census-driven redistricting that give the Red States a large number of Congressional seats at the expense of Blue States. Democrats generally and most especially post-Vietnam Liberal Democrats, as opposed to pre-Vietnam Liberals and Bill Clinton himself, have had extreme difficulty in competing in Red States and Districts. This is not Bill Clinton's fault. It is the fault of the National Democratic Party, which has not learned that it needs to revert to the Big-Tent Coalition concept that prevailed from FDR through LBJ. The other problem in 1994 was that Clinton could not decide as he entered office if he truly wanted to govern as a moderate or as a typical modern Liberal. The Democratic Party paid dearly for Hillary Clinton's Health Care debacle, Gays-in-the-Military flap and the high-tax Liberal label with which the Conservatives tagged Clinton. Republicans convinced many voters that the Clintons had pulled a "bait and switch," campaigning as a moderate but governing as a Liberal. Clinton also was guilty of multiple political mistakez and miscalculations as he sought to gain his political footing in Washington.

Well, as Clinton mastered the art of governance at the national level, he won over many voters. I am a pro-Defense Liberal, or at least I would be by pre-1968 standards. However, I have to admit that Clinton's New Democratic, Third Way philosophy and his strategy of triangulation often worked very well. Many voters grew to respect what they perceived as Clinton's pragmatic progressivism, as opposed to the increasing extremism and mindless partisanship of Right Wing Republicans. Consequently, Clinton defeated Bob Dole easily in 1996. Despite the Clinton scandals, the Democratic Party picked up Congressional seats during the last two campaign cycles on Clinton's "watch." If it had not been for "Monica-Gate," the Democratic recovery from the ignominious losses of 1994 likely would have been more pronounced. Indeed, voters appeared to give Clinton's fiscal policies considerable credit for the economic boom of the middle and late 1990s. In rejecting the Clinton legacy, the Democratic Party has actually worsened its performance in the electoral college in the last two Presidential elections, has suffered damaging setbacks in the Senate (especially, in the South), and seems to have little chance to retake the House any time soon. Thus, I must say that I find your argument regarding Clinton and his legacy fallacious.

With regard to your argument that Clinton was bad for Labor, I largely disagree with you, with some limited exceptions. Many things were at work. Globalization was a rising phenomenon long before most Americans had even heard of Bill Clinton. He argued that America had to remain competitive, master science and new technologies and make sure it had the best educational system in the world to prosper. It is hard to dispute that logic. Moreover, if one takes protectionism to an extreme, the results can be disastrous. The pre-Depression Smoot-Hawley Act certainly proved that. I have consistently argued on this Blog that the U.S. should not be making unilateral trade concessions to trade cheaters like Red China, especially given its decimation of whole U.S. industries through unfair trade and currency manipulation, its aggressive and hegemonic foreign and defense policies, and its lack of interest in assisting us in reining in Kim Jong-Il and North Korea. In contrast, I have supported trade agreements in Latin America, because the U.S. cannot simply be content with artificial barriers that generally have unintended consequences in any case. On the contrary, the U.S. must constantly be seeking new markets overseas for the economy to grow. Finally, I would argue that the U.S. Labor movement has sometimes behaved in counterproductive ways. It has been slow to organize new immigrants or to organize anti-union companies and corporations in recent decades. Thus, it has lost much of the dynamism that it had under leaders like George Meany, Walter Reuther and Lane Kirkland. Moreover, Meany and Kirkland had great appeal to traditional Blue Collar Workers and Hard Hats because of their pro-Defense views and culturally conservative philosophies. The marriage of Big Labor with the post-Vietnam and post-McGovern Liberals has caused Labor to lose considerable prestige among working class families. Blue Collar families disenchanted with modern Liberalism became the Reagan Democrats, with many later converting to the Republican Party. Consequently, I largely do not agree with your logic on the Labor issue either.

Mike M -- I can and do support the concept of a Big Tent coalition. I have given contributions to many candidates that I would characterize as stereotypical post-Vietnam Liberals to assist the Democratic Party as a whole. However, I get very tired of Deaniacs, Kossacks, and MYDD maligning pro-Defense Liberals, New Democrats, and Blue Dog Democrats. If they are going to do this, then they should expect sharp rebuttals. The only thing that I would say to you is that the national Democratic Party is going to have to convince voters as a whole that it is serious about national security and no longer soft on defense. Moreover, the Democratic Party needs to find a way of winning over Red State and Red District voters. FDR, Harry S. Truman, Jack Kennedy, and LBJ showed this could be done. Bill Clinton, to a lesser degree, showed it could be done. We would be well advised to formulate a strategy to address these electoral requirements, not to mention that for the Democratic Party to ignore national defense issues is an abrogation of its responsibilities.