JUSIPER

 
Barack v Bill

Posted by Sini

It's about time.

Barack Obama challenged Bill Clinton's truthfulness Monday in a deepening feud with the husband of Obama's Democratic presidential rival.

Obama's rebuke of the former president, who is still extremely popular with Democrats, came on the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., when both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton focused on the civil rights leader.

In an interview on ABC, Obama twice questioned Bill Clinton's veracity.

"I have to say just broadly, you know, the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. You know, he continues to make statements that aren't supported by the facts, whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq, or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

"You know, this has become a habit. And one of the things that I think we're going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's not making statements that are factually accurate."

But the reason Hillary is going to be the nominee is that no one, no one, had the courage to take on Clintonism during the entire primary season. The Clintons were never about doing things for the Democratic base but, rather, moving the party far to the right, in the name of electability.

A serious challenge from the left should have challenged the legacy of Clintonism in the first place: crime and welfare bills that punished the poor and people of color. The Defense of Marriage Act, Bill asking John Kerry to throw the gays under the bus. NAFTA.

Even the far right wing CATO institute has noted:

Perhaps most importantly, there was a substantial reduction in federal spending as a share of gross domestic product during the Clinton years. Using the growth of domestic spending as a benchmark, Clinton was the second most conservative president of the post-World War II era, trailing only Ronald Reagan.

No, Bill Clinton was hardly a Democratic president. And by not challenging him, the opposition essentially allowed Democratic voters to think that electing Hillary meant bringing back the best Democrat it was possible to have. That was simply not true. Bill Clinton deserves some credit for the fiscal and economic policies that generated a boom, albeit one that disproportionately favored the rich. But he never, never, was an ally of the left.

Being an ally of the left is what the Democratic primary process is about. Have the Republicans ever nominated someone who was for gay marriage? Someone who supported abortion on demand? No, and they never will. The Democratic candidates of the left, hobbled, no doubt, by a primary process that begins with two lily white states, missed a yearlong opportunity to educate party voters into realizing just how much harm Bill Clinton did to the party.

Now we will all pay the price.

3:40 PM |