Dumb Democrat Tricks, Ongoing

Let's talk about the 2000 Presidential election.  Al Gore lost - yes, I know, Florida, Nader, the Brooks Brothers protesters, the US Supreme Court picking the President, etc.  Those all happened, and they were all a big problem for us.  But we didn't get George W. in the White House because of any one of them, or even because of all of them together.  The plain fact is that Al Gore had the White House in his hand, but he lost it, and it was for one simple fact:  A clear majority of the Democratic party apparatus - politicians, staffers, consultants, pundits - have full ownership of the Republican party's caricature of the Democrats.

Did you get that?  The official ranks of the Democratic party are full of people who think that the worldview found on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and in Ann Coulter's books is correct:  Democrats - that is, the base - are crazy hippy-dippy moonbats who want 100% tax rates and redistribution plans, who will make monthly abortions mandatory and who will outlaw all religion.  We'll declare "traditional" marriage illegal while only recognizing marriages between humans and animals or inanimate objects.

These Democrats believe that whatever business wants, business should get.  They believe unions are fundamentally corrupt, ineffective, inefficient and so last century.  They think free trade and globalization are cures for whatever ails our economy.

There is one other belief that unites all these Democrats, a belief that unfortunately has been able to escape from their little cliques and find its way into the hearts and minds of other Democrats who don't agree with them on anything else.  It's the belief that Bill Clinton is a bad person.

Oh, they may pay lip service to or even actually think that he's a good politician or a good President.  But when the Clintons moved to Washington, DC, the conservative noise machine, already a well-organized, well-funded group of talk radio hosts, newspaper/magazine columnists and TV pundits, immediately announced to the world that they were not good people, not the right "type" for the White House.  Bill was a skirt-chasing playboy, and Hillary was a man-hating, ultra-ambitious shrew.

And the Democrats bought into it.  Some of them did so because they were more devoted to their position in the DC high society structure, others because they wanted someone else in the White House, and still others because there's been an infectious strain of spinus nonformus running through the Democratic party for quite some time.  Democrats have been running away from Bill Clinton for 16 years, and that more than anything else has been the Democratic party's downfall during that time.

That's what lost the 2000 election for Al Gore.  When Gore chose that nasty, petty little Joe Lieberman as his running mate, it was over.  Everyone knew that choosing Lieberman was about refuting Gore's entire time as Vice President, refuting everything that had happened in the country under Bill Clinton's leadership.  By picking the Democrat who jumped the hardest on Clinton's case during the impeachment circus - not the only Democrat, by no means, but the one who really wanted to make himself known for it - Gore sent a message of rejection to Bill Clinton as clearly as if he had spoken the words in a TV commercial. 

Aside from removing any rationale for a Gore candidacy, the DC Democrats miscalculated about the way people, ordinary, normal people, feel about Bill Clinton.  They relied upon the DC echo chamber for their views instead of paying attention to the level of support that Clinton enjoyed from the rest of Americans during his entire presidency and especially during the GOP's attempted coup.  Americans love Bill Clinton.  Even the ones that offer up the by-now-standard boilerplate about his supposed moral failings love him, loved his time as President.  If Bill Clinton could run again, he could win as a write-in candidate.

The other truism of American politics is that Americans also love Hillary.  Unlike what the Villagers believe, Americans thought that Hillary showed remarkable strength and devotion during the impeachment debacle, and any regular person who spends five minutes in her presence will know for a fact that far from relying on Bill's Presidency to get this far, if anything she would have become a Senator and/or a Governor a long time ago.  Like it or not, Hillary and Bill form the soul of the Democratic party - which doesn't necessarily translate into support for her candidacy.  But they are the biggest things we've got.

That's why things like this are so infuriating.

Aside from giving the lie to Obama's supposed "different way" of doing politics, this is the type of stuff that will lose us the election.  I'm not saying that Hillary's history is off-limits.  Nor is Bill as Hillary's husband off-limits.  But dammit, President Bill Clinton and his term are off-limits, because going after that means going after the only thing the Democrats have since the Carter Administration.  No wonder Obama is going around venerating Reagan and proclaiming the GOP as the "party of ideas."

Al Gore lost because he ran away from being a Democrat.  There was no reason for his candidacy, no reason for him to even be a Democrat.  John Kerry lost because he also ran away from being a Democrat.  His campaign was the epitome of Bob "May His Name And Lineage Be Erased" Shrum's brilliant "me too me too me too!" political strategy, which consists of agreeing with everything the Republicans say and then hoping that people choose the Democrat because D comes before R in the alphabet or something.

And Obama has already begun running away from Clinton and away from the Democratic party.  This kind of thing, once started, won't stop here.  Hillary and Obama are tied, and the gloves are going to come off - even Mr. Nice-and-Civil is going to get rougher as time goes on.  This kind of thing also cannot be undone.  We can't make this rhetoric, these flyers, go away during the general election.  Every time Obama makes this campaign a referendum about Bill Clinton's presidency and/or personal characteristics, he's playing along with the GOP's favorite strategy. 

