It’s Not Your Father’s Democratic Party: How the Party has Changed for the Worse since Clinton’s era
Today’s Democratic Party is an institution beholden to its public-sector union clients, academics, Eastern elites, and the crony capitalists who give it funding and benefit from the White House’s largesse when it gives them contracts — such as those for the failed energy companies like Solyndra.
Its base is the anti-business and anti-war Left, symbolized by the likely-to-fail campaign for Senate in Massachusetts waged by Elizabeth Warren. Hers, like that of the president, is that of a party that has taken “an ever-more-stridently leftward turn.” Gone is the emphasis of the DLC for private-sector growth, government efficiency, personal responsibility, and what Boyer writes is “an affirmation of mainstream values.” And one should add that also gone is a tough foreign policy against very real enemies, replaced by Obama’s “leading from behind” strategy. This has left the U.S. without influence to stop the slaughter in Syria, to defend Israel from ever growing attacks, and, most importantly, to force Iran to stop preparing the enrichment of uranium.
Boyer highlights the very real differences:
Obama’s presidency has seemed, in key regards, a repudiation of the New Democrat idea. Clinton Democrats embraced business; Obama attacked private equity. A New Democrat would have championed the Keystone XL Pipeline; Obama, yielding to environmentalists, has resisted it. Although Obama campaigned in coal country in 2008 as a friend of the industry (and of all those blue-collar jobs associated with it), his Environmental Protection Agency has established regulations so severe that one administration official admitted, “if you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem.” Many of the workers affected by such policies are swing-state voters, who are also keenly sensitive to values issues. Obama’s health-care mandates on contraception may help him with single women and urban voters, but it might hurt him among Catholics in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act; Obama stopped enforcing it, and then declared himself a supporter of gay marriage — the day after North Carolinians voted a traditional definition of marriage into the state’s constitution.
Pollster Doug Schoen says Obama has “substituted class warfare for Clintonism.”
“I think the New Democrat movement can be saved,” says Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council. “We do go through cycles. But it would have been a lot better if we had had a second New Democrat president to cement it.”
From, speaking to Boyer, ties the change to those he calls the “cultural liberals,” reflected in the press, academia, New York’s Upper West Side and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, and, of course, most of the film academy and big Hollywood boosters of Obama like George Clooney. The rest of the party’s base is made up of those who get government checks and those in the business community who get what From calls “corporate welfare.” In other words, the party has become “the party of elites and dependents.”
Given this reality, it is not a surprise that during the Republican National Convention — as I said in my previous column — the media did not highlight the speech by Jane Edmonds or even let most people know of the defection to the Republican side of former Alabama Congressman Arthur Davis, the man who seconded Obama’s nomination at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Davis is an African-American who must have taken great pride in the symbolic importance of a black man receiving the nomination of one of America’s major political parties. But Davis found that Obama had taken a different path than that which allowed Democrats in the South to gain electoral victories. Rather than trying to get those who had voted for Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan to vote for him, Obama, Davis points out, “was figuring out how to rally the Democratic base around him,” and he never “had to do what Clinton had to do …which was to figure out how to construct some kind of other political case that appealed to conservative-leaning voters.”
The line going into the Democratic Party convention seems to be that their party is united, while the Republicans are 1. fragmented; and 2. obstructionist. Owing to the power of populism, many will swallow this canard. I tried to show the internal incoherence of the Democrats here: http://clarespark.com/2012/04/06/diagnosing-potus/. Not even the centrist Bill Clinton can mesh the interests of environmentalists and labor. Meanwhile, the penetration of communist ideas into the Democratic Party is underreported by most of the media. We have no John Dos Passos or George Orwell to sound the alarm.
For labor day, I elaborated on the blog I posted above. It is about neurotic dread as Freud defined it and may be applicable to the fear of leaving the group, even when groups within the Democratic Party are at odds. See http://clarespark.com/2012/09/03/eros-and-the-problem-of-solidarity/.
It certainly has changed without Gingrich around to guide them fiscally and manage the pennies.
Here is a great definition of the libs..the “Democratic party”today:
“As reflected in the press, academia, New York’s Upper West Side and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, and, of course, most of the film academy and big Hollywood boosters of Obama like George Clooney. The rest of the party’s base is made up of those who get government checks and those in the business community who get what From calls “corporate welfare.” In other words, the party has become “the party of elites and dependents.”
