How the DLC Saved the Democratic Party

[ericson00]

In the wake of Bill Clinton owning some protesters, a lotta people are trashing him because he was a DLC/Third Way Democrat. Yes, it is true that the Third Way is partially obsolete today, but it wasn't always that way. Ditto the DLC. Using the ascendancy of a more liberal stances on certain issues doesn't negate why the Third Way holds an important and positive legacy in the Party, and thus the country. Dishonoring what they achieved is a perfect example of amnesia. Weirdly enough, its amnesia that unites both the Republican right and the far-left (which sometimes sounds like it belongs on the Nader 2000 campaign).

Let's look at history:

The Electoral College: The Path to Victory

?1442128450

this is too easy to forget
Color Code (how the colored states voted from 1968-1988):
Deep Red: 6 out of 6 contests
Lighter Red: 5 out of 6 contests
Orange: 4 out of 6 contests
States weird colored in red? I thought so. Thats because every single damn one of them (except New Hampshire and New Mexico) have voted Democrat 6 out of the last 6 elections from 1992 onward. Even New Hampshire and New Mexico have voted 5 out of 6 times Democratic!! That's right; ultra Democratic electoral college strongholds like California, New Jersey, Vermont (!! home state of Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders), and Illinois, home state of President Obama used to be perfectly Republican voting states in the two decades before the Clintons came along.

By today's electoral college count, the states mentioned above add up to 161 electoral college votes. Had George HW Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney had those electoral votes in 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012, they'd have won.

You have the few states Dukakis won in 1988:
?1442129292

To Dukakis' credit, he did greatly close the gap Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and McGovern gave to the GOP. All the states he won except Iowa and West Virginia have gone Dem 7 for 7 of the last elections, with Iowa 6 for 7 and WV 3 for 7. But Dukakis lost and lost because of stances which turned off the suburban voters that the GOP had no clue would be lost forever a few short years later...

Anyway, take the booty Dukakis did get to the first map in the diary, add them together, and ladies and gentlemen, I give you the beautiful electoral college Blue Wall:

?1442130673

Color Code (How the states have voted from 1992-present)
Deep Blue: 6 out of 6 contests
Turquoise: 5 out of 6 contests
Light Blue: West Virginia (not part of the wall but could be with Hillary having the right running mate)
THERE is the reason the GOP hates Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton! All those states (except WV) together already add up to 257 electoral votes. Add a few swing states, and voila! The GOP has a much steeper hill to climb than 13 electoral votes.

Compare the GOP's record in the last 6 elections:

?1442131365

olor Code:
Dark Red: 6 out of 6 contests
Orange: 5 out of 6 contests
(note: nearly all of the dark red states have a much longer GOP history but we're talking about 1992-onward)

Now that is a fall from grace! Thats 158 electoral votes in all the states they've won at least 5 times in the last 6 cycles. Back in 1988, they thought they had an electoral college "lock." From the look of the first map and the last map, added together, yea I could see why. But the first map is their lost Reaganite glory.

How We Got There: Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the DLC/Third Way:
------------------------------
Once upon a time, the big issues in American politics were welfare and toughness on crime. Remember Willie Horton, anyone? That attack on Dukakis wasn't a personal, swift-boat attack: it was a policy attack on an issue the Party was weak on in terms of public opinion. Dems were seen as weak with welfare and crime. Why did the above with regard to the maps happen? Clinton also did for our party in 1992 what Nixon did for his in 1968. In 1968, Nixon got working class whites to vote against their economic interests in the name of social issues, and brought the south to the GOP permanently. In 1992, Bill Clinton got wealthy suburbanites to vote against their economic interests in the name of being against the far-right social platform Pat Buchanan and Dan Quayle were pushing and got the northeast and west coast to vote Dem permanently. Nonetheless, Nixon worked within the New Deal paradigm and got America ready for the true believer, Reagan. Clinton worked within the Reagan Revolution paradigm and got America ready for Obama. Both 1968 and 1992 races had third party candidates who got accused of "spoiling."

"But Perot...."
---------------------
Here's the truth, once and for all, to quell what was a popular GOP talking point to discredit Bill Clinton's strategy:

National Exit Polls:

If Mr. Perot had not been on the ballot, 38 percent of his voters said, they would have voted for Gov. Bill Clinton, and 38 percent said they would have voted for President Bush.

Exit polls and electoral college:

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot's absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush "margin" without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire.

For Bush to have won the EC, he'd have " target="_blank">needed to win nearly every state he lost by less than 5%, which would be impossible given his sub-40 job approvals on election day 1992, and the fact he'd actually have needed to pick up Wisconsin, which he lost in 1988.