And he will lose in November - to McCain, to Romney, to Huckabee or to a handkerchief with George Bush's morning noseblow on it.  Because those Americans who don't live in DC, who aren't addicted to political coverage and who don't attend Georgetown cocktail parties want a choice - a real choice, not one between McCain's crazy brand of Republicanism vs. Obama's more genteel and civil brand of Republicanism-lite.

Stupid Democrats.

Comments

[Joe]

Democrats liked the Clintons and like the Clintons. Democrats respect the Clintons' political skill. Love is a strong word. Moreover, the Clintons triangulated more than Al Gore (the people versus the powerful) or John Kerry. Bill signed welfare reform and presided over a huge expansion of free trade. Those were his signature achievements. Hillary has consistently supported military action where the United States probably should not be intervening (most egregiously, in Iraq). To say that Bill adn Hillary are true Democrats more than Al Gore or John Kerry is a deliberate misreading of history. Bill and Hillary are more talented politicians than Al Gore and John Kerry. Bill and Hillary were more successful at taking and keeping power than Al Gore and John Kerry. But Bill and Hillary Clinton did not stand up for Democratic principles (at least liberal ones) more than Al gore or John Kerry.

[Stephen]

To say that Bill adn Hillary are true Democrats more than Al Gore or John Kerry is a deliberate misreading of history.

I guess. Nothing in my post suggests this, nor even comes close. It's not about anyone's record, or how closely they resemble a Real True Democrat. I've got most of the same criticism of Bill and Hillary as you, though I'd like people to remember Bill's attempt to integrate the military and Hillary's attempt to provide all Americans with healthcare; both of which would have been "signature accomplishments" of Bill's Presidency had they worked. But not only did they fail to achieve those goals, both Bill and Hillary got very badly burned. That has far more to do with Bill's subsequent move to the center than what the DLC would have us believe.

As for triangulation, for Bill Clinton, triangulation was about exploiting the weaknesses in the GOP, not about creating new weaknesses in the Democratic party. Again, as practiced by Bill Clinton it was a different beast than it has become under the likes of Harold Ford, Jr. and Bob "Burn In Hell For All Eternity" Shrum.

[Ari]

The plain fact is that Al Gore had the White House in his hand, but he lost it, and it was for one simple fact: A clear majority of the Democratic party apparatus - politicians, staffers, consultants, pundits - have full ownership of the Republican party's caricature of the Democrats.

I love your blog. I love your work. I may even love you. I have no idea. But this post is wrong. And the sentence above is wrong, particularly when coupled with the rest of what you've written.

And here's why: Al Gore lost in 2000, if you choose to put it that way, because of a fiasco in Florida -- put all you want into that basket -- and a Supreme Court so craven, so nakedly partisan, and so hypocritical that it was willing to steal an election from a candidate and the American people.

Saying otherwise is buying into Republican talking points, which is precisely what you're accusing others of doing in the body of your post. The basic assumptions in the above quoted statement, in sum, are just flat wrong.

Moving on, you have an alarming tendency to avoid specifics in what amounts to a long list of allegations. For example, what does The official ranks of the Democratic party mean? If you can't give us names, how about positions? The head of the Democratic Party? Howard Dean? Really, who are we talking about here? If you don’t have an answer, maybe you should sit on your hands and take a breath before you start typing.

Then there’s this gem: When Gore chose that nasty, petty little Joe Lieberman as his running mate. So, you knew, in 2000, that Lieberman was nasty and petty? Really? If you did, good on you. But I doubt it. Most people, the very Democrats you decry, had doubts about Lieberman but thought he was a high-risk/high-reward choice. It turns out that was wrong. And, it also turns out that Lieberman is a repugnant little man. I just doubt you knew it then. Or, that if you did, you had no better choice in mind at the time.

Furthermore, how many voters in 2000 do you think remembered Lieberman from the impeachment. Because if you're playing a populist game here -- people, ordinary, normal people -- you should be consistent. So, once again, who are these people? And why are you using this kind of normative language? Is there a normal Democrat? I'd like to meet this person. And then, assuming we can find one, I'd like to know if they paid such close attention to the impeachment proceedings that they had any opinion of Joe Lieberman before he shared the ticket with Al Gore. Again, the point here isn't that Liberman's a good guy; it's that your dealing in calumnies and half-truths.

Which leads me to: Like it or not, Hillary and Bill form the soul of the Democratic party. Again I say: really? What's your evidence for this? The Clintons are, without question, the most famous Democrats in this country. And Bill was, arguably, a great president, while she was an excellent first lady and remains a mediocre-to-good senator. But how that makes them the soul of the Democratic Party is totally beyond me.

