Best reply, but you sidestep the racial issue.
I'm saying that Bill Clinton, who won the presidency by a plurality, not a majority. Would not have won, if Ross Perot had not split the White Republican voting bloc.
Because in 1992, getting the majority of the White vote meant you won the election.
You are saying that Bill Clinton, "couldn't have won on his own, because he was virtually indistinguishable from a Republican". Since I really hated Bill Clinton's policy choices, ideologically I agree with you.
In the effort to win back the Presidency, Clinton and his "middle way" move to the center, was where the Democrats went wrong.
However, when you argue that Clinton couldn't win on his own. What exactly do you mean by that?
Are you saying Democratic voters wouldn't vote for him because he wasn't "Progressive". Because I was there at the time and Democratic voters were tired of running guys like McGovern, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis and losing.
Democratic voters wanted to win. They wanted to win bad. They were really tired of 12 years of Republican corruption, crony capitalism, social repression, racism, and a divisive "War on Drugs". They turned out for Bill Clinton in 92'.
He got 43% of the vote.
Biden, in the biggest turnout in US history, got 51%
That's how much ground the Democrat's have gained in 30 years. That's the only real measure.
In 1992, after Reagan completed the fusion of White Evangelicals, White Racists, and Old School Republicans, that was the demographic position of the Democratic party. In 1992 Democrats had become a "minority opposition" party representing only 43% of the population.
Because, 57% of the country, almost all of it White, was voting Republican.
So, if Clinton "couldn't win on his own" and he got all 43% of the Democratic vote. His problem must have been that he couldn't win over enough White Republican voters.
The question is why?
I'm saying it's because this group of White voters is racist, misogynistic, inbred, cretinous asshats who vote their race above all else. Clinton was never going to get their votes, and neither will any other Democrat.
You are saying it's because he was "indistinguishable" from the Republican candidates (Bush and Perot). Which is why White voters wouldn't vote for him. You imply it's because he didn't have a message that offered them a difference or real choice.
You seem to be saying that the election of 92' wasn't about racial group identities. That with the "right message" Clinton could have won over White voters and gotten a majority win in the popular vote.
This is still the fundamental conundrum of the political landscape for the Democrats today.
Demographic realists like me, Pelosi, and Schumer are implicitly/explicitly arguing that we have to do "whatever it takes" to hold the line until the demographic tide turns in our favor. Screw principles, screw morality, screw ideology. Hold the line.
Believe me, I am not happy about this.
I'm a Warren supporter for G-d's sakes. I have despised Biden for decades. I want the things you want.
I fear however, that I have become too morally corrupt to ever cross over the Jordan and live in the marvelous new society I hope you get to build. Because at this point I am so angry and so bitter, over this lifelong fight with racist anti-intellectual fuckwits, that I don't care anymore ideology or persuasion.
I just want to win.
