What Limbaugh is, is something different. He's a propagandist nothing more. As to his popularity among many. One has to go read Thomas Frank "Whats the Matter with Kansas". The short answer is this: When the Clinton betrayed the working class(blue collars) and pushed through NAFTA during the nineties many ordinary Americans saw the Democrats as no friend of theirs. Which caused many of these folks to turn away from the party since it didn't want them.The obvious problem with this assessment is the chronology: Limbaugh achieved his popularity well before the Clinton presidency. But that's not what bugs me.
What bugs me is the proposition that working class people, feeling (justifiably) betrayed by Clinton over this decision, would storm off and spend the next couple of decades voting for Republicans. As some of you will recall, most Democrats opposed Clinton on NAFTA, while nearly all Republicans -- including Rush Limbaugh -- supported the agreement.
Any working person cognizant enough to have known about NAFTA must also have known that most conservatives loved it and most liberals loathed it. Any working person educated enough to know what the acronym stands for must also be bright enough to know that the G.O.P. loves to ship American jobs to China and India.
I'm reminded of the long-ago (yet still present) debate over gays in the military. In 1993, I felt furious that Clinton wasted so much of his short-lived political capital on that one obviously-doomed issue. Yet many gay people felt just as furious because Clinton did not spend all of his capital fighting for the right of openly gay people to die in needless imperialist adventures. So furious were they that some of them declared that they would vote Republican henceforward. As though the Republican party would defend their interests.
That's the problem, and it is one we will face if the Dems ever win high office again. If -- when -- a Democratic president annoys one sector of his supporters over one issue, those supporters will announce their decision to pick up their marbles and leave the game. And off they go, voting once more for the party of debt, theocracy, war and corruption.
I call it the snit-fit factor. It tends to hit Democrats -- never the other side. Why is that?
5 comments:
If you assume from the start that Clinton was not a democrat but a republican in democratic drag...you have the answer. Ask why he led right off with the gays-in-the-military issue? He knew it would PO the rightwingnuts and the backlash would prevent it. Thus he can say to gays 'I tried' and to his right wing 'I took care of that!'
I think the reason the republicans went after him with such vengance is that he called himself a democrat but he was implementing all THEIR programs. And getting credit for it!
Do we need any further testimony than the recent 'chumminess' between Bush Pere and Clinton?
boloBert
Oh, for fuck's sake. Not this crap again. Even Clinton has expressed great regret for his mistake in allowing the Republicans to push the gays-in-the-military issue so early on in the game. There was no conspiracy to stealthily appease both gays and liberals and the RW on his part, it was just bad luck and a bad move.
My God. Can those calling Bill Clinton a "closet conservative" learn to read, please? Use those over-developed intellects you obviously believe you were blessed with? If you actually had such any such research or analytical skill, you'd be able to discern exactly what Clinton's objectives were in deciding to exercise some diplomacy with the Bush folks. Do you appreciate the fact that we weren't the "victims of another terrorist attack" last year? Then you might want to thank Bill for his effort on that score. Avoidance of that disaster in '05 didn't happen 'cause Dick and 43 are such generous men.
Jesus. Some people. The Green Party deserves you.
That's an interesting take on their buddy-buddy status, Jen. I hadn't heard it before. I have wondered what Bill's reasons were, always thought it was something more selfish. I like your view better.
sofla said:
The Democratic Chair of the Armed Services Committee, one Sam Nunn (D-GA), was the one who put the gays in the military front and center and first in the Clinton presidency's earliest days, not the GOP.
Nunn said he was against the plan (which was to change the military treatment of gays by presidential executive order, just as Truman had done when he integrated the armed services), and that if Clinton insisted on making his EO anyway, he (Nunn) would simply overturn the EO by a law changing the Uniform Code of Military Justice back to the status quo ante.
So, not only would Clinton lose his bid to allow gays, his OWN PARTY would have done the reversal. Nunn lined up the support of so many in the Senate (which was majority Democrat at the time) as co-sponsors to his planned bill that it already had a veto-proof margin from the sponsors alone.
Clinton backed off with a considerable political black eye from the dustup, a pattern to be repeated by the 'old bull' Democratic committee chairmen opposing his plans, perhaps most importantly one Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who was so offended Clinton didn't run his health care plan through Pat's committee that he helped kill the bill.
Take a step back. You'll see that my post was NOT about Clinton, gays, NAFTA, or any other one thing or person we were dealing with in the previous decade. I addressed the "snit fit factor."
Any Democratic president who comes to power (Lord willing) in 2008 will inevitably do something to piss off you and me. The question is whether we will be mature enough to see the larger picture. Surely after Dubya and the theocrats showed us how bad the alternative can be, we will know better than to withdraw our support simply because we didn't get our way on a few issues?
Reagan advisor Martin Anderson used to have a motto: "In politics, the question is always 'Compared to WHAT?'" Wise words. Keep 'em in mind.
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