was it the peace or the prosperity?

...that from the perspective of the time, Clinton's years seemed to be wasted years where he maneouvered just enough to survive himself, but never took what many people felt to be the right sort of tactics to permanently undercut the (R). That's what it looked like at the time.

Among other things that felt like capitulations that he needn't have made. It always felt like he, the president, blinked first.

Why that was is the subject of much debate. Seen this way, the some of the stuff you dislike about Obama is, to many of his supporters, an advantage.

In other words, people were expecting the counter-Reagan, and didn't get it, for whatever reason. So they have no confidence that his wife would have been the counter-Reagan.

Unlike them, I don't believe that Obama will be any approximation of a counter-Reagan either. I hope he'll surprise me but it's a faint hope.

I felt during the 1990s that Clinton blinked because Congressional Democrats didn't have his back. Which does not, of course, excuse the blinking. But starting with Sam Nunn on gays in the military to Ted Kennedy on Lani Guinier to Jim Cooper on healthcare, the Dems in Congress could not wait to show their independence from the Democratic President. And if it had been up to many of them Clinton would've resigned instead of fighting impeachment. It was only the 1998 election results that gave the Democrats in the Senate a spine. Otherwise they would've gone along with the coup for the "good of the country", just as they still think Gore did the right thing in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.

Clinton got off to a lousy start, some of it self-inflicted no doubt, but all exacerbated by his "friends" in Congress. Of course, many of those people remain in Congress and are only too happy to blame all of the right-wing shift on Clinton. Just like they like to blame 1994 on him. So much easier than remembering the corruption scandals engulfing the Congress at the time (i.e. Rostenkowski).

The slide to the right by Democrats is not any one person's fault, IMO. Just as it can't be fixed by any one person.

With full-blown CDS. Poor child, maybe there is something in suppository form that can cure the awful itching?

I quote the following from that article in the well-known Clinton loving MSNBC:

"The split pales in comparison to past political convention battles like the 1980 fight between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy. President Carter beat him in the primaries, but Kennedy supporters tried to take away the nomination at the New York convention. Kennedy didn't have the votes for the nomination, and at the convention finale he shunned the hugs and clasped hands that are customary at adjournment. Carter kept trying, almost chasing him around the stage."

Never mind us with that history thing.

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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

I felt during the 1990s that Clinton blinked because Congressional Democrats didn’t have his back.

that is how I felt, the Democrats, not just Clinton, had a mandate to do something about health care, and then they just rolled.

I just hate that Congressional Democrats keep passing every bad thing off on the Clintons. In some ares, Clinton tried to be progressive and got little meaningful support on the Hill. That Sam Nunn was even mentioned as a potential Obama VP shows people learned all the wrong lessons from the Clinton Administration. And, as VL rightly notes, the political landscape was a lot different then.

Congress and political environment Clinton did? Newt? Contract for America? (or whatever that bullsh*t was called).

He isn't. Imagine what Bill Clinton would have done with a country ready to move leftwards... Or, for that matter, Hillary.

I voted for Clinton in 92 despite warnings from liberal friends that he wasn't at all 'liberal'. I didn't care. I just wanted the all out assault on my civil rights to stop. Not a high standard, but Clinton met it and at the same time governed the largest peacetime expansion of our economy, yes?

And what's on offer now? Expanding faith-based interference in government, better and more legal! electonic spying, having my pastor join me at my doctor's appointments ... Obama's got a ways to go before he's a pale imitation.

Which is why I always get furious when liberals scream about Bill Clinton and DADT. That wasn't Bill Clinton's idea. That was the compromise Clinton agreed to after Senator Nunn killed his gays in the military proposal (which was to, you know, put gays in the military). Yet, to hear people tell it now, Clinton simply tacked right on gays in the military, as if he wasn't driven to the right by the Democrats in Congress in, of course, an act of bipartisan unity.

And I was on the interwebs fairly early in its history.

What sticks in people's craw are things like welfare reform. I remember that a lot of people felt that Clinton capitulated too easily on signing it, if it was a capitulation. I felt it was too. And if he were forced to sign it, he should have signed it under protest. But the language he used to describe his signature seems even now unforgivably weaselish.

Also, some people remember and resent the very concept of the "Sister Souljah moment."

So no, myiq2xu, not everyone who was watching remembers the 90s that way. Yes, Bill Clinton faced incredible odds and still survived. Yes, he was internationally popular. Yes, he presided over a booming economy. Yes, he left a country with its financial house in order. These are all in their own specific ways major accomplishments. But to say that he was valiant martyr who fought for progressive ideology in the hideous face of Newt Gingrich is to stretch the point.

Workfare type programs are ideological pollutants. I'd rather keep people on welfare, frankly, than create universal caps that do not respond to the reality of their lives.

Your Sister Souljah question is a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question. That is a rhetorical bomb you are tossing. Making use of black cultural discussions to win points among white people is just low, and, yes, racist.

Racist in the blind sort of way that white people are often, and us coloured folk cannot be by definition, not being the majority or cultural default.

This is over-the-top side-effects of internal cultural phenomenon among minorities, taken out of context for fear-mongering among whites. Do you really have in your head an image of an army of black Souljahniks cutting up white people? To think that in response to rhetoric, blacks seriously stood a major threat to the well-being of whites is a common racist trope. But it is the logical conclusion of thinking that what she said is so serious that Bill Clinton had to carom off of it.

