From: Hank Roth <pnews@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Why Clinton Won
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 06:36:29 GMT

<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From: LIVING MARXISM, December 1992}
WHY CLINTON WON
by Nancy Morton

[Nancy Morton advises her fellow Americans not to believe the 
hype about Bill Clinton's presidential victory]

Let's get a couple of things straight. Despite what the media 
says, Bill Clinton has not won a popular mandate for any radical 
programme of change. Nor is he about to lead America into a new 
golden age. Things will be different; but for many Americans, 
life under the Clinton presidency is likely to be even harder 
than it was under George Bush. 

Clinton's success in defeating the Republicans was a big 
breakthrough for the Democrats, who had won only one of the 
previous six presidential elections. However his much-vaunted 
`mandate for change' looks shaky, even in narrow electoral terms. 
Despite the highest turnout of voters ince 1972, 45 per cent of 
eligible adults--some 85m people--didn't bother to take up the 
offer. America has the highest abstention rate in the 
industrialized world.

MR 24 PER CENT

Among those who did vote, Clinton won 43 per cent compared to the 
57 per cent who voted either for Bush or Ross Perot. That gave 
the Democratic Party's president-elect the support of under 24 
per cent of those American's eligible to vote. It was hardly a 
popular landslide.

IF the electoral arithmetic doesn't quite sustain Clinton's claim 
to a popular mandate, the notion that his political programme 
captured the hearts and minds of the American people is entirely 
unfounded. Clinton did not win a positive endorsement. He won 
because many Americans (including those backing Perot) voted 
negatively, against the incumbent Bush and the Republicans.

Why did so many people reject Bush this time around? All of the 
pundits seem to agree that the depressed state of the American 
economy was a major factor. `It's the economy, stupid' read the 
legend hung on the wall of Clinton's campaign HQ. This was partly 
a response to Bush's attempt to revive the glories of the Gulf 
War in the early stages of the presidential race, and partly a 
reminder to the Clinton camp to focus their attack on the issues 
of jobs, banruptcies, healthcare and pensions. Everybody now says 
that this was the key to Clinton's success, as Bush paid the 
price for presiding over a slump. 

The recession has indeed had a devastating impact on the US 
economy and the lives of many Americans. Yet why should this 
necessarily lead them to vote for Clinton? As John Major can 
testify, an economic slump is no reason why the leader of a 
traditional conservative party should lose an election, 
partcularly when his opponent offers no distinctive alternative 
policy in the economic sphere.

NO MORE COLD WAR

Over the past two decades, many Americans who were worried about 
the economy would have been more likely to trust the Republicans 
to turn things around. The most important change this time was 
not in the economy, but in politics. The Republicans have lost 
the political authority and coherence which made them pre-eminent 
in recent times. That was why people's economic fears took the 
form of an anti-Bush vote. This political shift is largely a 
consequence of the end of the Cold War.

Cold War ideology created the political framework within which 
the Republicans could easily defeat the Democrats in the last 
three presidential elections. First Ronald Reagan and then George 
Bush was able to polarize debate around a package of issues, like 
crime, terrorism and Soviet expansion, which were all underpinned 
by the `us and them' mentality of Cold War politics. The result 
was to put Americna liberals on the defensive, and distract from 
other domestic problems such as poverty and unemployment. The 
Democrats were routed.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and crumboing of the old world 
order has changed all that. It means that an issue like the 
economic slump is more likely to be seen in its own terms, rather 
than being distored through the prism of Cold War politics. The 
Republican Party's capacity to win by polarizing things in the 
old way, around the old issues, has been badly undermined.

Contrast the fate of Bush's propaganda campaigns in the 1988 and 
1992 elections, and the change of climate becomes clear. Four 
years ago, the Bush campaign went for Democratic candidate 
Michael Dukakis in classic baiting sytle. Bush delcared war on 
`the L-word'--liberal--while the infoamous advertisements about 
Willie Horton depicted Dukakis as soft on black rapists. Bush won 
easily.

