What a lot of people don't seem to get about the popularity of Bernie Sanders

[ieoeja]

50. Thanks largely to Gary Hart and Gennifer Flowers.

Bill Clinton was not even on my radar til the Gennifer Flowers thing came up. While his apology was way over the top (the Bible Belt is one sick place) the fact that he continued on instead of backing down was a big game changer when contrasted with Gary Hart in the previous election.

The one dropdead attribute in presidential politics is "wimp". Hart dropped out over an alleged affair. Then he discovered that he actually went up in the polls after the affair came up. So he jumped back in. And he immediately plumetted in the polls because he initially wimped out.

So when Bill did not wimp out in response to the Flowers affair, people like me thought we finally had a liberal fighter on our hands. As the movie line went, we thought the 90s were going to make the 80s look like the 60s did the 50s. And the non-stop attack machine kept us too busy defending Bill from stupid, fake scandals to pay attention to the sell out.

The 80s should have been an abberation. One does not stop progress. One only slows it down to give people time to catch up (future shock). Reagan was a predictable reaction to the rapid social progress of the 60s and 70s. Clinton should never have happened. The 90s ended up being the abberation.