Finally: But dammit, President Bill Clinton and his term are off-limits. I don't even know where to begin. Oh, wait, how about here: why? Why are they off limits? I can understand saying that attacking Hillary based on gender is off limits. Or attacking Obama based on race is off limits. I’d even agree with those arguments. I can even imagine saying that attacking a fellow Democrat might be a bad idea. But saying that such a thing is off limits? Why? Remember, Bill has injected himself into the middle of the campaign, making it clear that if we vote for Hillary we get him as part of the package. So why can't Obama talk about the Clinton years? You’ll need to make better case for this. Otherwise, it just reads like another spoiled ingredient in a pretty nasty stew you’ve concocted.

Stupid Democrats. The real point of your post, right? I mean no disrespect. I really do love your blog. And I really do love your work. But this post is drivel. And it's filled with half-truths, colored by outright lies, that obscure any of the deeper points contained within it.

[bdub]

I don't have a problem with that flier. It is accurate. Many of us libs feel that Clinton abandoned the party via his triangulation and by passing the bills he passed.

You write,, "As for triangulation, for Bill Clinton, triangulation was about exploiting the weaknesses in the GOP, not about creating new weaknesses in the Democratic party." The result was the same.

I think these are valid criticisms.

And I have to second the comment of Ari.

Furthermore, you claim that it is a truism that Americans love Hillary. I would question whether you can support that assertion. Polls suggest she has a ceiling when it comes to her "lovability" and anecdotally, I know many moderate to liberal people who, for whatever reason, have stated that they will NEVER vote for Hillary.

That being said, it was a thought-provoking post and I hope you are wrong about Obama embracing a broader strategy of running as a non-Democrat, which was a big concern of mine from the get-go.

[Joe]

Well, what did you mean by saying that Al Gore and John Kerry ran away from being Democrats ? As near as I could tell, they didn't. Al Gore and John Kerry stood up for traditional Democratic principles like Social Security, abortion rights, civil rights, and expansion of health care to those who couldn't afford it. I guess your post confused me when you seemed to contrast Bill and Hillary Clinton with Al Gore and John Kerry.

[Josh R.]

Bob Somberby is gonna be mad at you for not mentioning the mainstream media and for laying it all at feet of conservative media. He's especially gonna be mad that you discount that reason for Gore's loss in 00.

"These Democrats believe that whatever business wants, business should get. They believe unions are fundamentally corrupt, ineffective, inefficient and so last century. They think free trade and globalization are cures for whatever ails our economy."

In some ways, didn't you just describe...the Clintons? Go read the Matt Bai piece on Clintonism in the New York Times Magazine and it comes clear. If you don't remember clearly, as Bai points out, Clinton came into town already seeking a third way--his future triangulation is in some ways a fulfillment of an already existant governing philosophy (the same one that gave you NAFTA and the end of big gov't as we know it).

And to write that Obama venerates Reagan is beyond the pale--it's unsupported by what he said. And, of course, ignores comments by Hill that are laudatory of Big Bad Reagan.

I've got most of the same criticism of Bill and Hillary as you, though I'd like people to remember Bill's attempt to integrate the military and Hillary's attempt to provide all Americans with healthcare; both of which would have been "signature accomplishments" of Bill's Presidency had they worked.

Sure, I'll remember those valiant failures, and I'll also remember NAFTA and Hillary's vote for the Iraq force authorization bill.

I hope Obama runs, to a certain degree, away from Clinton, both of them. Hillary's bought into the "How to Appear Strong" bullshit that leads one to give cover to the President to conduct war in Iraq (as well as Iran, although that's looking unlikely). Bill showed his true coward ways by shutting up for eight years while Bush trashed the country, but getting all riled up that a marginally different Democrat was going to beat her to the convention.

Keep Hillary in the Senate where her wonk can do some good and let Obama be the leader of the party (and this is from someone who has reservations about Obama, no homer here).

[lux]

Stephen, I respect you, but you're wrong. Here's a different way of looking at things, by way of a pal of mine:

Between 1932 and 1968 only one Republican was elected POTUS. That only happened because Eisenhower was a Republican who Democrats liked. (Let's face it, he could have run on the Satanist ticket and won.) In fact, it was the conservative wing of the Republican party that distrusted him most. They went along with his nomination in part because they felt he was a sure thing and in part because they felt that he wasn't much of a politician and thus could be controlled. (They were right on the first assumption, dead wrong on the second, which is how we got Earl Warren as Chief Justice, a sin for which the conservative wing still hasn't forgiven Ike.)

For about 40 years it was the Republicans who had no grassroots activists and no real strength at getting the vote out.

But in 1968 the Democrats mostly stayed home. Then again in 1972. In fact, from 1968 and today it's mostly been the Democrats staying home and the Republican activists (mostly from the Christian right) who have been out there driving the agenda. Whatever Democrat activists have been out there have been mostly detrius from the 60s.