Thank God…Clint Eastwood has drawn a line in the sand….he…Is us…
Draw your own conclusions…please.
So will Clinton turn the day, making those independent and moderate swing voters see him on the stage, and now decide to vote for Obama? Doug Schoen tells Boyer that he doubts it…
As support for Boyer’s position: Obama got a higher percentage of the popular vote than Clinton did in his two campaigns.
The recall election in Wisconsin is pretty good evidence that the Democratic Party is a tool of the government employee unions.
Those elections were all very different. In ’92, there was a major 3rd Party candidate and in ’96 Clinton was damn lucky to hang on after the Republican Revolution of ’96.
Clinton was always about Clinton. He’ll engage in a great deal of self-aggrandizement while subtly undermining Obama.
Having spent a great deal of time looking at the 90s and earlier antecedents of what Obama is pushing now I have to disagree somewhat. I think both Clintons were simply more covert in what and how they pushed transformational ideas. They learned to appreciate a good cover story and had their plans derailed dramatically by the 94 loss of the House and the Lewinsky scandal in the Second Term. But the educators in 98, prior to Columbine, were basically taking victory laps celebrating their covert installation of the Marxist theory of the mind. Which was to have been locked in place by a President Gore.
And the Regional Equity Movement that Stanley Kurtz described so well as an Obama primary passion for a 2nd term had its first national rollout back in 1998 at a Brookings Institution push. It even turned into a 2000 book that Gore wrote the Foreword for. My favorite part was reading the mentions of the Gamaliel Foundation as being at the forefront of REM nationally. So many bad ideas of a collectivist nature come out of Chicago, don’t they?
And the federal funding to manipulate state and local behavior that have made Agenda 21 and ICLEI so powerful were Clinton priorities as well.
In Obama’s Democratic party overt collectivism and openly pushing for a transcendent state is what has changed. In the 90s the memories of the destruction of Communism remained acute. Now we have the College Board wanting to teach students in AP history classes that Communism is just an international, cross-national boundary philosophy of how to best control natural and economic resources. And that Capitalism leads to environmental depredations. With that kind of calculated misrepresentation being formally pushed on the young, I guess it is safer to be more open.
Robin makes a good point… Clinton has always been a populist in the George Wallace mold, and he disowned his connctions with the DLC shortly after the 1992 election. And Hillary is a Marxist true believer. Clinton took a big leftward swing in the first half of his first term, and only turned away from it after the public embarassments of the 1994 election and the cratering of Hillarycare. He did this because he saw that his 1993 leftist position wasn’t going over with the public. (There’s actually something to be said for that… a politician who actually responds to what the people want! But it did give Bill a reputation for principled New Democrat moderate-ism that he doesn’t really deserve.)
I’m thinking that Bill’s speech, along with Hillary being absent from the convention, is mostly tactical: They want Obama to win this year so he will be out of the way in 2016. However, they’ve already made the mistake once of underestimating the Chicago machine, and I think they’re about to do it again. The Alinskyites won’t be sitting still during an Obama second term; they’ll be prepping another fresh-faced, smooth-tounged, no-visible-past candidate of a politically correct ethnic group.
As for Obama and Pelosi, I think they’ve been doing a good-cop-bad-cop routine all along. Pelosi relished her role as Queen of America and she played it well, allowing Obama to play the frustrated compromiser. Don’t forget, the goal all along was to portray the GOP as unreasonable for not caving, which they hoped would give Obama (and Pelosi) a broad popular mandate to act extra-constitutionally. The rise of the Tea Party blew that deal by disrupting the planned media narrative.
There was always an element of Democrats pretending to be moderates while their true feeling were obviously (to anyone paying attention) much farther to the left.
In 2008, they stopped pretending nearly as hard. I’m still not sure if that’s good or bad.
Well maybe. But my dad voted democrat all his life and if there was ever someone less likely to be a covert commie, it was he.
He came up in the depression. The army wouldn’t let him volunteer in WWII so he worked as a civilian clerk at the age of 16, and when it was time he went to Korea.
There were a lot of men like him. When McGovern ran he just didn’t vote.
