More on Why Bill Clinton’s Presidency Wasn’t So Good for Our Country

At the end of January I did a post called Bill Clinton Was Not a Good President, Why Hillary Worries Me. Much of the documentation I provided came from an article by economist Robert Pollin of UM Amherst titled: Note to Hillary “Clintonomics” Was a Disaster for Most Americans. Professor Pollin deconstructed the economic impact of Bill Clinton’s policies in the 90’s and described why they were harmful to most of us in this country, even today. My post also wove in my own impressions from the 90’s, but put into the context that I spent the decade concerned with the family matters of raising two children, my career and my struggling recovery from a massive heart attack that had left me somewhat disabled. Even with my necessary self-involvement, my impression of Bill Clinton’s administration were negative, while I also developed respect for his wife Hillary who lived through the disgrace born of a “vast Right Wing Conspiracy” against her and her husband.

We have been raised and educated to believe that our country America is a society where social class doesn’t matter. That is a mythological lie.  America is in many ways the equal of Great Britain when it comes to class differences, or perhaps more so because it is a fact that is universally ignored. Bill Clinton’s Arkansas family roots were somewhat sleazy, which was something not of his doing, but of the circumstances of his birth. Being a person of great intelligence and charm, he overcame those roots to become an “Ivy Leaguer” and finally two term President.

Yet in the social strata of those “to the manor born” he was viewed as a Parvenu, lacking class and status. Thus to some of the Right Wing elite of this country he was in essence “poor White trash”, to be despised for his upward mobility. Some might take issue with this, pointing out that there are other “self-made” men, like Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, who seems accepted in the highest circles of the elite. The difference is though that Blankfein has amassed a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while until after he left the White House Bill Clinton never even owned a home of his own. The truth of this is told by the fact that Bill Clinton was the most despised politician of his times by conservatives, even though he espoused and moved forward many of their own major policies. The elites aspired to take Clinton down because in their judgment he was unfit to be in the pantheon of the Presidency. We see the same phenomenon played out with Barack Obama, a determined Center Right President in policy, who has been reviled for being simultaneously a Muslim, a Kenyan, a Communist and a NAZI, by the claque of Conservatives and Republicans. Clinton’s “wrong” was that he was born to the wrong class, while Obama’s “wrong” was that his father was a Black African. In the Right Wing elite oligarchs that govern us, class and racial bigotry are givens in their prejudice.

Bill Clinton Wasn’t a Good President: Why Hillary Worries Me

My musings, such as they are, get created in broad strokes that synthesize all of my experiences and all of my reading from my life of 71 years.  I was a psychotherapist, Social Worker and a social services executive before my health failed and a forced retirement was necessary. Beyond that I grew up with parents who were politically aware and they helped me become a political junkie at the age of nine. When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, the country had lived through 12 years of the “Reagan Revolution” and by most measurements the fortunes of the middle class and the poor had declined via the agency of Reagan’s “trickle down economics”. George H. W. Bush, who I’ve written about in https://elephanttail.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/a-real-history-of-the-last-65-years/ ,  in his one term succeeding Reagan, had managed to get our country involved in the first Iraq War after sending Saddam Hussein mixed signals. In addition the economy had gotten worse owing to shifting of funds to the defense establishment and the fact the Reagan’s “Social Security Fix”, hid what was an enormous rise in taxes for the middle class. Clearly the majority of the country had enough of “Reagonomics” and was looking for change.

In the battle for the 1992 Democratic nomination there was a mixed field of good progressives and a few not so progressives. Bill Clinton, the Governor of Arkansas reeked of charisma, charm and backed that up with being a gifted public speaker. Born in Hope, Arkansas, his campaign theme was “Hope” and he talked a good progressive game, even if his record in that southern tinged border State was fairly right wing corporate. Despite numerous scandals, mostly dealing with his sexuality floating about him, he charmed his way to the Democratic Presidential nomination. It was his good fortune to have the Third Party run of billionaire populist Ross Perot. 

“Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (43.0 percent of the vote) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (37.4 percent of the vote) and billionaire populist Ross Perot, who ran as an independent (18.9 percent of the vote) on a platform focusing on domestic issues; a significant part of Clinton’s success was Bush’s steep decline in public approval.^[62] Clinton’s election ended twelve years of Republican rule of the White House and twenty of the previous twenty-four years. The election gave Democrats full control of the United States Congress,^[4] the first time one party controlled both the executive and legislative branches since Democrats held the 95th United States Congress during the Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.”

I happily voted for Bill Clinton, though I had some misgivings. Perot, the populist was to far to the right for my taste and G.H.W. Bush was unacceptable. Early on in Bill Clinton’s Presidency I began to experience “buyer’s regret” as I came to see that he was not the leader he had presented himself to be.

What Happened to the Democratic Party In this Election? In the Context of Clinton’s Loss

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss we see daily essays on the reason for that loss and where we on the Left should go from here.  I’m not a great political prognosticator, as illustrated by the fact that I predicted Jeb Bush would be the 2012 Republican nominee.  What talent I might have is the result of the perceptions I’ve gotten by living a long life in a state of alienation from the mythology and the reality of America.  Like many, I believed the polls and that Hillary Clinton would become President.  However, I had some trepidation about both Clinton and about the direction of the Democratic Party.  Back on June 15th, when I first posted the following piece, I took others concerns and counterpointed them with my own to come up with a post that I think is quite relevant today as we’ve entered the insane Age of Trump.

June 15, 2009

This election year has been the second most bizarre election year in my living memory. The first of course was 1968, a year when the fabric of this country was being ripped apart by the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Each of those deaths for their supporters, like myself, was a tragedy of immense proportions. Just as with JFK’s murder a scant few years before, I have a memory of where I was when I first heard the news and felt the tears of grief forming. These murders also served as stark metaphors for the undemocratic reality lurking below the faux American democratic system, as the killings connoted that trying to change the “system” will put you in mortal peril. MLK and RFK were of course paladins of the two overwhelmingly urgent issues of the 1960’s, Civil Rights and Vietnam. Adding to the turmoil, was the rioting of the Chicago Police Department as they turned Democratic Convention protests into bloody confrontations that doomed the Party’s Presidential campaign.

In this election year there has been a plethora of bizarre happenings, the most bizarre of course being the putative nomination of Donald Trump. Less weird, but perhaps of more significance, was the battle for the Democratic Party’s nomination. That Hillary Clinton will be the first woman to serve as standard bearer for a major party is an historic event. However, Hillary represents the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders, a lifelong Independent, Democratic Socialist, in both Houses of Congress, fought a good fight and accumulated an impressive amount of primary wins and delegates. His campaign revealed a rift between the “centrist” and the “leftist” wings of the Democratic Party. The convention has not been held, the platform has yet to be written and the general election campaign has not yet been fully fought. Yet some see ominous omens for the Democratic Party’s future. These omens, to some, seem to suggest that it is the Democratic Party that has been split apart, rather than the Republican Party. Are these discussions merely the fodder for pundits seeking things to discuss that will attract attention, or do they represent a fundamental problem for the future of the Democratic Party?

“The New Republic (TNR) was founded in 1914 as a journal of opinion which seeks to meet the challenge of a new time. For over 100 years, we have championed progressive ideas and challenged popular opinion. Our vision for today revitalizes our founding mission for our new time. The New Republic promotes novel solutions for today’s most critical issues. We don’t lament intractable problems; our journalism debates complex issues, and takes a stance. Our biggest stories are commitments for change. Today, the New Republic is the voice of creative thinkers, united by a collective desire to challenge the status quo.”   About The New Republic

Some see TNR as the sine qua non of American liberal publications and in truth it has been quite influential in Left Wing politics in America. They published a comprehensive piece of journalism in “The Split”, subtitled: 19 Reasons the Democratic Party Will Remain Divided – and What It Means for the Party’s Future. In dissecting the 19 reasons provided, TNR uses the answers of 23 well known left wing intellectuals, some like Rick Perlstein and Naomi Klein are people I admire and turn to for analysis. You can follow the link above and read the entire piece which I think presents a valuable discussion, much of which mirrors many of the issues I’ve been concerned with and write about. What follows here is my attempt to also respond to these 19 points from my own perspective.

