Tracks In the Dust

The Democratic state party chairmen met in Orlando to discuss the future of the party, assuming they have one. They can't stand on principle, they try to water down their stands on universal health coverage and Social Security, and then they can't understand why they're not taking seriously. (Though even if they were, Tucker Carlson would still make fun of them.)

Which brings me to former President Bill Clinton. I know I'm late in coming to the party here, but I was watching the dedication of the Clinton Library in Arkansas on TV awhile ago, and I have increasingly come to realize how Clinton's two terms were in fact not a renewal of the Democratic party, but in fact further evidence of their decline.

Clinton was elected as a "New Democrat" - a Democrat who could move the party to the center while still satisfying his party's base on issues of principle. The eight years of Clinton's presidency hardly advanced the party's fortunes; Clinton backtracked early in his first term on an economic stimulus package when he realized that Republicans wouldn't back it, and he was unable to get health care reform passed in 1994 over minority Republican opposition in Congress - and yet, as the majority party in Congress, Republicans have managed to run roughshod over Democrats of late. Anyway, the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, and Clinton retreated by selling liberals down the river and supporting asinine legislation like the Defense of Marriage Act (sponsored by a Republican congressman who had sustained two divorces as was on his third wife) and the 1996 welfare "reform" bill. And as Clinton's second term proved, he was more likely to spend political capital on building a legacy for himself - especially in the morass of the Monica Lewinsky affair - than on building a future for his party.

By the time Clinton left office, he'd done nothing to advance the Democratic party's national standing or the agenda of his liberal base - and after four years out of power, the Democrats have practically no internal infrastructure left on which to build. True, Clinton was in many respects a good President, especially with regards to the economy, but he hardly left a mark on his party or even on the country. A Bush is once again President, and most of Clinton's bite-size initiatives have been purged; it's as if Clinton never served as President, and the nineties were just a dream that we were waken from by the Republican right and the war on terror.

Clinton laid his tracks in settled dust that has since been stirred up. And to paraphrase one song I heard, did he really think those tracks in the dust would last? That's what the Democrats are faced with today. :-(