Clinton Represents the New Deal Tradition

Original Link: http://wwsword.blogspot.com/2008/06/clinton-represents-new-deal-tradition.html

This was originally a response to a comment to my blog entry "I Fear Clinton is Going to be a 'Good Democrat'."

Hillary Clinton runs as a Democrat for the same reason that Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson ran as Democrats. They are all the same sort of liberals. There is a big difference between the progressive liberalism of Roosevelt and Clinton and the ideology of the Republican Party.

The Democratic Party at the national level long ago veered from the progressive liberalism that marked the New Deal and Great Society. The Clintons brought back that kind of liberalism, which is why Bill is the only Democratic president to have won the White House since 1976. Moreover, he is the only Democrat to win re-election since Johnson.

The crowd that nominated McGovern, Dukakis and the like do not represent progressive liberalism, but rather represent a left-wing sort of identity and anti-war politics that is out of step with not only the Democratic Party tradition, but with America as a whole.

Obama represents a departure from the broad New Deal coalition that produced the most significant progressive reforms in American history. This new politics of the left gives the country to the Republicans, who them proceed to dismantle progressive reforms.

You are out of touch with the history of the country and the form and content of political philosophy if you really think that Clinton is a Republican. By nominating Obama, Democrats are embracing an out-of-step and self-defeating species of politics.