And, reversing the previous trend, only two Democrats were elected POTUS during this period. Carter was basically a fluke who probably would not have been elected but for the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon and thus made himself non-viable to too many people. Clinton was elected by appealling to Republicans because the grassroots Democrat activists still stayed home.

The point being that things do change and this stuff does cycle. The Republican activists you remember are now tired, frustrated and mostly disillusioned with the fact that the world of realpolitic and the world of wishful thinking aren't the same. (The Democrats felt the same way in 1968.) They're no longer the invincible force they once was. In fact, the're almost as obsolete as the old hippies in Venice Beach still spouting their slogans from the Summer of Love...

[Stephen]

Al Gore lost in 2000, if you choose to put it that way, because of a fiasco in Florida -- put all you want into that basket -- and a Supreme Court so craven, so nakedly partisan, and so hypocritical that it was willing to steal an election from a candidate and the American people.

I agre with that. But I'm also one of those that believes Gore would have performed much better in the election had he not spent his entire campaign repudiating his own history.

If you can't give us names, how about positions?

First, 31 Democrats voted with the GOP to begin impeachment hearings. Second, instead of standing firm against the impeachment and despite the fact that the American public was fully against impeaching Clinton in the first place, Congressional Democrats even offered up an official censure of the President for his conduct as a way for Clinton's GOP enemies to have the satisfaction of officially condemning him without going through an impeachment. Democrats intentionally offered the GOP an "honorable" way out even though public opinion was on their side. Perhaps "all Congressional Democrats" in 1998 is enough of a list of positions, perhaps not. And you either believe that criticizing Bill has become SOP for Democrats or not; the evidence for it fills our newspapers, magazines and blogs.

My comments about the Clintons forming the soul of the Democratic party simply reflect that we don't have anyone else to point to. Congressional leaders and governors don't become party symbols; presidents do. We're not going to rally around Carter, or LBJ or even Kennedy anymore. Clinton is the party symbol, so going after his presidency is attacking the Democratic party itself.

The GOP doesn't suffer from this, because they've had more presidents than us recently and because in addition to their current president, they've been spending the last 20 years trying to turn Reagan into a deity. So a Republican can be all about Reagan while criticizing Bush, and it's not an attack on the GOP.

It might suck, but that's political reality right now.

The real point of your post, right?

Yes! DC Democrats are some of the dumbest people on the planet. There never was a massive move to the right, never was this all-powerful conservative movement. Bush had to steal 2000 to get in the White House, and 2004 was very close. Even the GOP's much-vaunted Congressional control was razor-thin until 2006. So there's no real reason why Democrats should have lost so many electoral and legislative battles. There's no reason why Democrats are still losing legislative battles, but they keep following Broder's script, handing the Republicans whatever they want.

I do appreciate the compliments, and even that you think my post is drivel. I'd rather be called out on it than not, even though you are, of course, wrong.

[low-tech cyclist]

Al Gore lost because he ran away from being a Democrat. There was no reason for his candidacy, no reason for him to even be a Democrat.

Ah, so "the people versus the powerful" is GOP-lite, is it?

Stephen, I've got a high opinion of you, but this is nonsense. If anything, Gore was a bit ahead of the curve, too populist for 2000.

These Democrats believe that whatever business wants, business should get. They believe unions are fundamentally corrupt, ineffective, inefficient and so last century. They think free trade and globalization are cures for whatever ails our economy.

Sounds a lot like NAFTA Bill.

for Bill Clinton, triangulation was about exploiting the weaknesses in the GOP, not about creating new weaknesses in the Democratic party. Again, as practiced by Bill Clinton it was a different beast than it has become under the likes of Harold Ford, Jr. and Bob "Burn In Hell For All Eternity" Shrum.

I would have to disagree - it's not that different.

Triangulation, for Bill Clinton, was fundamentally a slowing-the-retreat tactic. And that's what the entire last six years of the Clinton Administration were - a slow retreat, with clever political tactics to try to lose as little ground as possible. Ending welfare as we know it, to hold onto an insufficient bit of safety net, and the like.

But never that I can recall, not in 1997 or 1999 or 2000 when he was free to do so, did he try to set the stage for the Dems to claim new ground. Never once did he try to rally his party around a forward-looking, positive expression of what it means to be a Democrat.

I won't say Bill Clinton ran away from his party during his Presidency; he saved that for later. And he was a good manager in the technocratic sense. But he wasn't exactly Mr. Proud-to-be-a-Democrat, either. And the Democratic Party really was worse off in 2001 than it had been in 1991, and Bill Clinton's a large part of the reason why.

And of course, since he left the White House, Bill Clinton has given George W. Bush a free pass. Fine, be Mr. Elder Statesman. Except that excuse was eviscerated when he went after Obama on specious grounds.