This is like men objecting to the SCUM Manifesto. It's hilarious and ridiculous and facile and really very sad.

I think that the Obama people were disingenuous in calling Clinton a racist, but some of her supporters know very little of what they speak, and yet speak with authority.

...forgive me for not thinking of Clinton as a great hero of the Republic, and for thinking that his epitaph should mostly say, "Much better than what preceded, and light years better than what followed." That's probably going to be Obama's epitaph if he wins in November, and would have been Hillary Clinton's too had she won.

...when it comes out of the mouth of David Duke than when it comes out of Sister Souljah's. It is different. Even the first comment is in context of black-on-black violence, and if you unpack it, it's not even as bad as your previous out of context quote.

...as there should be, a militant strain of black activism and nationalism that says things that are offensive/threatening/disquieting to the dominant white majority. That's practically a necessity, and it has always existed in symbiosis to the more politically correct forms of black civil rights activism, and will continue to exist, and should.

Anti-racist work is not colourblind, like Stephen Colbert's parody of a white conservative.

I just want to trust that the weasel is on my side, and that when the weasel *is* on my side, he won't trip me up.

However, forgive some of us for believing at the time that we could do even better. During Clinton's time, and sometimes with Clinton's cooperation, the siege engines against the welfare state were rendered operational. NAFTA for instance, and its ilk. Does no one remember the Seattle protests?

It really felt that even under a (D) administration, those of us who wanted something better were put between a rock and a hard place. In Canada, Ontario in particular, we had the odious Mike Harris regime, a Little Reagan. But his policies, and even the policies of Jean Chretian (whose days, don't get me wrong, I long for in hindsight) tracked well with Clinton.

So a lot of people thought, and still think, "If that's good..."

How much better Clinton was is knowledge only available in hindsight. That's not good, you know. That's the Overton Window, sliding right.

It's an "oppressed peoples" thing. And what offense emits from the mouths of those who speak for the oppressed is different in degree and in kind.

And there goes the tired MLK invocation (it's a sophisticated "my black friend" argument). MLK had a lot of contact and history with these people. He rejected them, yes, but historically, he was heads, they were tails.

For example, Malcolm X.

Who is an important figure in black political history, and for good reason.

...that's why I believe his epitaph will be no better than Bill Clinton's, and judging by the current conditions, likely worse.

Now we have experience and can make an educated guess beforehand. Some people didn't learn it, and can't, and never will.

Your choice. You're still wrong on race.

I am sorry I am so wordy. It is just my nature.

I would never claim Bill Clinton was some sort of singularly progressive figure. He was a mixed bag.

My point was that he did try to do at least two progressive things - reform healthcare and put gays in the military - and failed, in large part, due to the lack of support (if not outright hostility) from his own party. The problem wasn't Clinton, it was the Democratic Party. Just as the problem isn't Obama, it's the Democratic Party. Clinton and Obama are members of the party and its ruling elite, so they are part of the problem. But too often the party is happy to blame its lack of progress on individual leaders to hide the fact that the party itself doesn't support the progress.

I love the bitter concoction of irony and racism:

"white people could stop treating black people like crap"

BWHAHAHAHAH. Seriously, are you here all week, or do you have to go back to the 'special school' and make construction paper pictures?

For those of us just learning about irony, this statement bemoans racism while demonstrating how it works. For example: Not all white people treat black people like crap, yet the point is said in such a belligerent and prejudiced way that the writer is accusing an entire swath of people of being racist BASED ON THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN.

REAL LIFE STORY:
A friend of mine was in a hospital waiting room, which had the usual sampling of a mixed society: Asian, elderly, latino, children, women, black, you name it. The two loudest people in the room just happened to be a pair of black teenage girls, and they were apparently unaware they were inside. They were obviously upset about something, and didn't care that a sign on the wall asked for everyone to be quiet and respect others.

Said friend of mine asked if they would lower their voices, they refused rudely and made fun of him. Then a mother came by and asked the same thing; same treatment. Finally my friend got up and told the nursing station to ask them, and when the older, white nurse asked the young women to please respect the other people and lower their voices, the response was: "See? I hate white people. They're racist!"

My friend almost hurt himself laughing, but didn't bother explaining it to them.

Thanks for giving me something I can tell him next time I see him.

Mandos, I would have more respect for your arguments if you had better arguments. For instance, look at the context of WHERE Clinton made his comment:

"while giving a speech to Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow Coalition, saying, “If you took the words “white” and “black” and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.”

Given where he said it, how can you honestly believe that was some kind of cowardly racist pander? Wouldn't the less raving CDS viewpoint be that he was putting forth a point of common ground? Denouncing violence on both sides? Expressing respect by speaking in that venue and speaking his honest opinion even if it may not be warmly recieved? How many have that kind of courage? Obama? Are you really so blinded by your hate of the man that you can't see that? The point is not whether "oppressed people" can talk like Sister Souljah it is whether it is GOOD to talk like that. Is it good? Do you think it is good to talk like she did? Productive? Healthy? Oops, sorry, since Bill Clinton is WHITE he has no place pointing out anything that is TRUE about race relations. How easy us white (or more specifically "non-black") folk forget....

Y'know what, screw this, you won't listen to anything silly like facts or quotes or anything. You have your opinions and apparently that is all you need. Well, you are welcome to them.

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Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

I wrote a whole blog entry just for this. You can have it for the price of a Unity Pony.

"You'd better get this straight. Wise up before it's too late." -- Sister Sledge