BlackAsCoal
Gold Member
- Oct 13, 2008
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From the Left – We’ve Seen This Movie Before
When Bill Clinton first took office as president, he was swept in on a wave of the promise of a new direction. He was seen as a fresh face, not a Washington insider. He was well spoken, handsome, charming, and he spoke of new and progressive ideas about how government should work for the best interests of all Americans. He was a liberal intellectual with a knack for presenting himself as the common man and had an especially unique relationship with African-Americans who went to the polls in record numbers to support him. Toni Morrison, an African-American author would one day call him, "the first Black president."
In 1992, Bill Clinton was a liberal wet dream.
In announcing his support for Clinton, Dick Gephardt said, "Bill Clinton will be the kind of president the United States needs to recapture our economic strength and leadership in the post-Cold War world," and Clinton "has demonstrated resilience and decency."
Clinton also built a strong following of antiwar Americans, who believed America had been tricked into going to war in a place called Iraq by a man named George Bush. The man named Bush was also leaving America massive debt, a faltering economy, and had an administration full of corruption and shady characters. Clinton's victory was due in large part to an American electorate tired and angry at the man named George Bush. Americans were so tired of George Bush that democrats won victories all over the country and Clinton went into office with a solidly democratic House and Senate.
However, soon after Clinton took office, the left began to question Clinton's selection of his cabinet and the people who surrounded him. Although the left was largely responsible for pushing Clinton into office, the direction he seemed to be taking was sharply to the right and by the time he had served his first year in the White House, he was no longer Clinton the progressive, no longer the wet dream he first appeared to be. In fact, he created the right-wing wing of the Democratic Party, the DLC. Once in office, welfare reform, war, and harsh drug penalties found their way to Clinton's table. He would become the greatest incarceration president in American history .. and the majority of those incarcerated were African-Americans, the same group who so fervently supported him. Toni Morrison never considered that Clinton had used Sista' Souljah to prove to white people that he was not black.
Clinton also became best friends with corporate America and lobbyists were all over him like flies on shit. Buoyed by a reviving economy, Bill Clinton remade himself and got cozy with the very elements the left so despised.
By the very next election after Clinton had so triumphantly captured the White House, the American left was no longer as enamored by him and republicans stormed back into control of the Congress .. and they stormed back with a vengeance. Clinton went on to serve two terms, but he never recaptured the Congress and the DLC, with their centrist politics, would lead democrats to embarrassing election failures for many years to come.
Fast forward to the present day, replace the name Clinton with Obama and you have much of the exact same movie. "Fresh face", "eloquent", "inspiring", "change", and a liberal wet dream. He rode that same wave of antiwar, anti-Bush sentiment into office and became an instant hero of the left. Obama will enter the White House with almost the exact same advantage in Congress that Clinton had.
Obama has not only rounded up much of the old Clinton regime, he's also rounded up his wife. It seems the only person missing is Bill Clinton himself. Many within the Jewish community are calling Obama the first Jewish president, and, like Clinton, once the primaries were over, he turned sharply to the right, then once elected, he pitched his tent firmly right of center.
Now once again, the grumbling among the left begins. Once again, they've been played for fools and left abandoned. Their voice is nowhere to be found among Obama's inner circle, which is especially frustrating given there is indeed a place at Obama's table for former supporters of a man named George Bush. In fact, they have several places at the table. Even those who help to orchestrate the economic disaster America is faced with today have a place at Obama’s table. If, as Obama claimed, that “good judgment” was knowing the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea, why hasn’t he made a place at his table for those who had that good judgment? Everyone around him supported the war..
We've seen this movie before and we should have already have known how it was going to turn out. It's not as if Obama didn't leave plenty of clues about where this was heading. But, once again, full of hope and promise and a desire to make a better America and a better world, the left closed it's eyes and refused to look at the clues, refused to listen to the words of the song he was singing.
It's way past time for the American left to recognize that it has no political party that represents their interests. The Democratic Party is a party of centrists who only use the left to get elected. Once elected, they will run to the center and abandon anything remotely bold or courageous. This is why democrats are such failures in national elections, and why Obama becomes only the 3rd democrat to occupy the White House in the last 40 years for a grand total of 3 terms up to now. Even though the force to get our troops out of Iraq, and universal healthcare, and tighter regulation of corporations and the banking industry, all of which the entire country now overwhelmingly supports, are all ideas that came from the left, democrats continue to push the politics of centrism to their own detriment.
Republicans aren't centrists and once in office they tend to the business of their constituents, right or wrong, they understand the nature of politics much better than democrats .. thus, they'll be back. Ushered in by the weakness of centrist politics and the anger, frustration, and lack of enthusiasm by the left, republicans will be back.
If Obama continues down his present course, it may be as soon as the very next election that republicans will once again be in control of Congress .. just like with Bill Clinton.