John, I know the type of person you’re talking about. The sentiment on which they based their votes goes back to Reconstruction. But a lot of those voters are dead now, and many of the ones who remain have realized that the faction of the Democratic Party that they always sided with no longer exists. These voters always knew that Marxists were embedded in the party, but they always figured that the post-Reconstructionist Democrats could keep the leftists in check. They were wrong, and they see that now, but it’s too late.
Old Soldier, I’ve been telling people that I wish Howard Dean had won the Democrats’ nomination in 2004. When they look at me like I just grew another arm, I explain that Dean was one of the few American leftists who makes no bones about what he believes in. We could have had all this out two election cycles ago, and the result, whichever way it went, would have been definitive.
Ron – Must agree with Robin’s comments @3. I might add, the Democrat party lost its mooring with Franklin Roosevelt and has been drifting leftwards ever since.
Also, a point I keep making is that the Democrat Party is not at all liberal in any meaningful political sense of the word. (It is liberal with other people’s money and the use of government power to control people, but that’s hardly liberal.) Thus, I would amend the following, where you wrote: “For Democrats who really want to move forward, they too have to abandon a liberalism that has become both obsolete and reactionary,” to: For Democrats who really want to move forward, they too have to abandon a POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY that has become both obsolete and reactionary.”
Close. Obama represents the Democratic Party of Vice President Henry Wallace. FDR DID select him in 1940. Only because of the insistance of the old-line Democrats did Harry Truman get the VP nomination in 1944.
A major source of mis-education in the United States stems from the “history” of the 1948 election being reduced to the “Dewey Beats Truman” bumper sticker. There is no discussion of the Democratic split and the separate run by the Progressives under Wallace in that year. That was one of history’s pivot points, and it’s almost entirely ignored.
It isn’t patronage that is destroying the democrat party. We’ve had patronage since before there was civil service, before Andrew Jackson.
It was the infiltration of Marxist ideology that has corrupted the democrat party, an infiltration that overwhelmed, overran, and took over the party apparatus in the years from 1968-1973. The radical left is simply using the tool of party patronage as one more lever to control the party faithful.
AFL-CIO Sets Up “Hug A Union Thug” Booth At DNC…
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/09/03/afl-cio-sets-up-hug-a-union-thug-booth-at-dnc/
Three views:
Clinton; steer by the polls. He wanted to be a populist and centralist.
Obama; ignore or go against the polls. He wants America to have his vision despite the opinions and sometimes the constitution.
Christie: create favorable polls. He avocated strong leadership to do “the right thing” for the populace.
Christie is great, except for one big negative: he panders to Muslims and attacks those that try to warn us about the true nature and threat of Islam.
I agree with #5, Skandia Recluse. Tom Hayden and his friends took over the Democratic Party in 1972 when George McGovern set up new rules for the Democratic Party, after Hubert Humphrey appointed him to do so to “bring them into the system,” when Tom Hayden and his bullies attacked the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968.
so we don’t want to look back, but want to go back to Clinton.
It doesn’t get more schizophrenic than this.
You’re taking strenuous logical liberties with what was said in the article. The only reason Clinton is mentioned is for comparison. (It’s called a compare/contrast exercise that you should recognize from high school.) At no point in the article is it suggested that there’s a desire to return to the days of Clinton or to look backward. However, to continue the compare/contrast exercise, I would gladly trade the economic policies of Clinton between 1994-1999 (and the associated economic conditions of the time) for any policy of the Obama administration for obvious reasons.
The Democrat party has tipped over into communism, in all but name.
GOP lawmaker: Senate does nothing but ‘bingo and wheelchair races’ By Bernie Becker – 09/03/12
http://thehill.com/conventions-2012/gop-convention-tampa/247199-gop-lawmaker-senate-does-nothing-but-bingo-and-wheelchair-races
This reminds me of what today’s Liberals do in constantly bringing up Reagan, as in “Reagan would never have approved of (fill in the blank) being done by (fill in the blank)”. They cite Reagan as a good conservative they could work with, not like these nasty new conservatives. It’s as though we’re supposed to forget that at the time they called him a Nazi and accused him of plotting the death of every homosexual in the country.
