Demokraternas superhjälte

I allt tal om Demokraternas superdelegater kan det vara passande att också nämna något om Demokraternas superhjälte - och han heter faktiskt inte Barack Obama, även om det i nuvarande tider är lätt att tro det, i själva verket heter han Bill Clinton (även om det i nuvarande tider är svårt att tro det).

Det bör nämligen kommas ihåg att Demokraterna efter Roosevelts död aldrig haft det speciellt lätt. De stora Demokratiska superpolitikerna i Kennedybröderna, blev båda mördade - och JFK:s efterträdare Lyndon B Johnson kan visserligen prisas som mannen som öppnade upp för svartas rättigheter et c, men han var också den som drev in USA i Vietnam. Jimmy Carters presidentskap måste betecknas som ett misslyckande, och det enda han lyckades med var att få till stånd Camp David-avtalet - ett avtal som dock helt var Anwar Sadats förtjänst, hur mycket Carter än vill förknippas med saken. Därför är Bill Clinton förmodligen den mest framgångsrike Demokratiska presidenten efter Franklin Delano Roosevelt - en president som förmodligen är omöjlig att slå då han av de flesta historiker rankas som USA:s tredje största president efter Lincoln och Washington). JFK och Robert Kennedy är givetvis Demokratiska legender, men deras liv avslutades tragiskt nog alltför tidigt innan deras politiska potential nådde full blommning.

Efter en lång svacka i det Demokratiska partiet, och efter Republikanernas framgångsvåg med Reagan och George HW Bush, förde Clinton det Demokratiska partiet in på arenan än en gång - och under den tiden var han tveklöst alla Demokraters (varav många nu är superdelegater) superhjälte. Clinton lyckades enligt denna artikel av Peter Beinart förmå Demokraterna att ta sig igenom frågor som för dem alltid varit svåra. Beinhart skriver i sin artikel:

When Michael Dukakis ran for President in 1988, crime was perhaps the biggest issue in the campaign. It splintered his coalition, pitting blacks who saw the death penalty as racially unfair against blue-collar whites who demanded a hard line against crime and too often associated that crime with blacks. Today, by contrast, roughly 1% of Americans say crime is their top issue, and no one even knows what Obama's position on the death penalty is. For Obama, that's an enormous boon, and Bill Clinton deserves a lot of the credit. His policies--especially his bold proposal for 100,000 new cops--helped bring down the crime rate. And by embracing the death penalty, he eliminated one of the GOP's best wedge issues. That embrace was ugly at times, as when Clinton flew back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded man. But it was politically shrewd. And because Clinton did it then, Obama doesn't have to now.

Clinton also removed the word welfare from America's political lexicon. In the mid-1980s, when pollsters conducted focus groups with Reagan Democrats, they found that when they talked about government help for the needy, voters saw it as welfare: taking money from whites to give to undeserving blacks. That attitude was hugely unfair, but it was a political reality. Clinton changed that when he reformed welfare in 1996. By making it brutally clear that people who didn't work wouldn't get much help from Washington, he made it harder for Republicans to tag Democratic antipoverty programs as handouts to "welfare queens."

On affirmative action, Clinton took the air out of a deeply polarizing issue by "triangulating" it-- tweaking preference policies rather than abolishing them or defending them outright. But perhaps Clinton's most important contribution to Obama had little to do with race. The Clinton presidency restored the Democratic Party's reputation for economic management, which Jimmy Carter had nearly destroyed. By almost 20 points, according to the Pew Research Center, Americans today trust Democrats over Republicans to guide the economy--a huge boon to Obama in what looks like a recession election. Obama owes much of that advantage to George W. Bush, of course. But he owes some of it to Clintonism too.

If Clinton had been more principled, if he had been less of a panderer, if he had tried to be purer than his political opponents--if, in other words, he had been more like Obama--he might have opposed the death penalty, vetoed welfare reform and unambiguously defended affirmative action. He might also have gone with his liberal base, not Wall Street, and chosen economic stimulus over deficit reduction in 1993. And had he done those things, Barack Obama would probably not be in a commanding position to become the next President of the U.S. So as they bid Clintonism goodbye, Obama fans should show a little gratitude. If Bill weren't the person they revile, Barack couldn't be the person they love.