Reply #67: Actually, it comes from an article in the "Nation" [View All]

[CWebster]

"Still Clinton's Show?

...In the vacuum before the party's nominee is chosen next year, Clinton's footprints are all around--coaching presidential wannabes, offering broad policy prescriptions and encouraging his former White House lieutenants to do the same. Some of them are trying to create new campaign vehicles that will help the minority party get out the anti-Bush message and, not coincidentally, defend the Clinton orthodoxy. 'Bill is desperate to establish himself as the strategy guy for the Democratic Party, the guy who shapes the message,' said one hostile Democrat. The message, as Clinton reassured loyal fans at the Democratic Leadership Council, is: 'We don't have to be more liberal, but we do have to be more relevant in a progressive way.'

A darker scenario was suggested by a Democratic lobbyist who described 'Team Clinton' scurrying around Washington, setting up independent money pots and 'issue' fronts to pre-empt other voices and to define the broad agenda for 2004 in Clinton's New Democrat terms. The ultimate objective, in this scenario, is to prepare the ground for Senator Hillary Clinton's eventual run for the presidency (when Mr. Bill might return to the White House as First Spouse). This insider chatter sounds melodramatic and way ahead of the story, but it's not exactly paranoid fantasy. The Clinton circle is busy building things."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030217&s=greider&c=1