For Hillary to Survive, Clintonism Had to Die

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) On the night of the New Hampshire primary in 1992, Bill Clinton began his speech by declaring that “New Hampshire has made Bill Clinton the comeback kid,” but by its end he was announcing a kind of tactical shift. The message of empathy for middle-class pain that had dominated his campaign—and carried him to second place in the economically depressed state—was far from the animating cause of his bid to lead the Democratic Party. “Tomorrow morning I will carry this campaign away from New Hampshire,” Clinton said. “I will go all across this county, to the rest of the nation, asking them to embrace the New Covenant that I have advocated to restore opportunity and increase responsibility and rebuild a sense of the American community.”

To anyone who had followed the opening phase of Clinton’s life as a national figure, “New Covenant” was familiar code for the bundle of policy positions—many cultivated by the moderate Democratic Leadership Council—that allowed the Arkansas governor to introduce himself to the country as a New Democrat. Each represented a carefully calibrated diversion from the liberal orthodoxy of the previous decade; Clinton expressed little patience for identity politics, was a cheerleader for free trade and held to an unrepentantly hard line on crime and drug use. Just three weeks before the New Hampshire primary, Clinton refused a request for clemency against Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally disabled double-murderer, whose execution offered a useful occasion to demonstrate his unambivalent view toward the death penalty.

Only one other person stood on the stage that primary night at the Best Western Inn in Merrimack, and while Clinton did not name his wife, Hillary, in the speech, he told his auditors that without her “love and friendship over 20 years I wouldn’t be here tonight and wouldn’t be fit to be here tonight.” On Tuesday night in Manchester the roles were reversed, with Hillary behind the podium and Bill flanking her, and in a way her candidacy is built on his 1992 run. But in other ways, his legacy is one she's had to live down.

In her concession speech after her devastating loss to Bernie Sanders, Hillary called herself the “best change-maker,” but the vision of change she had articulated during her New Hampshire campaign diverged pointedly from her husband’s. In a single debate last week, Hillary Clinton affirmed her opposition to every major multilateral trade pact of the last the last quarter-century, volunteered concern for the politics of racial and sexual identity, and implied she might be pleased to see the U.S. Supreme Court again ban capital punishments by states. Perhaps notably she has taken umbrage at being called a moderate, even though until recently she happily wore the label as a badge of honor. If she did not share his surname, the entirety of Hillary’s candidacy could be reasonably understood as a challenge to Bill’s political legacy.

For Hillary to survive, Clintonism had to die. .............................(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-11/for-hillary-to-survive-clintonism-had-to-die

[Jefferson23]

1. A pivotal point in time, instead of inspiring and working to fight the conquests of the

Reagan period, he calculated measures to embrace their horrific policies..Republican Lite.
Why the fuck anyone wants more of this is beyond me, a weakness and an unwillingness
to organize and fight back will not be what defines millennials...count on it, Clinton.


Bill Clinton was the embodiment of this approach, willing to antagonize the party’s core constituencies with centrist positions and a language of moral disapproval. Unlike Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, Clinton denied Republican opponents any opportunity to portray him as soft on crime, weak on foreign policy, coddling of welfare recipients, or unwilling to confront the injustice that racial quotas presented to those who were denied work or education because of them.“When Bill Clinton was labeled a moderate, it helped him, even in the primaries,” DLC founder Al From wrote in a 2013 book The New Democrats and the Return to Power.

[antigop]

7. "Why the fuck anyone wants more of this is beyond me,"--several reasons

1) Some people benefit from the status quo.
2) Some have not been burned yet by the status quo.
3) Some just want a female prez sooo badly.
4) Some do not understand what is really going on in this country, thanks to the MSM.
5) Some combination of the above.

[Jefferson23]

8. +1 Can't disagree with that. My response was more to members here but when you think about

it your answers could still apply...at least in part.

[Skwmom]

2. They don't believe you. The messenger does matter.

[earthside]

3. Clintonism needs to die.

But the problem is that Hillary in her whole political career has been on both sides at one time or another on almost every progressive issue.

So, as Hillary pivots left now to try and co-opt Sanders, why believe that there is any sincerity in her new found rejection of Clintonism?

This article really only identifies Hillary's biggest problem: you cannot trust her.

In the end she is a Clinton and will fully embrace Clintonism either as the nominee (heaven forbid) or as president. And that means coddling backup with her investment banker cronies and proposing policies that further degrade working and middle class Americans.

[RiverLover]

4. That's right. For the campaign, for votes, Clintonism dies.

But then centrist, warm purple place, pragmatism to GET THINGS DONE (read: rethug things) would replace it & BAM, Clintonism is resurrected from the dead.

Trickle Down lives to see another day...decade.

[EdwardBernays]

5. Ahh

So if she can pretend for long enough she'll get to be President.

How inspiring.

[BillZBubb]

6. Hillary is a change maker--she changes her positions every other week

She just doesn't have a lot of credibility. She'll do well on Super Tuesday, when the conservaDem states hold primaries. That will get her supporters hopes back up. But Hillary isn't the future of the party. She's a relic of the past.