"Today, We Are All Walter Mondale". Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 1984.

[RiverLover]

76. That's right. Here's his "typical" campaign speech from 1992~

HE 1992 CAMPAIGN
THE 1992 CAMPAIGN; Clinton's Standard Campaign Speech: A Call for Responsibility

Following is the text of the campaign speech, excluding a brief introductory passage, that Gov. Bill Clinton delivered at the University of Pittsburgh branch at Johnstown, Pa., on April 22, as transcribed by The New York Times. . . .

I want to make just a few sort of basic points about this election. And I'd like begin with two little statistics, one of which was published a day or two ago in America's newspapers and one of which will be out tomorrow. Statistic No. 1: According to the Federal Reserve Board, 1 percent of America's people at the top of the totem pole now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, the biggest imbalance in wealth in America since the 1920's right before the Great Depression.

Statistic No. 2, out tomorrow: For the first time in a decade personal income in our country as a whole fell last year. That says we've got problems. And I want to tell you that behind that, I live in a state that is one of the worst states in America, where we were abandoned with farm income going down, factories closing and moving away. The Federal Government cutting back on money for economic development, education, environmental protection. We've got a lot of counties that went through just what you went through in this county.

And in the last 11 years, I had to try to put together an economic strategy to deal with it. I don't like to bore people with statistics, but let me tell you, what's happened here might be worse than what's happened in some other places in Pennsylvania, but it's not all that different from what's happened in America.

For more than two years now, the average middle-class family has worked harder for less money to pay more for health care, for housing, for education, for taxes. Poverty has exploded, especially among working people.

I just got out of a rather bruising campaign in New York State. You might have read about it. But one of the things that really moved me about that was that I met so many courageous people, people you never see on television, who live in the Bronx and Brooklyn, who live in high-crime neighborhoods and get up every day and literally risk their physical security, going to and from jobs that still pay them less than top-level wages, to support children in difficult circumstances, playing by the rules.

For millions and millions of Americans, the dream with which I grew up has been shattered. The ideal that if you work hard and play by the rules you'll be rewarded, you'll do a little better next year than you did last year, your kids will do better than you. But that idea has been devastated for millions of Americans.

How did this happen? I would argue it happened for two reasons. No. 1: We lost our economic leadership. Other nations began to do some things better than we do, and their economies started growing faster and faster as ours slowed down. Big, Simple Ideas

No. 2, and this is why I'm running for President: We elected people to high office who had the wrong response to the problem. And that's what this election is all about. Three or four big, simple ideas, even though the problems are complex.

What is President Bush's theory about what's good about the economy? That the Government would mess up a one-car parade, and you can't trust anybody in politics or Government. So the answer to our economic problems is to make taxes lower on corporations and high-income individuals, and get out of the way and let the market do the rest.

That's their idea. The other day, the President vetoed a bill passed by the Congress that a pro-business Democrat, Lloyd Bentsen from Texas, got through, a tax bill that would have made it easier for plants to modernize their equipment, for people to start small businesses, for people to buy houses, for people to invest in housing in low-income areas. All these things would have been done and George Bush vetoed the bill. Why? Because those incentives were going to be paid for by raising taxes on upper-income people. And he didn't want to do that, because his theory is keep the taxes low on the rich and the corporations and everything will be fine.

Well everything is not fine. We have had it their way for 11 years. And we're going downhill as a nation. The middle class is collapsing. Poverty is exploding. ....

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/us/the-1992-campaign-clinton-s-standard-campaign-speech-a-call-for-responsibility.html?pagewanted=all

Then he became our president for the next 8 years, our centrist president who inducted China into the WTO, NAFTA, bankers went crazy creating a housing bubble, the tech bubble was created, he wiped out Glass-Steagall ushering in 2008, he hurt blacks & single parents with his "welfare reform"...and so much more.

And we're going to get the same damn thing again, unless we WAKE UP as a country....