The Democratic Party needs to return home

[SHRED]

This article delves deeply into everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party.
It is why I support the restoration of a return to the ideals and actions of FDR.
It points out where we went wrong as a party and in my view why we need to heed the call of Bernie Sanders.

In office, Clinton pursued Republican objectives. He launched a prison-building empire, gutted welfare, deregulated the financial markets, produced astonishing tax breaks for the rich, passed a trade bill that destroyed American jobs and wrecked Mexican agribusiness, and decided there was no good reason to maintain a wall between the unscrupulous capitalist investor and unwitting depositor. After all, as the Nineties refrain went, banks can police themselves. All the while, of course, he continued to peddle his sincerest sympathies to Main Street.

America hasn’t been the same since. Not least because the very deregulatory policies Clinton approved gutted the global economy in 2008. From an electoral perspective, the Democrats need only shade slightly left of the Republican insurgents to appear like even-keeled moderates and win the liberal vote. This is the platform and plan of Hillary Clinton, too. Another neoliberal corporate presidency. Obviously the Clintons think their strategy can still prevail. After all, as Bill Clinton gleefully said of disillusioned progressives he knew would eventually return to the fold, “They have nowhere else to go.”

FEBRUARY 18, 2016
The Clinton Monster That Won’t Die
by JASON HIRTHLER

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/18/the-clinton-monster-that-wont-die/

..

[highprincipleswork]

1. Nowhere else to go? We'll see about that, and who's out of power by the time this is done.

[Skwmom]

2. Bill Clinton was a trojan horse. The Clintons ARE Republicans that have taken control of our party.

[noretreatnosurrender]

3. Wow

Now 92, Henry doesn’t mince words. Just close your eyes and listen to that soothing baritone rippling with gravitas remind us that, “It’s not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.” You couldn’t sum up the Clinton political strategy any better. To be sure, if Hillary wins the nomination, it will be because we have read our Krugman and our Brooks, and have endorsed the lie that it isn’t meet to ask for what we want, but rather to settle for an ersatz replica of something we once believed in. Rather than waste a vote on the “unelectable,” we ought to elect a charmless political lifer with a handbag of bootless pledges and a mountain of dirty money.

[Punkingal]

4. K&R

[Corey_Baker08]

5. Really? Bush Had Nothing To Do With The Unprecedented Recession Of 2008?

If I remember correctly Bill Clinton has been praised by both sides for his handling of the economy. The middle & working class did great under the Clinton Administration.

The economy boomed during the 90s, furthermore President Clinton left office with a budget surplus.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if I am on DU or FreeRepublic...

[SHRED]

7. If you think anyone at Freeperville could write this article

I've got some bridges to sell to you.

Did you even read the article?

[Corey_Baker08]

8. Yea I Read The Post, Your Blaming President Clinton For The Economic Collapse Of 2008...

You are also misrepresenting the progress this country made while he was President. You did a good job attacking him yet failed to list any of his many major accomplishments.

President Clinton left office with a higher approval rating than Reagan.

[SHRED]

10. Did I say that?

Really?

What this article is about in my view is the direction of the Democratic Party. Where it is headed.

We have a choice and this article for me spells out that choice. Continue appeasing those who have contributed to the shape we are in or go back to our roots of FDR.

And OBTW...I do believe that Bill, through his deregulation schemes, NAFTA, and other points made in this article does indeed share the blame of our out of balance system, popularity contests be damned.

[stillwaiting]

6. We will have to organize and take it back.

Current Party Leadership will not do so willingly.

A number of elected Democrats will have to be replaced before most elected Democrats begin representing us over financial interests and multinational corporations. When we do THAT, what is possible in the political climate will change dramatically.

But we have to do that first.

[brooklynite]

9. You recall that, before Clinton, we lost 5 of the 6 previous Presidential elections.

[SHRED]

11. With Clinton we still lost