If being an Elder Statesman means treating the Worst President Ever with kid gloves, but trashing one of your own party for trivial reasons, then who's fighting on the side of one's party?

I agree that we shouldn't take part in knee-jerk sniping at Clinton - that we ought to cut that nonsense off at the knees. But frankly, he has done little to help his party, and he doesn't deserve an unjustified across-the-board defense.

[Eric]

Clinton the *heart* of the Democratic party? Please. Even if the reasoning in the rest of this piece weren't so leaden, this statement would be enough to sink it.

At best, Clinton was a conservative Democrat whose reign has indeed had a net-negative effect on the party by creating a DLC subculture that has kowtowed to each and every GOP request in the name of some false-God bipartisanship for the better part of a decade. No tenet too central to dispatch in the name of "compromise." Gosh, those GOP devils fooled us again! (and so forth)

There is simply no way around that fact: Clinton didn't invent triangulation, but he sure as hell harnessed it, and HAS to take partial ownership for everything that's come out of it. Period. The sooner the Democratic Party can face that and move on, the better off the country will be.

[R. Stanton Scott]

I don't agree with everything you write here, though I might have said much the same thing with a different approach. Still, I think you hit a couple of nails squarely.

Bob Shrum should be unemployable as a political consultant or campaign manager. He's done nothing more than enrich himself by taking kickbacks on campaign ad purchases, and completely misreads our political landscape by buying into beltway conventional wisdom. Specifically, he seems to think that everyone in the US approaches politics like a wealthy white man who can get powerful people to answer the phone.

I also think you correctly point out a huge problem with the Democratic leadership. Except for Howard Dean they seem to have no concern or interest in the opinions of the base--and indeed seem to hold them in contempt. To some degree the Clintons are guilty of this--they seem to have bought into the notion that we should organize society around corporations and markets. And the Shrums of the world think objecting to this will cost votes, even as more and more Americans question its logic.

Of more immediate importance, however, is the tendency to allow Republicans to choose the political battlefield. As an example, people like Shrum allowed the 2004 election to hinge on Kerry's Vietnam service without going after Bush's time in the Guard more aggressively.

Finally, it is useful to point out, as you do, that Bill and Hillary Clinton are good people. Whatever their flaws, I believe they both went into public service for the right reasons, and they have the skills to get results from their good intentions, even if they don't win every fight. We should also remember how ridiculous it is to blame the Clinton's for being "divisive"--another example of playing on the GOP's home field. This is a bit like blaming the wife who didn't get the pot roast just right for the beating her husband gave her for it.

And that is how I would characterize the Democratic Party today. GOP operatives like Atwater and Rove have beaten Dems with baseball bats for years, and too many liberals think it is their fault.

[ikl]

Stephen, did you live in Kansas during the 1990's? Do you think that it is a coincidence that Obama won big majorities in states in the interior west where the Democratic party went from being a minority party to a joke during the 1990s? If not, do you have another explanation for this rather striking trend?

Claiming that Americans love Bill Clinton is a bit like claiming that Americans loved GWB in 2002 or 2003. Because you are on the left you don't immediately see how silly the Clinton claim is whereas I suspect that you don't agree with the later claim. Both figures were pretty polarizing but had majority support some of the time. That is different from being widely loved (FDR and Reagan were arguably widely loved and won landslide reelection victories but they were also loathed by a substantial and vocal minority - Clinton and Bush, not so much).

Moreover, you don't actually address the claim in the Obama flyer is which not that Bill didn't get votes (he did, especially as an incumbent in 1996), but that the Clinton white house was bad for the party which is at the very least a highly plausible claim given the evidence cited in the flyer. The Democrats lost congress after 40 years of (more or less) control in 1994 and they didn't get it back until Bush's approval ratings hit 35% or so (basically a gift from the right).

Also, if Obama is Republican light, how do you explain the parade of progressives coming out for Obama in the past month? Is there some sort of collective delusion going on here? And what do you make of foreign policy? If anyone is Bush-light, isn't it Clinton? I think that you are confusing rhetorical positioning and underlying policy commitment here and completely ignoring foreign affairs.

[Stephen]

but that the Clinton white house was bad for the party which is at the very least a highly plausible claim given the evidence cited in the flyer.

That's one criticism of the flyer I didn't fit into the post: by its logic, Bush has been great for the Democratic party. We've got Congress again and we control a majority of governorships and state legislatures.

It's a stupid, simplistic attack against Bill Clinton that doesn't even try to address his actual record. But what Obama is trying to do is make the Democratic primary a referendum on Bill Clinton's presidency, which is a guaranteed loser.

As for foreign policy, I hate the Hillary voted for the AUMF and won't repudiate that vote. But if you get past that rather simplistic yardstick, her approach is pretty much the same as Obama's. If we can trust them to act in office as they claim, electing one or the other will make little, if any, difference in America's actual foreign policy.