Barack Obama, the Sequel.
When Bill Clinton first took office as president, he was swept in on a wave of the promise of a new direction. He was seen as a fresh face, not a Washington insider. He was well spoken, handsome, charming, and he spoke of new and progressive ideas about how government should work for the best interests of all Americans. He was a liberal intellectual with a knack for presenting himself as the common man and had an especially unique relationship with African-Americans who went to the polls in record numbers to support him. Toni Morrison, an African-American author would one day call him, "the first Black president."
In 1992, Bill Clinton was a liberal wet dream.
In announcing his support for Clinton, Dick Gephardt said, "Bill Clinton will be the kind of president the United States needs to recapture our economic strength and leadership in the post-Cold War world," and Clinton "has demonstrated resilience and decency."
Clinton also built a strong following of antiwar Americans, who believed America had been tricked into going to war in a place called Iraq by a man named George Bush. The man named Bush was also leaving America massive debt, a faltering economy, and had an administration full of corruption and shady characters. Clinton's victory was due in large part to an American electorate tired and angry at the man named George Bush. Americans were so tired of George Bush that democrats won victories all over the country and Clinton went into office with a solidly democratic House and Senate.
However, soon after Clinton took office, the left began to question Clinton's selection of his cabinet and the people who surrounded him. Although the left was largely responsible for pushing Clinton into office, the direction he seemed to be taking was sharply to the right and by the time he had served his first year in the White House, he was no longer Clinton the progressive, no longer the wet dream he first appeared to be. In fact, he created the right-wing wing of the Democratic Party, the DLC. Once in office, welfare reform, war, and harsh drug penalties found their way to Clinton's table. He would become the greatest incarceration president in American history .. and the majority of those incarcerated were African-Americans, the same group who so fervently supported him. Toni Morrison never considered that Clinton had used Sista' Souljah to prove to white people that he was not black.
Clinton also became best friends with corporate America and lobbyists were all over him like flies on shit. Buoyed by a reviving economy, Bill Clinton remade himself and got cozy with the very elements the left so despised.
By the very next election after Clinton had so triumphantly captured the White House, the American left was no longer as enamored by him and republicans stormed back into control of the Congress .. and they stormed back with a vengeance. Clinton went on to serve two terms, but he never recaptured the Congress and the DLC, with their centrist politics, would lead democrats to embarrassing election failures for many years to come.
Fast forward to the present day, replace the name Clinton with Obama and you have much of the exact same movie. "Fresh face", "eloquent", "inspiring", "change", and a liberal wet dream. He rode that same wave of antiwar, anti-Bush sentiment into office and became an instant hero of the left. Obama will enter the White House with almost the exact same advantage in Congress that Clinton had.
Obama has not only rounded up much of the old Clinton regime, he's also rounded up his wife. It seems the only person missing is Bill Clinton himself. Many within the Jewish community are calling Obama the first Jewish president, and, like Clinton, once the primaries were over, he turned sharply to the right, then once elected, he pitched his tent firmly right of center.
Now once again, the grumbling among the left begins. Once again, they've been played for fools and left abandoned. Their voice is nowhere to be found among Obama's inner circle, which is especially frustrating given there is indeed a place at Obama's table for former supporters of a man named George Bush. In fact, they have several places at the table. Even those who help to orchestrate the economic disaster America is faced with today have a place at Obama’s table. If, as Obama claimed, that “good judgment” was knowing the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea, why hasn’t he made a place at his table for those who had that good judgment? Everyone around him supported the war..
We've seen this movie before and we should have already have known how it was going to turn out. It's not as if Obama didn't leave plenty of clues about where this was heading. But, once again, full of hope and promise and a desire to make a better America and a better world, the left closed it's eyes and refused to look at the clues, refused to listen to the words of the song he was singing.
It's way past time for the American left to recognize that it has no political party that represents their interests. The Democratic Party is a party of centrists who only use the left to get elected. Once elected, they will run to the center and abandon anything remotely bold or courageous. This is why democrats are such failures in national elections, and why Obama becomes only the 3rd democrat to occupy the White House in the last 40 years for a grand total of 3 terms up to now. Even though the force to get our troops out of Iraq, and universal healthcare, and tighter regulation of corporations and the banking industry, all of which the entire country now overwhelmingly supports, are all ideas that came from the left, democrats continue to push the politics of centrism to their own detriment.
Republicans aren't centrists and once in office they tend to the business of their constituents, right or wrong, they understand the nature of politics much better than democrats .. thus, they'll be back. Ushered in by the weakness of centrist politics and the anger, frustration, and lack of enthusiasm by the left, republicans will be back.
If Obama continues down his present course, it may be as soon as the very next election that republicans will once again be in control of Congress .. just like with Bill Clinton.
Barack Obama, the Sequel.
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