Bush Sr.'s sub-40% job approval near and on the election was similar to Carter in 1980, or his son in 2008 (when his party lost the WH) and LBJ in 1968 (when his party lost the WH) and far lower than Reagan in 1984, Nixon 1972, Clinton in 1996, or tossup races (with results that would be MoE in a poll, between 45-49%) like Bush 2004, Ford 1976, Obama 2012 (2/3 of those were re-elected).


When Perot wasn't in the race, Bush was losing by a lot more and near the 37% he got anyway; Clinton was far ahead:


Perot wasn't even a conservative; he was pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and to Clinton/Bush's left on trade. After all, Bernie Sanders accepted a gift from Perot.


I'm not the only one to debunk the Perot-myth.

Why this Matters
--------------------------
To deny that Bill Clinton did what needed to be done both in the heat of a crime wave 20+ years ago and for the party back then is not only wrong, but ahistoric. Kudos to Bill for standing up for the truth.

[SHRED]

1. This should be good...

[Hortensis]

23. It is. Thanks, Ericson, for a balancing

viewpoint on a much-abused and little-understood phenomenon. It occurred in the context of a massive shift of national sentiment toward conservative "solutions" to often made-up problems.

Crime for instance. Crime was not nearly as bad in most places as believed, but conservative media pushed the idea that people were being killed at ordinary gas stations and banks, just walking down ordinary streets, so that many millions believed violent crime rates were rising even while they were actually falling. Fear moves people right.

I remember believing then that the GOP's three-strikes law, that Biden didn't fight hard enough and ended up adopting as his own, was very bad and would lead to great injustice. But I had no idea back then just how devastating it was going to be, and critically, the nation insisted on harsh actions like this. State governments were also passing harsh crime-control laws, and many local jurisdictions were prosecuting the existing ones to the max. It was the tenor of the times, and we all knew it at the time.

And then there was the "we have to get off the back of big business." Remember that mantra heard in every discussion at every gathering for over 15 years? It was yoooge and had yoooge backing from the populace. Insecurity moves people right.

We are a democracy. What the people feel to be true matters far more than what is.

[FreakinDJ]

30. Geez - The Republican Revolution of 1994 never happened I guess

Just one of those inconvenient truths

The DLC - New Democrat Coalition - Third Way members have been a Losing Coalition from the start and purely disastrous for the Democratic Brand

The Republican Revolution, Revolution of '94 or Gingrich Revolution refers to the Republican Party (GOP) success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections,[1] which resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and a pickup of eight seats in the Senate. The day after the election, Democratic Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama changed parties, becoming a Republican.

The gains in seats in the mid-term election resulted in the Republicans gaining control of both the House and the Senate in January 1995. Republicans had not held the majority in the House for forty years, since the 83rd Congress (elected in 1952).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution

It was the DLC/New Democratic Coalition Dems that suffered the heaviest losses in 2010. The Millennial Vote that swept Obama and a wave of Democrats into power in 2006 and 2008 saw little or no reason to show up at the polls for Neoliberal policies

Essentially almost every Conservative Democrat from 2006 was either wiped out in a primary, retired or lost in a general election since 06.

After making huge gains in both 2006 and 2008, Dems got wiped out in 2010 and again in 2014. By and large the losses were in the right side of the Democratic tent. The Blue Dog Coalition which saw it’s ranks swell up at one point to about 60 members, currently only have 14 members, for a loss of over 40 members since their high point in 2009 and about 25 or so from 2006. That number is sure to go down even further with the loss of Loretta Sanchez who is running for the Senate seat in CA and Gwen Graham who got redistricted out of her FL seat.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/03/27/1506462/-Has-the-Democratic-Party-Moved-Left-A-Look-at-the-Last-10-Years

And you can't blame just the Millennial voters - Life Long Democrats just plain lost interest and didn't show up at the polls

The same independent voters—a large and growing slice of the American electorate—who propelled Mr. Obama to victory in 2008, swung dramatically to the GOP. At the same time, loyal Democratic voters said they were dispirited with the administration and Congress and were thus less likely to go to the polls at all.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704462704575590660718488430

Lets talk FACTS - Bill Clinton's Rightward Swing came in a "Pre-Internet World" and by no means would be a "Winning Strategy" today

[daleanime]

2. ........

[TM99]

3. Total revisionist history.

We were there dude.

Some of us were actually in the trenches.

Superpredators were a pseudo-scientific social-psychology theory that didn't even pass the smell test then among professionals like myself.

But please go on with your bad self. Own this, tout this and spread it wide. Watch minorities voters reject the Clintons like they did in 2008. Watch the independent leftists bail on this party in the GE if she makes it that far.

The sad thing is that most of y'all are too blind to see how racist the crime bill and the theory of superpredators were and still are.