Stephen, did you live in Kansas during the 1990's?

Yes, around half of them. It could be that Obama's success in red states like Kansas has to do with the conservative nature of the Democratic party in those states, where anti-Clinton feelings still run high even among Democrats.

[Adrock]

My mother asked me to provide reasons she can use to convince her coworkers to vote for a D this November instead of an R. She says that everyone is complaining that the Democrats will hurt the middle class. Hear that? Democrats will hurt the middle class. The worst part of it all? She works in an elementary school of a lower-middle class district in "liberal" Massachusetts. Read that last sentence again. When I heard that from her I couldn't help but feel that everything I've done to contribute to liberal causes has been for naught.

[Ari]

even though you are, of course, wrong

Stephen, if this is a joke, it's funny. Regardless, everyone puts up a tragically bad post now and again. So don't feel bad. I remain a fan both of you and the (now redesigned) blog.

[Harper]

That's one criticism of the flyer I didn't fit into the post: by its logic, Bush has been great for the Democratic party. We've got Congress again and we control a majority of governorships and state legislatures.

No, by the flyer's logic, Bush has been bad for the Republican party. Which judging by the state of the GOP these days, seems pretty inarguably true.

[Crissa]

Yeah, if that ad had come out Monday, I don't think Obama would have won quite the catch-up swell that he did.

[ikl]

I disagree that Clinton and Obama have a similar approach to foreign policy. Or at least, I think that there are likely to be important enough differences that it would be a big mistake to conclude that they are similar and move on. It matters quite a lot to me that people like Samantha Power are Obama foreign policy advisors and that Clinton's team are the same folks that gave Bush the benefit of the doubt on the Iraq war. Predicting foreign policy is hard because we don't know what will happen over the next 5 years. But this is the area where the President does almost whatever he or she wants subject to constraints imposed mainly by external forces (foreign countries) rather than Congress. So I don't think that literalism about platforms is the way to assess foreign policy - rather you want to try to get a sense of the instincts of the candidate and those of their trusted advisors. Because that is going to determine how they respond to now unknown situtions that will arise in the next 5 years, not the details of their positioning in the campaign. Obama is making the right noises on foreign policy (talk to foreign countries that we don't get along with including Iran and Cuba, no torture, repudiate Bush's foreign policy positioning, action on Darfur, etc). The point is not that I just the I tend to agree with Obama on these issues (though that is also true), but that they suggest that his way of thinking about foreign policy would be systematically more in line with mine. I think that US foreign policy is systematically pretty screwed up (ex. Cuba) and the Clinton team basically promises a return to a much more competently executed (one would hope!) version of the same screwed up policies. That is likely to be a big improvement over Bush but not so great in the grand scheme of things. And Hillary's unwillingness to cross Washington foreign policy conventional wisdom even just a little bit seems like a very bad sign. Now, this is all of guessing game. I could be wrong. But the stakes are pretty high and just about all of the evidence points in one direction.

Don't you think that caucuses tend to attract a higher proportion of Democratic activists than primaries? People who vote based on a sense of who would be good for the party in their state. I don't necessarily think that Dem voters in the interior west are really conservative. I don't really know, but I don't think that it is reasonable to just assume this (anyone who is a Democratic in Idaho is really swimming against the tide and is likely to be a bit of a freethinker). But it may be that they don't like the Clintons much for a combination of cultural and ideological reasons. If you look at demographics, if you were the sort of voter who probably was a Repubican in the late 19th century (blacks, white northern Protestants especially Yankees but German and Scandanavian protestants to a less extent), then you are probably an Obama voter today. If you would probably have been a Democrat (white southerners, Catholics - I don't know how Hispanics voted then but Hispanic immigrant groups today seem somewhat similar to earlier waves of white urban Catholics), you are more likely to vote Clinton. Since Obama voters look a bit like the old Republican coalition, it is not so surprising that white folks in the interior west are for him - but this may be a matter of political style rather than anything that maps onto left - right divisions. Remember that the Republican / Democratic divide of the late 19th century doesn't really track anything very clear in today's ideological terms.

If anti-Clinton feelings still run high among Democrats in the interior west, doesn't this run against your whole agrument above? Yes, most people in MA and NY like the Clintons. But that is perfectly consistent with Clinton rule being not so great for the party as a whole if they were hurting the party in lots of red states. And that is sort of the point of the Obama flyer. Nobody thinks that Obama is going to be competitive in Idaho. But if he doesn't tend to drag down the rest of the ticket, that would have to count pretty significantly in his favor.

Hasn't Bush been great for the Democratic party (obviously he has been a disaster for the country, but that is a separate question? He gave Congress back to the Dems through sheer force of unpopularity. And he still might drag an otherwise strong Republican nominee down with him in 2008. Not to mention losses in Governor posts and state legislatures. And the Democratic base has been really fired up since 2004. We'll have to see what happens. The Democrats may or may not convert this opportunity into a stable majority. But Bush has given them a real chance.

