Political Memes

I think this is backwards.

Or rather I think you’re right about Bill and Hillary Clinton, but the cause and effect works the opposite of how you said.

In 1992 the democrats had won one presidential election in 24 years.

I think the violent betrayal of the antiwar left by the DNC in 1968 just turned too many politically active people away from the Democratic Party. Anyone who really cared probably had been gassed or beaten, or knew someone who had, in Chicago in 1968, and so decided - pretty understandably - fuck this game, I’m not playing.

And so what happened? Did we get the yellow line? Did the DNC suddenly realize, as OP swears he wants them to, that to attract votes they’d have to move to the left?

Fuck no. Instead we got Wall Street, the resurgence of wealth inequality as a defining characteristic of the American economy, death squads in Central America, Star Wars. Finally, a generation of continuous losing later, Clinton decided he could safely abandon the actual left since they weren’t interested in voting anyway, and just appeal to conservative-but-not-Nazi rich white people, and the new face of the Democratic Party was born. And, it worked.

And for one instant partway through that whole thing, an actually liberal Democratic candidate won, did some affirmatively great things, got a whole bunch of resistance from the right and not much support from the left, and then got beat out of a 2nd term because of lukewarm support from an American left wing that was too jaded to really realize that he wasn’t the same people who had cheated them out of actual progress in a recent primary they were still salty about. And so, when he lost, an idiot with fascist tendencies and no real government experience won, and ruined the fuckin world.

So no I don’t think the lesson of Clinton is “this lack of ideology.” I think the lesson of Clinton is, if you want the government to represent you, you need to work (in whatever way) to make sure it does, otherwise the most powerful military and economic power in the world will just be up for grabs for whoever feels like fighting hard enough to grab the wheel. And when that happens it’ll fuck up your day and many other people’s way way worse than what you were saying wasn’t worth voting for.