TNR’s article begins:

“Throughout most of the 2016 presidential primaries, the media focused on the noisy and reactionary rift among Republicans. Until the battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders turned acrimonious in the home stretch, far less attention was paid to the equally momentous divisions within the Democratic Party. The Clinton-Sanders race wasn’t just about two candidates; instead, it underscored a series of deep and growing fissures among Democrats, along a wide range of complex fault lines—from age and race to gender and ideology. And these disagreements won’t fade with a gracious bow-out from Sanders, or a victory in November over Donald Trump. For all the talk of the Democrats’ need for “unity,” it would be a serious mistake to paper over the differences that came to the fore in this year’s primaries. More than ten million Democrats turned out in force this year to reject the party establishment’s cautious centrism and cozy relationship with Wall Street. Unless Democrats heed that message, they will miss a historic opportunity to forge a broad-based and lasting liberal majority.

To help make sense of what’s causing the split, and where it’s headed, we turned to 23 leading historians, political scientists, pollsters, artists, and activists. Taken together, their insights reinforce the need for a truly inclusive and vigorous debate over the party’s future. “There can be no settlement of a great cause without discussion,” observed William Jennings Bryan, the original Democratic populist insurgent. “And people will not discuss a cause until their attention is drawn to it.”

You can click on the links for each of the 19 topics below to get to the particular arguments of this TNR article.

“We Go High”….One Mistake By Hillary Clinton, Ignoring a Truth About Our Country

As the days until Election Day 2016 began to dwindle down to a precious few one phrase that Hillary Clinton kept repeating,  as if a mantra,  was “When They Go Low,  We Go High”.  Every time I heard it in one of Hillary’s speeches,  or related by any of her many campaign surrogates, I cringed at the cluelessness that it revealed.  I write that it was clueless because she had taken the phrase from Michelle Obama,  but completely misunderstood its context and real meaning.

As I listened with tears in my eyes and emotion heavy in my chest when Barack Obama acknowledged his victory, as our first Black President, in a Chicago stadium, there was but one thought weighing heavily on my mind.  “Please keep him safe from harm!”  After all I’ve lived through the murder of another President of hope, JFK, murdered 53 years ago today in Dallas.  In the crazy years that followed, I shuddered and cried for the champions of hope murdered over and over again by those who would fight change in America.  Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,  and  Bobby Kennedy were all murdered as their lives arcs placed them on the cusps of positive change.  The strain of racism, bigotry and oppression of the less powerful, runs deep in our country.  By the fact of his election alone,  Barack Obama, was a symbol of what our country could actually become, what it claims to be, but certainly isn’t.

Part of the implicit racism in America,  targeting people of color, is that they are not allowed to actually express their outrage and indignation at what has been done to them.  If someone of color protests too loudly against the oppression stifling them,  they are marginalized, attacked and all too often murdered.  This is true as well for those who would carry the banner for change in our country, even if their skin color matches the currently dominant one.

Returning then to Michelle and Barack Obama, the hatred expressed at their rise was an outpouring of vitriol unmatched in our history. The Obama’s, besides being so damned attractive as political stars,  are an extremely intelligent and perceptive marital team.  They understood that Barack’s Presidency,  was so symbolic and threatening to the forces of bigotry and reaction in America, that it must not stray too far from the accepted American political middle,  lest it end in disaster, or death.  Like Jackie Robinson, who integrated Baseball in 1947 with racial segregation at its peak,  the Obama’s would not be allowed to respond in kind to the hatred, bigotry and vitriol heaped upon them, without even more dire consequences.