If it is racist, and you support it, what does that say about you? Ask yourself that, please?

[ericson00]

4. why did/have most non-white voters stuck with the Clintons?

because most (but not all) of the people accusing them of "racism" are sanctimonious white uberprogressives.

[TM99]

6. Dude, I am a fucking bi-racial man.

Daddy was black, my mommy was white.

So this 'sanctimonious white uberprogressive' just owned your racist ass.

[ericson00]

10. clearly, you're not representative of the majority of non-whites who have gone HRC

and who will likely continue to do so.

[TM99]

12. Clearly you have no idea

what you are talking about.

Seriously quite while you can.

[w4rma]

9. Clinton magically turns Hawaii into a majority white state. (It's the least white state at 21%) (nt)

[zalinda]

14. Because Bill Clinton played the sax

on Arsenios show and he was on MTV and told what kind of underwear he wears (boxers or briefs). He was considered cool. Besides do you think people of color were going to vote for the Republican? At that time Bill Cosby was spouting off about the black man's responsibility, and Clintons tough on crime bill played right into that. At least the Democratic Party had some people of color in the higher up positions, Republicans were white as snow.

You need to read the book "Listen Liberal" by Thomas Frank about the evolution of the Democratic Party, it started before Clinton, Clinton just brought it home.

Z

[Hortensis]

22. Frank has some good observations,

but what strikes me is how behind the curve he is and how, and this is so typical, how much he ignores the changing moods of nations and times. "Democrats aren't who we think they are." Democrats are like everyone else -- they are affected by new ideas and the megafluctuations between predominantly liberal and conservative eras, eras that more and less religious, militaristic, idealistic, infiltration of business into local, state, and federal governments and judiciaries, etc.

In any case, Democrats and Democratic elected officials have moved left again, and inequality is a huge issue. Not just with us. It's a huge issue on the right too -- just not with the right's current leadership.

[SHRED]

5. They keep digging while in a hole

Like they can't help it or something.

Strange.

[litlbilly]

16. how many people survived on credit cards during Bill's terms? alot, and how many of them got

crushed in the 08 crash? a lot. The third way crap is done. It is time for FDR, which is Bernie. He will become the pres and I and lots of other people are going to make sure that happens. Sorry. but we are done with the Clintons and the other conservadems. They are all gonna get trounced by true progressives this time. The people have had enough.

[SHRED]

7. What's next?

Signing NAFTA, The Telecom Act, and repealing Glass -Steagal was awesome?

[scscholar]

8. Why is libertarian not to the right of conservative?

Strange diagram

[HughBeaumont]

24. I don't get that either.

The economic policies of the Libertarian Party excludes them from being a bridge between left and right. I have nothing in common with that logical bollocks.

[SHRED]

11. Like during Vietnam

They said they had to burn the village down to save it.

Makes about as much sense.

[X_Digger]

13. Fuck the DLC / Third Way / Wall Street / 1% fellating assholes.

We remember 1996. We remember losing eight senate seats, fifty-four house seats-- the largest defeat for our party since 1946.

We remember Gephardt, Brooks, and Foley telling Bill that the "crime bill" would cost the party.

Did he listen? Fuck no. Full speed ahead.

[YOHABLO]

15. Third way dems love Bill and Hillary. They brought the Republican ideals into the Democratic Party.

[tabasco]

17. Here's where the Political Compass puts H. Clinton

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

[ericson00]

18. Political Compass is not a good measure

its not an American political compass. Of course they consider America "to the right," because in the world, America is the "establishment," the equivalent of a corporation, etc.

I'm glad we're not Europe, with openly fascist and communist parties in their parliaments. You think American politicians race bait? Try the European ones.

[kristopher]

19. WTF?

You used the same kind of chart - this one just has the individuals plotted.
And did you read what you wrote: "its not an American political compass. Of course they consider America "to the right," because in the world, America is the "establishment," the equivalent of a corporation"

I'm going to go out on limb here and guess that you haven't got a clue about what fascism actually is.

[tabasco]

31. Good Lord, you are FAR out of touch.

You sound like someone who's never been to Europe. It's a wonderful place, and far ahead of the U.S. in many respects.

The Political Compass uses objective factors and standard analysis for their conclusions. You, on the other hand, seem very biased to the point of being obtuse.

[pampango]

20. Most of us want a candidate who appeals to independents and crossover republicans, in addition to

getting support from our base. Bill had his way of doing it. Bernie has his way. I prefer Bernie's but acknowledge Bill did much more good than bad and left the country in much better shape than his successor did when he left office. (Of course, you can say that about all Democratic presidents and none of the republican ones. )

What is a little weird about this primary campaign is that Hillary gets most of her voters from the Democratic base with relatively little (compared to Bernie) from independents and crossover republicans. This is similar to the way that pre-Bill Democrats ran for president. Bernie OTOH gets much of his support precisely from independents and crossovers which is similar to Bill's strategy.

