Have Bill Clinton's political victories been misinterpreted ?

[kentuck]

I know htere are a lot of fans of the Big Dog, but would he have won without Perot in the race? Many people think that Perot took more Repub votes because of his stance on deficits and that Clinton may not have won if not for him?

It is true that Clinton used the Dick Morris strategy of "triangulation" to put a wedge between the Republican issues and many attribute that to his victory. But what is the real reason that Clinton won? Has his victory been misinterpreted by many of his supporters?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. how does it explain his second term though?

[formernaderite]

5. Perot ran in 96 as well....

and Clinton never received over 49% of the vote. My brother and his wife are Perot republicans. They would never have voted for Clinton, they just didn't care for Bush or Dole.

[papau]

2. Exit polling - if you believe exit polling - says Perot took equally from

Clinton.

So I do not believe there would have been a change in outcome if Perot had not run.

[ArkDem]

7. .

:wow:

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

3. No. He had a lot of moderate Republican supporters. n/t

[JI7]

4. the passing of the Cold War helped him

he was also smart enough to understand the political mood and to do things to make people more comfortable about voting for him such as attending the execution of some mentally ill person which helped him among those who might have been worried he was too soft on crime . and of course later on the Defense of Marriage Act he signed helped him for the next election.

but the passing of the cold war helped in that it made the overall issue of national defense less a concern for many voters. this allowed the focus mostly to be on an area that was a strength for him.it also meant the whole draft issue and war protests were less an issue since defense, war type things weren't a big concern.

i think he would have won without Perot also.

[patcox2]

6. You are right, Perot threw him the election; hated Bush Sr.

And what were his legislative and policy victories? Welfare reform and selling out the middle class with globalization.

Clinton is a perfect example of why the dems are doomed. Idiots think he was a liberal, because he supported all the divisive fringe causes, like homosexuals in the military. Hug a tree and say hooray for feminism, then completely renounce the economic policies that are the real, true foundation of this party, and yet everyone thinks he is a progressive hero. Exported more jobs than anyone in history.

These same issues are what make the poor and working class males, who should be voting for us, reject us. This party has renounced the basic economic justice principles of sticking up for the working man and woman, in favor of catering to fringe special interests. The republicans paint a cartoon picture of us, feminazi tree-hugging gay marriage advocates, and the real true essence the party, economic opportunity for the workers, fighting the power of the corporations, the new deal and square deal and social security in the broad sense, democrats are afraid to talk about those things because someone might say "class warfare."

[charlie]

8. Maybe

In the first election. Not to take anything away from Clinton's campaign, which was very good, but Perot threw Poppy off his stride. Poppy couldn't turn the full shitstorm on a single opponent, he had to contend with another who clearly despised his ass (Atwater being dead didn't help either).

Here's a moment from the second campaign where Clinton gets to enjoy being an amused bystander while Perot tears into a rattled Bush:

PEROT: ...and the rest of my minute, I want to make a very brief comment here in terms of Saddam Hussein. We told him that we wouldn't get involved with his border dispute, and we've never revealed those papers that were given to Ambassador Glaspie on July the 25th. I suggest, in the sense of taking responsibility for your actions, we lay those papers on the table. They're not the secrets to the nuclear bomb.

Secondly, we got upset when he took the whole thing, but to the ordinary American out there who doesn't know where the oil fields are in Kuwait, they're near the border. We told him he could take the northern part of Kuwait, and when he took the whole thing, we went nuts. And if we didn't tell him that, why won't we even let the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee see the written instructions for Ambassador Glaspie?

BUSH: I've got reply on that. That gets to the national honor. We did not say to Saddam Hussein, Ross, you can take the northern part of Kuwait.

PEROT: Well, where are the papers?

BUSH: That is absolutely absurd.

PEROT: Where are the papers?

BUSH: Glaspie has testified --

(APPLAUSE)

-- and Glaspie's papers have been presented to the US Senate. Please, let's be factual.

PEROT: If you have time, go through Nexis and Lexis, pull all the old news articles, look at what Ambassador Glaspie said all through the fall and what-have-you, and then look at what she and Kelly and all the others in State said at the end when they were trying to clean it up. And talk to any head of any of those key committees in the Senate. They will not let them see the written instructions given to Ambassador Glaspie. And I suggest that in a free society owned by the people, the American people ought to know what we told Ambassador Glaspie to tell Saddam Hussein, because we spent a lot of money and risked lives and lost lives in that effort, and did not accomplish most of our objectives.

We got Kuwait back to the emir but he's still got his nuclear, his chemical, his bacteriological and he's still over there, right? I'd like to see those written instructions.

(APPLAUSE)

LEHRER: Mr. President, just to make sure that everybody knows what's going on here, when you responded directly to Mr. Perot, you violated the rule, your rules. Now --

BUSH: For which I apologize. When I make a mistake I say I'm sorry.

(Laughter.)

LEHRER: I just want to make sure everybody understands. If you all want to change the rules, we can do it.

BUSH: No, I don't. I apologize for it but that one got right to the national honor and I'm sorry. I just couldn't let it stand.

LEHRER: Governor Clinton, you have a minute.

CLINTON: Susan, I don't agree that there are no women and minorities in important positions in my campaign...

[robbedvoter]

9. Riight. bet Carter stole it too, we know JFK did. In fact, we NEVER

existed, It was all imagination - a dream from the labor camps in Germany - talked about in the present labor camps in Faluja. It's been fascism wall to wall all along, so go gome, lie down and die already. :eyes:

[AP]

10. Condorcet analysis of '92 and '96: Clinton would have won w/o Perot.

Condorcet analysis is when you break down all the people in a race and match them up with all other people in head-to-head match-up and ask voters who they'd vote for.

There is Condorcet match-up data on the last 20 or 30 years of presidential elections and, guess what, the winner of the race was also the condorcet winner in every election except 2000. Gore was the Condorcet winner in 2000.

Not only would Clinton have won in a head-to-head with both Perot and Bush, but he would have won both of those races by very wind margins.



Table 5.

Pairwise votes 1992 election -- Contest Outcome

Clinton v. Bush: Clinton wins by 12.9 points

Bush v. Perot: Bush wins by 16.5 points

Clinton v. Perot: Clinton wins by 28 points

Using adjusted voter profile we can calculate the pairwise votes, these are

given in Table 5.


In 1992 Clinton was the Condorcet winner, easily beating both Bush and

Perot in pairwise contests. In a pairwise contest, Bush would also have beaten

Perot but by much less than Clinton (Perot was therefore the Condorcet loser).

The large difference in the Bush v. Perot and Clinton v. Perot pairwise elec-

tions follow from the fact that Clinton voters ranked Perot second more often

than they ranked Bush second. In the Bush v. Perot election, therefore, Perot

picked up relatively more Clinton voters than did Bush. Bush voters, however,

ranked Clinton second more often than they ranked Perot second. Thus, in the

Clinton v. Perot election Clinton picked up relatively more voters than did

Perot.

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:hF0qLxFaRFkJ:mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/Perot.pdf+condorcet+clinton+perot&hl=en

[Mend]

11. People knew

he had really top-notch people, such as Robert Rubin, in the cabinet and that they were all working their asses off to solve the problems of the world. There was peace and prosperity. You can nitpick about your particular gripe but huge numbers of people either became rich or were doing very well, abortion was legal, there was no draft. Maybe that isn't everything but it worked for a lot of us. All this in the face of a massive right-wing conspiracy which was against him because he showed how it should be done. He was re-elected because he was so competent at his job and no one could cover that up with spin.