The outpouring of hateful rhetoric towards the Obama’s was unprecedented, not only in its viciousness, but in the obvious fact that it had little to do with Barack’s actions as a centrist President.  So with the penetrating intelligence that the Obama’s have always displayed, was  born the phrase “When They Go Low,  We Go High” and given the esteem with which a majority of the Country now holds the Obama’s, it worked.  However,  just as it’s often said that general’s in current wars, often try to replay past wars,  the Hillary Clinton team thought it clever to use Michelle Obama’s meme.  It didn’t work and in fact it couldn’t have worked.  Hillary,  wife of Bill, had a long history of problems and attacks against them and their marriage.  whether some were justified is irrelevant.  The Republican’s and Trump attacked her for her scandals by creating memes like “Lying Hillary“,  which realistically could only be answered by counter-attack in kind.

With a man like Trump,  whose candidacy was so obviously bereft of anything but memes, the only real answer was:  “When They Go Low,  We Go Lower”.  Trump’s history was such a bizarre and checkered one, that if exposed in meme,  he would be shown as a corrupt clown.  Trump was/is unfit to hold any political position and that lack of fitness really wasn’t even about his deplorable treatment of women.  By failing to attack Trump again and again for his crooked business behavior and a career of catering to the ultra-wealthy,  Clinton,  thought with the election in the bag she was acting Presidential.  Ultimately,  to be able to act “Presidential”, one must be President.

Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Be Trusted to Rein in the Excesses from America’s Financial Industry

Last night I watched the entire Republican Presidential Debate. My stomach churning at this unbelievable spectacle of no-nothing ignorance, made more dispiriting with the possibility that one of these unfit people may get the nomination. All that these people offer this country is continuing military actions; increasing our already bloated military budget; assurances that the wealthy will pay even less of their fair share for our government; and an oligarchy controlled by the wealth of a few. The litany of what is wrong with any of the possible Republican candidates, based on their stated positions, would be worth a 10,000 word essay on its own and I won’t bore you with it. Suffice it to say that I cannot in good faith vote for any of them. So for me the  question devolves on who I can vote for and support in this upcoming Presidential election.

For me the main political issue of this election is whether the control of this country by voracious corporate interests can be reined in. This particularly pertains to our financial and banking industry, which has become an amoral exercise in making money that produces nothing supportive of the American economy. In fact the complete emphasis on profit coming from “Wall Street” has been destructive to our country’s industrial base and from it flows all of the other evils plaguing our country, such as having the most expensive health care in the world.  Since this country’s democratic aspects have been severely limited by a self-perpetuating “two party” system, this leaves me with the choice of either voting for the nominee of the Democratic Party, or throwing my vote away on a candidate with no chance of positively affecting this election.

At present Hillary Clinton is seen as the person who will win the Democratic Presidential nomination. For me the problem with Hilary is that the policies she offers represent the failed centrist politics of her husband and of our current President Barack Obama. Their centrist policies are those of the Democratic Leadership Council and bear equal responsibility with the Republican Party for the deterioration of our country.

We True American Patriots Must Stop Bringing Knives to Gunfights With These Trump Traitors

I originally published this in early October of 2017. Trump had been in power for 9 months, with Republicans controlling all three branches of government and things were looking bleak for Democrats. As much as I understood the threat that Trump posed, back then I probably couldn’t have envisioned how bad things would get and how bitter the taste of our hard fought 2020 victory would taste in the reality of Trump refusing to accept defeat. Sadly, I had known in my gut, that my country was in dire danger from this awful person and the fascists in the party he represented. Now 40 months later my perception has been proven by history and my solution has become imperative, lest our country succumbs completely to Republican Fascism:

Considering my long, Left-wing history as a New Deal Democrat and my minor political activism in the 60’s and 70’s, against American Racism and the Vietnam War, some would think that I am loathe to call myself a patriot.  They would be wrong.  Even as I decry the examples of how our America has failed to live up to the ideals of the American Dream,  emotionally I dearly love the country of my birth and the fact that I am an American.  In the years since the end of World War II,  Republicans and conservatives whose programs are aimed at benefiting the most wealthy among us, have worked to paint those of us on the Left as unpatriotic because we are not warmongering jingoists.  They have done this because they represent programs and ideals that are harmful to most Americans and so they must find ways to get people to vote against their own self-interests.  These purported patriots have sent American troops out to die and be maimed, in wars that never should have been fought and yet they pretend that they Honor Our Troops.  It is time that we on the Left take back the mantle of American Patriotism from those who have really dishonored and disgraced our country, in their greedy need to serve their oligarchic masters.  We need to stop bringing Knives to Gunfights.

Despite all the attempts by some on the Democrats to try to put a bright face upon last year’s election debacle, any words of comfort ring hollow.  Republican’s control the 3 branches of our Federal Government and a majority of our States.  The Supreme Court now has a new justice that makes Antonin Scalia look like a democratic socialist in comparison.  Along with the attempts to rally the Democratic Party and the Left,  we have been bombarded with dueling postmortems on the reasons for this awful loss.  The results of this loss are already devastating for so many of us not shielded by wealth.  At this time, the most important accomplishment that we of the Left can attain, is to organize countrywide at the grass roots level for the 2018 congressional election.  At the same time we must work hard at the local and State level to regain control of these localities and that is indeed an awesome, nearly impossible task.

From my perspective, we need to simplify our analysis of what happened to US this time and distill it down to its’ essence.  The battles that have been fought over the soul of this country, have been waged in earnest by the representatives of aristocratic and corporate wealth since the Goldwater loss in 1964.  They represent a well-funded strategy to disseminate propaganda undermining a sense of national community and perpetrating Right Wing mythology to such a degree that it eradicates history and becomes accepted as fact.  While the issue of a small federal government and an antipathy to taxation have be recurrent themes in American History, it took the would be oligarchs fed up at Goldwater’s debacle, to hire some of the best advertising and merchandising minds to craft the mythology of “evil liberalism” coupled with the accusation that the minorities without power were inexplicably in control of everything.  With Trump’s election, this strategy has reached almost complete fruition.

However, even more important in the battle between the American Right and Left Wings has been the tendency by Liberals, Progressives and Left Wing radicals to be hoisted on their own  petards of pretense.  That pretense has been that America is a Democracy under a semi-divine Constitution and that if only the country can follow the forms laid down by our Founding Fathers all will be well.  I’ve written many times, in many different ways that this is an illusion that has little to do with the real state of affairs in our country. I’ve also written about the false narrative of history that we on the Left have incorporated into our psyches to such a degree that most of us also function in a “bubble” of diminished comprehension.

Following that false narrative causes too many in the Democratic Party to rely on institutional wishful thinking like the Rule of Law,  that dictate we play by the “rules of the game“.  Yet for many of us that means existing in a psychological state of denial, because deep down we Know, or we suspect the truth that this battle is a war for the well being of the many, versus the autocracy of a few. A brief look at past history confirms the fact that the other side plays dirty, while we stupidly play by the “rules”.

• Nixon won election by secretly interfering with the Paris Peace Talks and prolonging the Vietnam War.
• The Watergate Scandal came to light when Nixon attempted to “bug” the Democratic Party
• The un-elected Gerald Ford made a deal to pardon Nixon in order to become President
• The findings of the Church Committee that the Intelligence community was interfering in the political process were ignored.,
• Reagan partisans interfered with Jimmy Carter getting the hostages released by promising arms and other benefits in what became The Iran Contra Affair.
• Bill Clinton was maneuvered into confessing adultery, after first perjuring himself by an elaborate, well financed sting operation.
• George W. Bush became President after dubious Florida voting tactics run by his brother Jeb, the Governor and a SCOTUS decision unprecedented in our history.
• George W. Bush won re-election based on voter suppression and voter fraud in Ohio and John Kerry’s refusal to fight on.