In terms of policies, Hillary is much more like Bill than Bernie does. But in terms of voter appeal, Bernie's support comes from groups that are similar to those that Bill targeted successfully. I support Bernie based on his policies but acknowledge that electoral chances rely on the same groups of voters that elected Bill.

[zalinda]

35. Bill Clinton did not leave the country better off

it only looked that way. First of all he did not win his first term with a majority, he got 43% of the vote. He totally lucked out with the economy, first it was the wave from Bush I, and then the Internet. Credit had also started loosen up. In his second term, he got 49.2% of the vote, still not a majority. He was popular, but not that popular. People forget.

Z

[pampango]

36. I don't think he 'totally lucked out on the economy'.

"first it was the wave from Bush I". I haven't heard that one before. I thought the economy was in recession at the end of 1992.

"then the Internet".

There were only three developed countries that gained manufacturing jobs from 1991-2000: the US (2%), Canada (18%) and Italy (3%). It's not like there was a global gain in manufacturing jobs throughout Clinton's presidency. During the decade of the 1990's the UK lost 31%, Japan 15%, South Korea 17% and Germany 24%.

Clinton was not just lucky. Nor was Bush II just 'unlucky' to see manufacturing employment crash during his presidency.

[Glitterati]

21. DLC was birthed by Zell Miller and James Carville

Yeah, Zig Zag Zell - the Godfather of the DLC.

[Odin2005]

25. Pure propaganda.

[FreakinDJ]

26. Straight from Bull Shit Central

[think]

27. The DLC was so awesome even the Koch brothers bought in....

http://www.democrats.com/node/7789

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

28. I understand why the DLC pivoted toward the Libertairan elites, but it has run its course, just like

its predessor, which was too close to Labor, which was rife with scandal at the time. The DLC is completely tone deaf; it's been in charge of the Party since Clinton 42 and overseen the Great Redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper classes; it has overseen the Party getting decimated at all levels of government, losing Governorships as well as both houses of Congress; it's completely ignored its base, which has been telling them for more than a decade, it doesn't matter who wins, both parties are the same. The DLC is completely baffled by the implications here. They respond, "We are not the same! Do you think the Republican Party cares about civil rights?! (All the while, mounting losses are rolling back gains made pre-DLC.) And Hillary is the most tone deaf: ridicule, shame, and blame (the unengaged) is the DLC M.O.

So Bernie comes along, and guess what, Populists care about civil rights, too! Astonishing! So civil and human rights is a complete wash. Now, we can focus on "why bother, both Parties are the same." Bernie says, "You know what unengaged voters? You're absolutely right! And I'm not agreeing with you today, I've been saying it since the 1980s! Not only that, my opponent has lived her entire 25 years inside the DLC bubble. Who will be her advisors? Rahm Emanuel? Well, thank god he's too toxic now. Another crop of Goldman Sachs executives? Today's top Wall Street defense attorney? These are the people she knows and trusts. A vote for Hillary is a vote for another 8 years of 'there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.' That will guarantee an electorate that remains unengaged, more losses at all levels, and a Party that remains tone deaf and has just one resort: blame and shame."

[cantbeserious]

29. WJC - The Best Republican President In Modern History - IMHO

eom

[Jester Messiah]

32. Yes, I too love Big Brother. n/t

[socialist_n_TN]

33. Why do people think that what was true politically in 1972...........

or 1980 or 1992 or 1994 is still true today? I guess it's human nature for the "establishment" to think that nothing will ever change when it's obvious that things have changed a great deal since any of those times.

I consider myself a fundamental Bolshevik and I'm open about it. In Tennessee. In 2016. And I get very little flak about it. I don't think that would have been the case in 1994. Generals open up the current war fighting the last one. That's what's happening today in politics. The "establishment" is fighting the last campaign when the battleground has changed.

[bigbrother05]

34. Just like Clinton's Crime Bill saved the inner cities and young black men

A stop gap action to stop the bleeding isn't the long term solution. You have to rebuild from your base once you have a chance to catch your breath. The DLC continues to be a top down, corporatist construct and the Dem establishment represented by HRC won't let it go.

Obama's election was thought of as a move back to the Dem roots, but he pragmatically made peace with the existing power structure (team of rivals).

Bernie's trying to take another step and break the money linkages. His health care and tuition ideas build on what Obama was able to get done. His ability to see the potential pitfalls and follow on effects of policy decisions make him well suited to lead us.