[ikl]

Also, here in CT the Obama-Clinton map looked a lot like the Lamont-Liberman map in the 2006 primary. I would submit that CT Democrats are not confused here. (In other news, polls in CT show some pretty serious buyers remorse about Liberman).

Meanwhile, the candidate for "Lamont voters" in CT was bring droves of independents and Republicans to the caucus in Kansas to switch party registration and vote for the same candidate that the Lamont voters in CT like:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/6/1095/14512/555/451003

How is this a bad thing for the Democrats? Especially if you are a more left-leaning Democrat?

[djw]

I agree with Stephen's critics a bit more than Stephen here, and I don't think particularly highly of his characterization of Gore, Kerry, or Obama's campaigns, but I have to object to Ari's taunting question here:

So, you knew, in 2000, that Lieberman was nasty and petty? Really? If you did, good on you.

If you didn't know Lieberman as a snivelling little worm in 2000, it's simply because you weren't paying attention. His conduct during the impeachment is just the tip of the iceberg. Co-founding ACTA with Lynne Cheney? Hell, read his book The Power Broker, which is a hagiographic love letter to a corrupt machine politician. Most people didn't know how bad he was because they (understandably and quite reasonably) didn't follow his career closely. Those who did, knew. We shouldn't belittle them for it.

[Josh]

"Al Gore lost because he ran away from being a Democrat."

Al Gore lost because he ran away from Bill Clinton. There's a difference.

There are those who felt that Bill Clinton ran away from being a Democrat. Things like his abandonment of real reform of gays in the military (a campaign pledge which morphed into a Republican-lite DADT policy), or the claim that "the era of Big Government is over (adopting Republican talking points, and rejecting a core Democratic value that what matters is not the size of government, but what it does), or Hillary's industry-drafted health insurance plan (which abandoned a chance for real reform in favor of an industry-friendly Republican-lite proposal).

Furthermore, this is all fair game, since Hillary's claim is that she has more experience, and that she was a key part of the first Clinton administration. Her failure at healthcare reform helped Republicans take Congress. She is touting her participation in an administration which, through its rhetoric about a "Third Way," implicitly attacked every Democrat who came before them. And she isn't disowning that rhetoric or the mistakes she made then.

Those errors, the triangulation and the idea that you beat Republicans by acting more like them on foreign policy and in industrial regulation was behind her votes on Iraq and Iran. It's the sort of President she'd be.

Needless to say, that's still a better Presidency than Bush's has been or than we'd have under any Republican who even thought about running in 2008, and I'll vote for her and work for her election if she's the nominee.

But Obama's plan is simply not Republican-lite, and it isn't fair to claim that "President Bill Clinton and his term are off-limits." Not if she's going to use him and her role in that presidency as qualifications. The Clinton years were better than the Bush years, but they weren't perfect. I happen to think that Obama years would be better than H. Clinton years would be, or than B. Clinton years were.

[Ari]

djw: Sorry that you didn't like that part of my comment, the whole of which was written in the spirit of the original post. Again, as I noted in the paragraph from which you selectively drew that quote, I allowed that it's possible that Stephen did know that Lieberman was a toad in 2000. And I believe that you did. Perhaps you'll even grant that I did at the time and found the choice poisonous.

But that's not the point of what I wrote, nor was it the point of the original post. I was responding to this line: Everyone knew that choosing Lieberman was about refuting Gore's entire time as Vice President, refuting everything that had happened in the country under Bill Clinton's leadership. That sentence, I maintain, is as ridiculous as the rest of Stephen's post. It is stitched together from generalizations based on nothing more than angry misreadings of the past and a romantic glorification of some normative Democratic voter.

Sure, Gore was reaching out to conservative Democrats by choosing one of his party's theocrats. But the idea that the mainstream of the Democratic electorate understood this is just wrong. Most voters, if they knew anything at all about Joe Lieberman, knew only three things: his religious faith, advertised as deep; his family story, especially his wife's biography; his ostensible appeal in Florida, based on both of the previous traits. Give me any evidence that I'm wrong, that there was some popular sense of Lieberman's role in the impeachment fiasco, and I'll back down. And by popular I don't mean among political junkies. Or even among high-information voters. I mean popular, among rank-and-file Democrats.

[Josh R.]

Al Gore lost in 2000 because:

1) he was successfully tarred as a lying punk whom the public couldn't trust, whereas Bush, running as a compassionate conservative, i.e. a safe conservative who wouldn't do too much different from Gore policy wise except perhaps on abortion and guns, was the good ole boy you could trust. If the Gore doesn't get tagged a lying piece of shit by the media (cf Love Story, the Internet, and so many others), Bush's entire approach would have fell far more flat.