By dint of a combination of voter suppression, Russian Interference,  FBI corruption,  overt racism and the “Big Lies” of Trump,  we have elected perhaps our country’s most malevolent President. As his cabinet is formed from some of the worst elements of corporate greed, aristocratic elitism, and anti-democratic fascists,  most of us are threatened economically and socially. Trump and the Trump Cohort are in effect making war upon an overwhelming majority of Americans.  Yet for many in the Democratic Party establishment, their response to this dire threat is to maintain the belief that in the end reason will win out over the doings of a narcissistic, pathological liar abetted by a Party all to willing to ignore his Russian treason.

Of the many flaws I observed in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, perhaps the most damning was the belief by her political strategists that all they had to do was to emphasize the historical nature of her candidacy and counter point it with Trump’s sexism and misogyny.  They overlooked the fact that this country is for the most part sexist (why the wage disparity?) and that many Fundamentalist Christian women believed only a man should be President.  Meanwhile,  this putrid Billionaire, whose money comes from selling a boorish upper class brand,  was allowed to position himself as the economic savior of the middle class.  Virulently untruthful Republican campaign ads were met by too cleverly bland  and obviously ineffective Democratic ads, mainly showing Trump contretemps, racism and misogyny.  Never once did it occur to the Clinton Team that in truth a sizable minority of this country is sexist and racist.  The appeals to people’s higher natures fell upon deaf ears.

The sad irony of all of this is that Trump ascended to the lead in the nomination battle by appealing to the racism and sexism of the Republican base.  With the nomination secured, Trump actually adopted the message that Bernie Sanders had such success with, that many in the media disdained as a “populist” message.  You see just as Bill Clinton’s winning mantra was “‘it’s the economy stupid“, so Sanders had identified that the key issue in this election was exactly the unfairness of the American economic situation.  Hillary, belatedly moved towards Bernie’s position to secure her nomination, but then in the giddiness of positive polling numbers, began to retreat to her comfortable “Centrism“,  incorrectly believing she could reach out to that non-existent political cadre, the oxymoronic Republican Centrists and the even more non-existent “undecideds“.

My upshot is this.  I see the battle for political power as a war between the “haves” and the “have nots“, over the resources of the country.  We all know instinctively that when it comes to human affairs, “money and power” are fought for by warlike means, with no holds barred and the understanding therefore that all tactics are acceptable as long as they result in victory.  Most Left Wingers,  myself definitely included, see the human condition as a need for harmony and community.  This is the thrust of most of our political action. However, when you are fighting a war against an enemy of implacable fortitude; contemptuous for the normal rule of law; and without qualms or compassion for the innocents hurt as collateral damage;  to respond to that enemy,  you mustn’t allow yourselves to be bound by chivalrous behavioral norms.

We can’t win a war with the antediluvian Conservative Corporatists by dint of weaponry, or violence, because they are already fairly violent and well armed people.  The battle to be fought is with the deadly weapon of propaganda and in Trump’s peculiar case ridicule.  This “war” needs to be fought by creating effective memes and by crafting a mythology that makes people despise our enemies.  The motto of my college was “the truth shall make us free”.  While that is a noble aspiration, we have seen in this election that the  “truth” is malleable to pathological liars and that “love does not conquer hate“.  My take on this, though many might disagree, is that “when they go low, we go lower“.  If we lose the battles to come in the next four years,  we will inexorably lose this country to a Fascism every bit as virulent as that practiced by Hitler and Mussolini. The stakes are high and they’ve got the guns.  I have to believe though, that we’ve got the intelligence and the wit to prevail in the “War of Ideas“,  but we need to unleash it ruthlessly, without regard for the niceties of comity.

A metaphor for my mindset is this iconic movie clip below and the surprise ending, that really shouldn’t be a surprise.  Let’s be sure we’re the ones bringing a better gun to the gunfight of the next three years.