Revenge of the hollow man - reelection of Pres. Clinton

Progressive, The, Dec, 1996

So here we are, facing four more years of Clinton. It's Clinton II. Revenge of the Hollow Man.

But the sequel will resemble the original, only less daring, if that's possible. All those progressives who went to the polls and voted for Clinton, hoping that he would suddenly find his progressive bearings in the second term, think again. There's a sign up at the White House: NO LEFT TURN.

Here's why: Clinton's grand plan has been to remake the Democratic Party as a moderate Republican Party. He set out to build a new governing coalition not of the poor and the disenfranchised, but of suburban voters, the new hi-tech industries, and Wall Street. He thinks he's found the Rosetta Stone of a new Democratic coalition.

Christopher Dodd, the Democratic Party head, says, the Party's moving in the right direction"--which is the literal truth. And Clinton talks fatuously about "the vital center," a phrase that guarantees the continual blurring of the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Gone are the promises of change. Gone the hope for universal health care, gone the hope for a peace dividend, gone the hope for rebuilding our cities, gone the hope for a more just economy.

Clinton's new appointments to his cabinet and his staff show no hint of progressivism. It's the same old establishment crowd, only more so. No one should be surprised. The expectation that Clinton would wake up the day after the election and say, "Fooled you, I'm a leftist after all," never made any sense. He's been a corporatist since his second term as governor of Arkansas. A corporatist he shall remain.

Some on the left have kidded themselves that their access to Clinton--when added to his willingness to please and his lame-duck status--would translate into a more liberal second term. This is delusion squared. It doesn't even make sense at the level of pop psychology: If Clinton so desperately seeks approval, he'll be able to get more of it--and from much more powerful people--by governing from the right.

And while it is true that Clinton won't have an upcoming campaign to make him act opportunistically, his heir apparent, Al Gore, has one, and Clinton won't do anything to prevent Al from getting his due. Gore's motto, as John Nichols reported in The Capital Times of Madison, is Clintonesque in its vacuity: "Not to the left, nor to the right, but to the future."

So forget about fixing up the welfare mess. Clinton knew that dismantling welfare was a move calculated to haul the Democratic Party to the right, and Gore knew it, too: That's why the Vice President urged Clinton to sign on. Why would either of them go back on their actions now?

As for Pentagon spending, Clinton and Gore are already boasting about the lack of difference between the two parties. Gore even says the Democrats are going to spend more on the military than the Republicans down the road. Don't run out to your mailbox to look for your peace dividend anytime soon.

And civil liberties? Clinton and Gore have shown nothing but disdain for them. The Democrats are now the party of the death penalty, wiretapping, internet censoring, and three strikes and you're out. Don't expect Bill Clinton and Al Gore to wake up and find a copy of the Bill of Rights under their pillows on January 20.

These aren't leftists in disguise. They're Republicans in disguise.

It's Scene I, Take II. And even the popcorn is stale.

The nonvoters outnumbered the voters on November 5. Only about 49 percent of the electorate bothered to show up at the polls, down eight million from 1992, the lowest level since 1924. Pundits attributed the slim turnout to a combination of popular satisfaction with the political direction of the country, confidence in the economy, and voter apathy.

"Nonvoting is the way many contented people express passive consent to current conditions," George Will wrote, adding cozily: "In a free and constitutional society, elections are of limited importance because life's basic enjoyments are not at risk."

But there is a huge section of the public that is not contented, and that does not feel so secure about obtaining life's basic enjoyments. Those who do not vote are disproportionately poor. We are becoming a government of the privileged, by the privileged, and for the privileged.

Special interests are adept at selling their way of thinking. "Business was a big winner," The New York Times declared the day after the elections. The Times cited a raft of state ballot initiatives intended to regulate business that failed at the polls. A Maine initiative banning clear-cutting lost to a timber-industry-sponsored initiative; propositions in California and Oregon that would have imposed controls on health-maintenance organizations were voted down; and a truth-in-advertising proposition that would have made it easier to sue companies for misleading investors lost in California.

"Americans' on-again-off-again flirtation with anti-business causes is off again," Peter Passell of the Times concluded, minimizing the impact of vast amounts of corporate campaign dollars.