The Clintons Are Better than the GOP: For What It's Worth

It has to be said that President Clinton's administration was an improvement over his GOP predecessors. For instance, a lot of jobs were created and the administration had a much more diversified look. He had budget surpluses the last three years in office. He also supported and signed the Family Leave Act in 1993. His intervention in Kosovo helped improve our relations in the Middle East because we intervened to protect a Muslim minority in Europe. We played an important role in temporarily de-escalating tensions in the Palestinian occupation. On the other hand, the Clintons introduced Welfare reform that was a disaster; a federal three-strikes law that backfired; set back the struggle for women's equality in the work place by Willie letting an intern give him a blow job in the White House; bowed to the financial magnets with the Gramm-Leach Act that deregulated and helped unleash banking mismanagement; negotiated treaties that exported American jobs abroad; and did absolutely nothing to keep factories from being dismantled and sent abroad with our jobs. Some would argue that the Clintons had to compromise with the GOP in order to take back the White House after years of GOP domination. Perhaps that was the case twenty years ago. Today, however, the job market is producing fewer and fewer decent jobs; the health care reform that sucked up all of Obama's political capital was pretty much right out of the Conservative Heritage foundation playbook; our infrastructure looks more and more like some third world failed state, an oligarchy pretty much dominates our political system, and the GOP is in a meltdown. We can be led by fear of the return of the GOP to the White House and continue to make weak and detrimental compromises, allow the e-mail scandal to weaken our chances against the GOP, and embrace temerity. On the other hand, we could decide that we need bold action and mobilization of working people to galvanize a brighter future. Senator Sanders is not perfect, but he is at least capable of providing us with a picture of America that can actually make us great again. Sanders is just as likely to continue Democratic efforts to improve the standing of minorities, and more likely to advocate for Native Peoples. His lifelong record of taking principled stands is in stark contrast to the Clintons: he took on social bigotry on the House floor while the Clintons were pushing “Don't ask, Don't Tell”. More important, he understands that we will not face down the political power of our oligarchy unless we mobilize all Americans to do so. As he recently told Chris Matthews, he does not think inside the beltway.