Nineties Nostalgia

Out on the road yesterday, I didn't see a Grateful Dead sticker on a Cadillac, but I did see a pro-Clinton (as in our 42nd President) sticker on a Mini Cooper.  It was from the Clinton Presidential Center and it simply said, "I miss Bill."

Where was the little voice in that motorist's head saying, "Don't look back, you can never look back?"     

I don't miss Bill Clinton.  I don't miss him because the better, happier more civilized America I was expecting from his election to the Presidency in 1992 never materialized - no universal health care, no improved public transit, no improvements in education, an economy that did nothing to narrow the gap between the rich and poor, and a Republican Congress that mostly ignored all that.  In fact, apart from the lack of a sex scandal and a six-year Democratic Senate, the Obama administration was the exact same way!    

Democrats ought to be looking forward, but they're so dressed to the nineties that they can't help but look back at good old days that weren't as good as they look in retrospect.  I can understand their nostalgia for 1992 - after all, that was the year of one of the few elections in recent history where Democrats won everything.  But I can't understand why they acted out their nostalgia by nominating the other Clinton for President in 2016.

Did they really think that Hillary could re-create the 1990s - the decade before 9/11, the decade before the financial crisis, the decade before the opioid-addiction epidemic, the decade before the hollowing out of so many towns in the heartland that weren't in all that great shape back in the nineties to begin with?  Did they really think we could go back to the Clinton years by putting another Clinton in the White House?  Oh wait, both Clintons would have been back in the White House, with the same co-presidency approach they took between 1993 and 2001.  The memes showing Bill Clinton in front of the White House with the words "I'm moving back in!" that showed up on Facebook before his wife lost to Donald Trump sum up the misguided nostalgia of the Hillbots.  These people were more annoying than rock fans who still hoped for a Beatles reunion concert even after John Lennon's death.   

So before anyone suggests that we can bring back the nineties, let me remind you of a few things:

• Kurt Cobain is dead.
• Janet Evans isn't coming out of retirement.
• Arsenio Hall doesn't have a late-night talk show anymore, and Jerry Seinfeld isn't rebooting his sitcom.

So let's move forward and concentrate on what's at stake in 2020.  In the meantime, go to a Foo Fighters show, be sure to root for Katie Ledecky at the next Olympics, and watch Stephen Colbert.  And "Murphy Brown" is getting rebooted; at least there's that.