2) The Supreme Court.

[djw]

Ari, fair enough, as I said I agree with much of your comment and I don't like the narrative Stephen is foisting on Obama/Kerry/Gore. But Leiberman is one data point in favor of Stephen's narrative that we ought not bother to try to twist or rebut, becuase it clearly works for him.

I'll also add that this eternal search for the "real" reason Gore lost is premised on a logical fallacy. It's a big, complex outcome with a ton of potential causal factors that probably would have changed it. Errors in Campaign strategy may have sunk Gore, but so did Nader, GOP perfidy in FL, SCOTUS, etc. None of these causes are more real than any of the others, even if we were to embrace Stephen's counterfactual logic about the nature of the campaign (which I think certainly may be correct, but I don't claim to know it for certain and I don't really see how anyone can).

[Ari]

djw: Absolutely. The 2000 election was a catastrophic clusterf***. And trying to tease out this point or that one as we reconsider Gore's "loss" is a bit silly. That said, there's no doubt in my mind that Lieberman did Gore no favors. But not for the reasons Stephen suggests. So again, my problem is with the tone and substance of the original post, which is lazy, nasty, and filled with Republican talking points.

All of that said, I really meant what I said: blogging is insanely hard. Everyone gets a pass for a bad post here and there. I think this blog is fantastic and Stephen's work on it is stellar. So I probably should have shut up from the beginning. But something about the revisionism in the original post got my back up. I meant no offense either to you or Stephen, no matter how vehement my response my have been.

[Tom]

Bullshit, Stephen.

Emphasizing antiwar credentials is "republican-lite"? Really?

Obama, who has been winning more liberal and better-educated segments of Democratic primary voters, is running away from the party? Really?

Nominating Hillary, who has repeatedly failed to oppose the war, is the way to give the electorate a "real choice" against McCain? Really?

The guy who pushed to get NAFTA passed and proudly condemned "the era of big government" and "welfare as we know it" is the soul of the Democratic Party? Really?

Ridiculous.

[Felicia]

Umm, what about how the Clintons have denigrated Obama and his record? Also, Obama isn't going around calling Reagan and the GOP gods. He was pointing out that the Democratic party needs to improve--a point you seem to agree with. They need to stop being sissies and sticking with the "status quo", that is one of Obama's messages. What the hell?

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

I see that it's terrible, no good, very bad politics to suggest that the Clinton Administration wasn't the greatest Democratic Party-building exercise in American history, but it's smart, insightful, and all-round constructive good politics to write a post excoriating half the party, which concludes "Stupid Democrats."

Seriously, why is it bad for Obama to point out Clinton's failure to achieve Democratic goals? Obama is appealing for the support of members of the Democratic Party. If Hillary Clinton wants to make the case that Bill Clinton's presidency was a net gain for the party (and there's a perfectly respectable to case be made there), nothing's stopping her.

The point is that what we now have is an argument between candidacies and factions about how well the party's been run and led over the last couple of decades. This is an entirely legitimate argument for Democrats, and Democratic voters, to have among themselves. That's why we have a contested race for the nomination, and primary elections.

It's remarkably silly to have the vapors over that Obama ad when you're writing a post slamming a huge chunk of the party yourself. If you have criticisms of Obama, his campaign, and his supporters, make them. But don't accuse them of being "Republican-lite" just because they dare to have criticisms of other factions of the party. Hashing this stuff out is what we're supposed to be doing.

You seem to be accusing people of bad faith based on merely the fact that they disagree with the value you place on the last Democratic President. That's not exactly an impressive display of good faith on your part.

[Stephen]

I see that it's terrible, no good, very bad politics to suggest that the Clinton Administration wasn't the greatest Democratic Party-building exercise in American history, but it's smart, insightful, and all-round constructive good politics to write a post excoriating half the party, which concludes "Stupid Democrats."

I'm not a presidential candidate.

Further, I haven't seen Hillary campaign on the basis of Bill's presidency. It's just assumed that she is, even though she's not making "I'm just like Bill, only with a vagina" part of her stump speech.

The point is one of solidarity. Democratic Presidential candidates should not spend their time blasting earlier Democratic Presidents. Jeez, everyone knows that George Bush is a horrible president and has done more damage to the Republican party than anyone else ever has and likely ever will. Yet while each of the GOP candidates have been trying to distance themselves from Bush, are any of them pointing out the obvious? Have any of them gone after Bush I for his failures? How about the fact that Newt Gingrich's tenure as Speaker was disasterous for the GOP? Is he a target?

No, of course not, because as bad as the GOP field has been this time around, they at least have a basic understanding of how politics works. If Hillary gets the nomination, this type of stuff will prvide endless rounds of effective ammunition to the GOP and to the media, which just loves their "Divided Democrats" storyline.

You're right that we need to hash this out. We do, not the presidential candidates.