Reply #85: The tragedy of Clinton is, with his abilities as an orator and his

[Ken Burch]

charisma, he could have fully stood up to the right and MADE THE CASE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICS. He never had to lead a fight to drive the left out of the party and to make the Democrats a white man's club(or a near white man's club, since if you are a African American or Hispanic American politician who embraces the DLC agenda, you've essentially deracinated yourself, and if you're a female politician who has done so, you've spat on Bella Abzug's grave). Clinton would have won as a real Democrat. He didn't have to be a "centrist" globalist with a Scoop Jackson fixation.

Clinton COULD have spoken up for the poor and defended them on the false accusations that they were poor because of their lack of personal morality. Clinton could have used his own life story to refute that. Instead, he let all of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich's lies stand unchallenged, and allowed social welfare in this country to be destroyed with nothing positive put up in its place, like, say, real jobs training and federal jobs programs. Why any low-income voters voted for him after that will always be a mystery, since they showed him a loyalty he never showed them.

Clinton COULD have defended the protest tradition and could have spoken up for a new foreign policy that was not based on putting corporate interests first. Instead, he repudiated his own ideals and listened to Reaganites like Ben Wattenberg.

Clinton COULD have fully defended and articulated the idea that ALL of America's cultures deserve equal respect. Instead, he indulged the worst white suburbanite fantasies of inherent Anglo Protestant superiority.

None of this was necessary. The Democrats didn't need to surrender to what Robert Kennedy once called "the darker impulses of the American spirit". Clinton could have been elected as his best self.