12/27/16

The Clinton Effect

Since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 the Democrat Party has taken a turn toward the fiscal right and moral left. President Clinton's cult-like following made it difficult for a normal political recovery from the 'excess exuberance' of the era. The U.S. Presidency since the Clinton administration has never been taken by a mainstream candidate.

Perhaps Al Gore would have been elected in 2000 except for his association with Bill Clinton. Of course some would blame his loss to the definate not-top drawer G.H. Bush candidacy on Gore's choice of Joseph Lieberman from a state with few electoral votes. It is likely though that the close election would have gone Al Gore's way if not for the Clinton spoiling effect.

In 2004 John Kerry was taken down on his own merits. Memorable though was the political use of his declaration that Vietnam vets were war criminals decades before. Hillary Clinton did not run in 2004, yet a return of the Clintons was inevitable given Bill's swingy, too-confident persona.

The American need to move past the Clinton conundrum was overcome by Clinton spoiling effect.  Party leaders saw a way to avoid running Hillary by running a safe black candidate from Chicago and Harvard; Barrack Obama. Obama was a rather underqualified candidate with accolades piled on like smorgasboard condiments even from the Nobel committee. His performance was exceptional at golf and basketball, poor at bowling, and in economics concentrated wealth and deepening public debt more than any other U.S. President.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-barack-obama-beat-donald-trump-tweets-20161227-story.html

The Clinton effect returned with a vengeance in 2016 to sweep the Democrat field of candidates clear allowing Hillary to campaign against Donald Trump- a man the nationlooked toward hoping he would help get the nation out of the stuck-in-the-mud quagmire of debt, porous borders, terrorism, antipathy and bad terms with Russia, concentration of wealth and basic bad times and immorality that followed the on of Bill Clinton after the end of the cold war.

Its a tall order for Trump to move the nation ahead to reduce poverty, restore moral basics, conserve U.S. border security, eliminate the federal budget deficit, restore the challenge ecosphere environment and so forth. It is even more difficult for Americans to believe that the Clintons and the Clinton effect may finally be gone. 

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