When Clinton was running the country Conservatives couldn’t stand him, so please, let’s not look back and pretend it was otherwise. Besides, the only difference between Clinton and Obama is that Clinton is a genuinely talented politician who appreciates what the public will tolerate and what it won’t. Idealogically they’re of a piece.
I agree with your assessment of leftist sentiment towards Reagan in the 80′s. However, I must address what I consider a rather cavalier assessment of Clinton’s vs. Obama’s governing/political philosophies. To say that Clinton and Obama are merely “Idealogically …of a piece” is like saying there’s no appreciable difference in realpolitik between John McCain and a Tea Party conservative like Mike Lee; an assertion that most conservatives would find both patently wrong and offensive.
Bill Clinton did lurch to the left in the first couple years of his first term when controlling all branches of federal government. However, any one familiar with his governing philosophy in Arkansas was not at all surprised with his populist tone once the GOP took control of Congress in 1994. Barack Obama is a true believer; a ideologist who has shown none of the populist inclinations of Clinton since the GOP took over the House in 2010. In fact, the opposite is true. Obama has doubled down on the rhetoric and dug in his heels; a tell-tale sign of political rigidity concerned primarily in philosophical purity than the impact of realpolitik.
All of this is not said as one who admires Bill Clinton per se, but rather as one who respects his skill as a politician who attempted to build consensus when necessary to succeed as opposed to Obama who governs only through force of power.
What’s left to like about the Democraps? Their constant screed to tax the “rich”, when the “rich” already pay most of the income taxes? And, it will do almost nothing to the deficit.
The “You Didn’t Build That” accusations, when entrepreneurs certainly did build their businesses. They got up to clean the shop, make the orders, balance the books, pay their employees AND PAY THEIR TAXES. What about their flat earth, no growth, no jobs [policies even after spending billions of dollars.
Green energy? No how about green subsidies for rich billionaires to play at windmills and solar panels. While making energy more expensive for the average citizen. Like $4.00 gasoline? Well you can thank O’Dismal for his no drilling, no refining, no productive agenda. And WWIII is brewing. Will we even be able to produce enough energy to win a war?
What is to like about O’Dismal bowing and scraping before the Saudi king? He might have just as well got down and licked his boots. Talk about signalling subservience. And then O’Dismal ended our space program and made it into a “feel good program” to make Muslims feel better. Talk about wasted money.
And how about the food stamp, unemployment, and disability president. We simply can’t afford this many unproductive citizens sucking the lifeblood out of the country.
So they call the opposition Nazi’s and extreme. Its all they got left. No accomplishments, just insults. Think about it. So cling to your gun, Bible or Torah, and vote them the out. .
If “Clintonism” exists, then it would exist at the DNC convention.
If reaching toward the center, across the aisle, bridging the divide was a core element, rather than a cheap trick, it would demonstrate clearly all that it stands for…and against…in North Carolina this week.
The problem is, there is no triangulation possible between small c communism and free market constitutional governance. It’s an either/or proposition.
I predict that Clinton will sell out country for party, will pile on the the funeral pyre all the logs of intentional divisiveness, will mask the inane and dangerous fiscal insanity of dependency spending, will give safe harbor to international buffoonery.
Clinton will abandon all that defined him as a centrist. He will join the small c communists as their champion….and will forever lose the Dick Morris infused “centrism” that allowed him to be, at least arguably…motivated by independent thought.
Vendors in Charlotte Tell MRC-TV’s Dan Joseph: ‘No, I Built This’ By Ken Shepherd | September 04, 2012
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2012/09/04/vendors-charlotte-tell-mrc-tvs-dan-joseph-no-i-built
No matter how far-left (endorsed by the CPUSA) the democrats have become you will never hear the so called MSM suggest that they need to moderate their views, whereas everytime the GOP has a minor setback it is the overwhelming topic of conversation for weeks.
Lets face it, the culprit of our destruction has always been, and will always be New York City, and Washington DC which are the centers of media and government. These two cities are democrat machines with each having over 90% registered democrat populations. Whether it be wall street, media or government these two cities are the epicenters of corruption. The islamist must have known it also.
We have not had a true conservative running DC since Calvin Coolidge where he was able to reduced the size of government by one half. This would be impossible today.
We are doomed anyway you look at it. The progressive left is so entrenched there is little hope for this country. Any reform will be hyped as killing off the weak and poor. As far as I’m concerned, the media is our biggest problem.
