Give the devil his due: the sleazy ex-president from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, knew how to play politics. Running as a conservative Democrat from the South, in the mold of Jimmy Carter, Clinton managed to build on the same Carterite coalition to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency in 1992. The moment he got into office, the Democrat looked as Republican as anyone the Republicans offered up during the election, and in some instances even more so.
The flim-flam artist from Arkansas got rid of the guaranteed federal entitlement for aid to families with dependent children, enacted most of the globalization pacts that are bedeviling the economy to this day (WTO, NAFTA, etc.), including sending a great portion, if not most, of our manufacturing production capability overseas, decimated the F.D.R.-era Glass-Steagall Act, which until Clinton's new rules kept the banks fairly honest, but since then has opened up a financial hornet's nest, and emblazoned a gingoistic imperial arrogance in the same model as the corrupt Reagan-Bush I period.
In effect, Clinton told progressive Democrats, too bad if you don't like the Republicanization of the Democratic Party that I am implementing, because there's no place else for you to go. The little, meek progressive surrogates said, "Yessir," re-elected him, and went on about the business of taking their slots in the new right-wing Democratic-Republican Party. Despite all his talk about "hope and change," Barack Obama has gladly taken over the remnants of what Bill Clinton has left of the Democratic Party after an 8 year interregnum of the most repugnant and despicable administration in the history of America: Bush II (a period in which almost anything directly afterwards would be hard put not to look like a mirage of the Garden of Eden). Now do you think we need a strong, national third political party?
[revised on 12/27/09]
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