Bill Clinton: Classic or Dud?

I don't know if a Poppy Bush reelection or Dole beating Clinton would have, respectively, stymied the Rush-infused growth of alternative conservative media and moderated the party's excesses. Some kind of Democratic overcorrection to Reaganism was preordained.

That was a good read, but even assuming a Dem-controlled Senate I don't doubt Poppy would've gotten some Thomas-esque cranks onto federal courts, if only to appease the right wing; eight years of Clinton appointing judges was a good thing.

All those joyful Democrats who tearfully celebrated the generation-shifting results of the 1992 election

The euphoria of displacing Reagan's successor definitely went to people's heads. I remember listening to a call-in the local community-owned volunteer-run lefty radio station (KBOO) on the night of the election and hearing all the callers speculating about what marvels would soon be delivered by our new "progressive" president. For the first and last time in my life I called in to a talk show -- to say on-air that while Clinton would certainly be an improvement over Reagan, the USA had never elected a truly progressive president, hadn't now, and if they expected him to push hard for a left-progressive agenda that Clinton would soon disappoint them.

The party still exists in the shadow of Reagan and the Clintons. Any real rebuilding work is only just starting, if it is to succeed at all.

A Bush win in 92 election is a weird thing to fantasize about. The incumbent President only got 37% of the vote.

there's a lot of debate over how much perot affected the outcome of that election but i think it's fair to assume bush wouldn't have done as badly (at least) without him in the race.

was there a more progressive democrat who could plausibly have been elected in 1992? (or 1996, assuming a second term for bush.)

(aimless -- surely FDR qualifies as a progressive president?)

i remember Clinton's election pretty clearly and I remember the elation as well, to feel like we'd thrown off the mantle of Reaganism finally. Obv. in retrospect that seems suspect but at the time it felt like something. Much in the same way that it felt like something when Obama was elected, and now in retrospect we have to accept that there was still a rapid expansion of executive power, broad misuse of FISA and the patriot act, and drone bombings. Presidential elections seem to only ever get incremental progressive gains, I don't know why, when you can clearly go very far down the fucking toilet with ease as the Trump administration has demonstrated.

FDR qualifies as a progressive president?

FDR was a non-ideological pragmatist faced with a nation in an existential crisis. He was wiling to try radical new ideas, only because the old ideas had failed catastrophically. As one of his top advisors (I forget who) complained, FDR's Brain Trust was desperately trying to save capitalism, but the capitalists hated them intensely.

and FDR wanted to balance the budget AND do Keynesian spending stuff

and nuke people and lock up the japanese.

truly a renaissance man

"and nuke people" was the guy who came after him, to be fair

the development vs the use

i tend to think Roosevelt would've used it as well

the actual Progressive movement gave us eugenics and prohibition. nukes seem very progressive in that sense

there's a lot of debate over how much perot affected the outcome of that election but i think it's fair to assume bush wouldn't have done as badly (at least) without him in the race.

I think there's consensus, though, that Clinton would have won with or without Perot. If you throw Perot's 19,743,821 votes back into the mix, Clinton would have only needed a little over 35% of them to win the popular vote.

Which doesn't, admittedly, take into account: 1) the electoral college, 2) how Perot affected the debates (quite a lot, at least one of them), and 3) the fact that Perot hated Bush and zeroed in on him the whole way.

But I assume Clinton would have won a plurality of Perot's votes--who were mostly, as I remember it, people angry at Bush for breaking his tax pledge and various other things--making at least the first point moot.

Perot's spoiler effect was essentially nil - he ended up drawing support evenly from each candidate.

Everyone would have used nukes

Not long after Clinton unpacked his things in Chappaqua, his successor was presiding over a sputtering economy, increased poverty, and yawning deficits.

I feel like there was an important historical event that's being elided there... can't quite put my finger on it....

For whatever it's worth, in 1996 when Perot's votes dropped from 19% to 8% - the Republican vote went from 37% to 40%, Clinton's vote went from 43% to 49%.

^^^ exactly

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ross-perot-myth/

maybe he'll end up in prison. that'd be p cool.

A friend and I were talking about the convention yesterday: going to take a wild guess that WJC is kept well hidden from view this year.

and what of Lucretia?

there might be a video tribute to Epstein and Weinstein if Biden's the nominee, ya never know

The woman from the bombastic Blood, Sweat & Tears song? I don't know.

Bombastic Rodham

Don't forget the time his spouse met personally with Putin at his private compound before taking $500,000 for a speech to Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Oh, wait, that was the Clintons. https://t.co/NMwY76eJF5

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 23, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/YsfBoQf.png

I see how this is generated -
https://www.kapwing.com/explore/bill-clinton-album-challenge-meme-template

- but where does it originate? Did he pose with actual LPs originally - when, and what were they?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bill-clinton-swag

According to this the original is a photoshop to begin with (from an onion piece from 1999!) so no, he never posed with any records

In the onion article they are all Joan Jett lps

The image definitely has that janky onion photoshop feel

Yes. In fact I originally thought it was fake - thanks for confirmation.