NO NEW DEAL

This time, when the going got rough, the Republicans tried a 
similar line of attack. Clinton was portrayed as a womaniser 
without `family values', as anti-American, as a man with past 
links to the Kremlin and the KGB. But it made little impression 
in the polls. The Republican right launched its `cultural war' to 
try to recreate the atmosphere of the Cold War. It only succeeded 
in making the Republicans seem ludicrous and out of date, and in 
alienating the uncommitted. Where Dukakis had been crushed by the 
power of Cold War politics, Clinton emerged as the first post-
Cold War president of the USA.

It is important to appreciate that Clint's victory reflected a 
negative reaction against the remnants of the past, rather than a 
positive endorsement of his plans for the future. Those who claim 
that he has won a popular mandate for his policies of radical 
change miss the point about how little Clinton has promised to do 
for the majority of American people. His commitment to salvaging 
American capitalism from the slump means that, for millions, the 
future looks even grimmer than the present.

Clint's vague programme of economic action and welfare reform has 
been hailed by many as a model of how government intervention 
can combat the slump. Clint's `New Covenant' has been carefully 
named to conjure up images of the New Deal with which Democratic 
president Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to end the Depression of 
the 1930s. But the comparison stops at the word `new'. 

FDR's New Deal involved a massive injection of state funds into 
the American economy, at a time when government investment on 
such a scale was unheard of. Even that was insufficient to cope 
with mass unemployment and poverty. Clinton's pale imitation can 
achieve far less today.

The proposal to spend $20 billion a year for four years on 
infrastructure investment might sound impressive. But $20 billion 
will add just one per cent to the massive total which the US 
authorities already spend in a year. It is hard to see why that 
relatively small shot in the arm should make much difference to 
an American economy which is already doped up to the eyeballs 
with state spending.

Clinton's spending plans are held in check by the massive 
government budget deficit, which is currently adding another $325 
billion a year on to a total debt of some $4 trillion. The 
president-elect has pledged to halve the deficit in four years. 
Whatever new spending there is will go to help business. The 
American people, meanwhile, are in for hard times of austerity 
and cutbacks.

Clinton's approach to welfare sums up his economic priorities. 
He denounces the idea of `government handouts' and says that `if 
people don't work if they can work, they shouldn't eat'. His plan 
is that people should get low-paid job training and welfare money 
for no longer than two years. After that, they have to find a 
job. If they cannot, their money will be cut off, and they will 
be press-ganged into a `a community service' labour scheme.

Clinton's emphasis on individual responsiblity has more in common 
with Reaganism than with traditional Democratic liberalism. He 
see asks Americans to be concerned about `not just placing blame 
but...assuming responsibility'. In other words, it's down to the 
individual to pull himself up. This theme runs through all of his 
vague policy statements to date.

Clinton's education plans include fining parents who don't attend 
the regular meetings of their Parent Teacher Association. He 
would link college loans to community service, and plans a sort 
of domestic task force to deal with teenagers who drop out of 
school. In his home state of Arkansas, this  `help' involved 
prohibiting drop-outs from getting a driver's license, something 
tantamount to making it impossible for them to earn a living. The 
bottom line in Clinton's America is that if you can't get a job, 
or you children get a poor quality education, it's largely your 
own fault.

BAT TO WORSE

Much has been made of how Clinton's relative youth, his baby-
boomer sensibility and his talented wife, Hillary, will make for 
better government. But remember how Bush was going to create a 
kinder, gentler America post-Reagan, or how that nice Mr. Major 
was going to change Britain for the better after Margaret 
Thatcher? In reality, the combination of economic slump and 
political exhaustion today ensures that, regardless of the 
personalities involved, every capitalist government makes things 
even worse than its predecessor. America is certainly in for 
some changes under Clinton. But they won't be what the pundits 
expect.

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[All typos are mine---HR]

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive