Third Wayers are better than most Republicans

[Mnpaul]

78. and the second worse thing

they don't learn from their mistakes:

Along with the abandonment of political reform and increasing identification in the mind of the public with Court corruption, the Clinton administration failed to develop economic proposals which would ease the growing economic insecurity that had done much to generate Country antagonisms toward Washington and which needed to be allayed in order to restore public support for activist government. One aspect of this failure in economic policy was the administration’s early decision to sacrifice some of its more populist economic proposals at the alter of deficit reduction. This strategy met with the approval of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the bond market, but despite Clinton advisor James Carville’s comment that if he were reincarnated that he would want to come back as the bond market, since then "you can intimidate everybody," the bond market has little ability to provide the types of tangible and lasting economic benefits necessary to build and sustain a majority coalition for the Democratic party or to allay Country fears that the government is acting in the interest of ordinary citizens (Phillips 1994: 77 and Woodward 1994: 125-126). The focus on deficit reduction also forced the administration to propose a set of regressive energy and gasoline taxes (the latter of which was finally enacted), which promised to further pinch the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans. Moreover, by so quickly and cavalierly jettisoning some of his central campaign promises, Bill Clinton created more doubts about his promise to end "politics as usual" and increased Country cynicism towards his administration.

The Clinton administration also have erred in its staunch support for NAFTA. Not only does the agreement put further downward pressure on U.S. wages, thereby increasing the income inequality at the heart of Country anger at government, but in aggressively pursuing passage of the agreement, the Clinton administration put itself in conflict with organized labor. By attacking one of the Democratic party’s most important constituencies, the administration succeeded in further weakening the Democratic coalition and exacerbating the party’s organizational decline. Also, the time and resources spent by the White House and labor lobbying for and against the agreement would have been better spent on measures of benefit to both groups, such as lobbying for health care reform, an overhaul of campaign finance, or upgrading the organizational capacity of the Democratic party.

Finally, the Clinton administration failed to deliver on the central component of its economic agenda, health care reform. Health care reform represented the type of a broad-based government benefit program that had engendered popular support from activist government in the past and provided the glue which held together the Democratic party since the New Deal. Passage of health care reform would have helped to ameliorate Court and Country divisions by providing evidence that the government can work to resolve complex issues in a way that benefits average Americans. Alas, with the demise of health care reform, the Democrats failed to use the power of government to revitalize their coalition, and in the process furthered the public’s impression that government is incapable of acting in the national interest.

http://academics.hamilton.edu/government/home/2002/faculty/pklinkne/94.htm

Sound familiar? This is great article that explains what happens when they go down this path. We need to go in a different direction or:

By any measure, the elections of 1994 were a significant reverse for the Democratic party; losing fifty-four House seats, eight Senate seats, and majority control of both houses of Congress for the first time in forty-two years is no small achievement.