Reply #25: Nice piece Will, but a bit faulty on Clintonian history

[MadHound]

You fault progressives on the left for not pushing Clinton in the right direction, for letting their guard down after the twelve years of Reagan/Bush, for letting the right determine the direction Clinton would go. A faulty premise, but not entirely your fault. All throughout Clinton's presidency there were massive protests against his policies, were talking in the hundred of thousands, virtually every year that Clinton was in office. Yet they didn't get into the mainstream media, a task made more difficult still by Clinton's cave to the telecom industry with the '96 Telecom Act. Yes, some journals were reporting these facts, and trying to urge Clinton to move further to the left, but they were marginalized, and Clinton also simply refused to listen to them.

Clinton also had clear evidence that he had the popular support on such issues as universal health care, with polls running in the sixty to eightieth percentile in favor of UHC. Yet he chose to cave to the AMA and insurance industry, diluting all talk of UHC with the confounding and confusing entity known as Hilarycare.

And again, he refused to be decisive when it came to the military in general. Afraid of the label "draft dodger" he set out to out-hawk the war hawks. With no enemy standing since the Soviet Union collapsed, with the public calling lound and long for the benefits of a "peace dividend", Clinton instead decided to be a hawk in order to shore up his re-election chances. The cuts to the military weren't deep at all, a mere 2.7%, and we continued to meddle into foreign conflicts where we didn't belong. Rather than actively work for peace throughout the world, we continued to intervene militarily, and ramped up our arms sales to the point where we were the number one arms supplier, selling quantities greater than every other country combined.

Clinton, when push came to shove, was simply another corporatist candidate, doing what his corporate masters asked of him. The reason why he was attacked by Republicans and their spin machinery so savagely is because they saw him as a huge threat, a Democratic president who was adroitly enacting all of the Republican programs. Such a president could banish the Republicans to the political wilderness for decades if not stopped. So they revved up their spin machine and went to work tearing him down. It succeeded to a certain extent.

But Clinton's march to the right wasn't due to lack of pressure from the left. Instead it was a move dictated by Clinton's corporate handlers, who handily shut out the voices from the left, and left progressive and liberals stranded with little recourse.

I would suggest that if you wish to research this more, you read the last few chapters of Howard Zinn's book "A Peoples' History of the United States" I would also suggest that you peruse the back issues of Mother Jones magazine for further confirmation of the lefts' activism throughout Clinton's term in office.

Clinton was a bit of relief from the hard core right during the Reagan/Bush years, but was the kind of relief one feels when one goes from getting shot to getting slapped. You aren't feeling as much pain, but you are still suffering. Clinton didn't relief the suffering of many millions of people, both here and abroad, he simply slowed the rate of damage.