“Conservative and centrist Democrats, so critical to Clinton’s efforts to reform welfare, balance the budget, and erase the image of the party as being reflexively anti-business, have nearly vanished.”
You can say that again. The few “Blue Dog” Democrats out there were all purged in 2010 after Obama, Reid, and Pelosi threw them under the bus to get Obamacare passed. Now you have a Democratic Party that’s basically a socialist party trying to turn the United States into France, or one of the many other failed European social-welfare states like Greece.
But, in one way, this may be a good thing. The disaster of the Obama administration may have woken up the American people and it certainly scared them. Every generation has to be reminded of the horrors that can be unleashed by a liberal Democrat in the White House. America last learned this hard lesson with Jimmy Carter. Once they saw what a weak and failed leader Carter was, it ushered in the Reagan era and the Republicans held the White House for 12 years. Maybe this is our generation’s wake-up call and we will have a new era of conservative Republican leadership in the White House thanks to Obama’s disasterous term in office. I certainly hope so.
Even worse, Obama’s base really does not comprehend that they only regained their congressional majorities by 2006 because of the Blue Dogs who mostly lost or retired 2010-present. They still think they just have to communicate better.
The good news is that all the talk about 2016 is Biden v Hillary. This new Dem Party has no bench, except maybe Gov. O’Malley.
My theory is that Michelle Obama will run in 2016, assuming there still is a United States of America that has not descended into anarchy, or martial law.
I just hope Romney/Ryan can break through their liabilities.
Certainly helps me now that the DNC has dissed Israel in the official platform, and, I was persuaded by Eastwood – his endorsement is one that actually matters with me.
I confess that listening to Romney makes me so tense – just because he sounds tense.
btw, Hillary is missing the convention because no Cabinet member can engage in political events.
I certainly hope we have learnt well from this disastrous administration. I remember President Carter calling Reagan, “a dangerous right-wing radical” with Gallup polls showing Carter in the lead 47% to Reagan’s 39% before the October debates.
And, the words Reagan stated at the October 1980 debates, are as relevant now as they were then:
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions ‘yes’, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don’t agree, if you don’t think that this course that we’ve been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have.”
The election should be automatic and Romney should win. If he doesn’t it means that O successfully got out the fool vote. More ominously it means that the country now has a critical mass of imbeciles and it’s really on the skids.
More seriously, if O wins it’s almost a sure thing there’s going to be a middle class tax revolt. The epicenter of disaffection with the Federal government has always been isolated to Congress. But the cancerous disdain many have for Congress will metastasize from there and spread throughout Washington DC.
I can only hope and pray that your prediction comes true. Maybe we’ll meet in a fox hole.
Powder’s dry and all’s clean, lubed, and sighted in.
You would think Romney should win, but the entitlement class in America has grown huge and enjoys substantial political power. They’ll all vote straight-ticket Democrat. It’s going to be a wild ride.
The Tea Party is NOT done. We have to rid the Republican Party of the progressives in its ranks. And Portman introduced a bill that is essentially Agenda 21. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. As the song says, We’ve Only Just Begun!!
September 4, 2012 Why does Social Security need 174,000 bullets?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57505646/why-does-social-security-need-174000-bullets/
The problem with the Democrat Party is that they have become the Democratic (mob rule) Party!
The Dems used to be mildly off on many things most of which could be negotiated. This man has taken them to a whole new world. When the communist party gives you their endorsement you know you are left of left.
I’m going to post this as much as I can: When it gets to fundamentals, Ryan put it best: we faced a financial crisis. Instead of addressing it with complete focus, Obama chose to pursue Obamacare with a Democratic House and Senate. Therefore, our crisis is worse than it should be and everyone is worse off than 4 years ago because of this decision. Nothing anyone says can spin those fundamentals. That is the question of this election that everyone should wonder about: why did he pursue Obamacare then and not try to fight harder to increase job through policies to stimulate the economy when his party controlled all branches of the government? There are only two answers from him, and neither of them good: (1) Obama cares more about himself and his historic legacy that the welfare of the average person; or (2) he was so clueless about economic policy, never having had a job in the private sector, that he thought the stimulus bill would cure everything. How to the Dems even come close to countering those arguments?
Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride – On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride from Charlestown to Lexington to warn fellow colonists of the approach of British troops marching in their direction. Revere, joined by William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, set out to give an early warning to colonial resistance leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock of the Brits’ intention to arrest them and seize the colonists’ weapons stores. Now the spirit of Paul Revere rides once again to alert today’s citizen/patriots to prepare for new dangers presented by our own government’s anti-freedom policies.
Ain’t that the truth… the party of JFK has become the party of Karl Marx.
Clinton was horrible for America. He was riding the wave made by the policies of Reagan and Bush Sr.
Interestingly, no Democrat will give Reagan ANY credit for the economic boom during the Clinton years, yet there they are blaming W for every disastrous decision that Obama makes. Truly…you can not reason with Democrats. Just not possible.
Ron – NAFTA was passed early in Clinton’s 1st term.
Except his wife Hillary is STILL a left wing hag whose politics are indistinguishable from the con artist in the WH. She was a big cheerleader for Alinsky as well. And we got the heathcare shove down, and the vast right wing conspiracy, and the it takes a village and all that putrescence. You know things are pretty bad when the Clintons are now an exemplar of restraint.
Obamas role model- Hugo Chavez
Obamas ideal nation Venezuela
This all began following the Clinton Impeachment; a fateful schism. The Democrat Party hoist the Jolly Roger against the GOP then, and has never looked back.
I could not agree with all that has been stated here. I recently completed a book on this subject,
This Is NOT Your Father’s Democratic Party is now available on Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1477600957, and deals with this exact topic. Democrats used to be proud veterans, hard working middle class families and responsive representatives. Today it is a party of social re-engineering and greedy politicians. My father was a Director of the SBA under JFK, and small business thrived then. Today the Democrats are picking the meat of the small business owner’s bones.
It’s time to wake up American, Not being a Republican does not qualify one to be a Democrat! Democrats need to stand for something rather than selfishness and hammer out legislation. This guy in the Oval Office is a fraud who never signed the front of a check in his life. Reclaim your Party!
Hogwash.
The only difference is that they now dare to be more open about what they are. The dumbing down of the populace is advanced (a deliberate process that has been going on for 7 decades or more), and the media is more firmly in their grasp.
The Clintons are just as Marxist as Obama. They just kept their hatred of America a lot more under wraps.
This is not all pure willfulness on Obama’s part. Look at what the business community perpetrated after the Clinton presidency ended:
(1) Fired millions of middle-class Americans to outsource their jobs overseas.
(2) Participated in a huge and unethical national real-estate scam (cheating both naive borrowers taking sub-prime loans and sophisticated investors in mortgages). These dishonest and irresponsible decisions should have bankrupted their perpetrators — and would have, had they not taken advantage of their too-big-to-fail status.
(3) Bit up the salaries of top executives to unprecedented levels.
Voter goodwill towards the business community cannot be taken for granted.
The Big Lie of Democrats: It’s all Bush’s fault. But Democrats controlled the House and Senate beginning in 2006. Bush should be faulted for approving their legislation, I absolutely agree. But note: they were Democrat initiatives. And then from 2008 until 2010, they controlled everything, but want to bear no responsibility. Leaders in every other walk of life would be fired for failing to deliver on their promises, but Obama thinks he is different…because he is not a real leader: “A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal.” Hmm, how has he done, the most partisan president in our lifetime?
If you are honest enough to look at the economy from 2001 until 2006, what do you see? Nothing but growth. It continues to be an utter lie that our problems are all Bush’s fault. An utter lie. And we cannot let Democrats continue to get away with saying that.
I don’t think the Democrat Party has changed since Clinton but has just continued to “evolve” at a faster pace under President Obama. Obama was able to jam Hillary’s health care through. Bill and Hillary would have done the same except people weren’t so enthralled with the Clintons as they were with Obama when they were first in office plus health care costs weren’t so expensive then. This has been going on since the 60′s or more. Remember what Krushchev promised was that Russia (Communision and now called Socialism)would bury us. Some say this was going on since FDR.
Let´s add to this that, Obama made a MILLIONAIRE OF HIMSELF. He had a net worth of $200,000 when he came to Washington. He is NOW worth $10M. Obama is better off, not Americans.