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We have not really escaped the so-called Reagan Revolution. Moreover, the two terms of William Jefferson Clinton were an important and integral part of it, for the simple reason that it effectively administered a powerful blow to the Democratic Party as a true opposition party. Having seen the success of Reagan, elements of the Democratic Party in the mid-80s formed the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) that proceeded to move away from the interests of the majority of working Americans and the middle class and into the corporate realm. Why stay with traditional positions, the apparent thinking went, when the right was being so successful? Accordingly, the DLC has received funding from, most notably, the military-industrial complex, the petroleum industry, and right wing interests such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, perhaps the most influential supporter of rightist causes in the country.
It was during the Clinton Administration that the DLC saw its doctrine bear fruit. Clinton worked to "end welfare as we know it" by putting into practice a reform the basic mechanism of which had been worked out in the right wing Hudson Institute and applied in Wisconsin by then Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, later to become George W. Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Perhaps worst of all, Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act that further secured control of the public's information system in the hands of a small but powerful segment of society, thereby making "news" ever more reflective of corporate interests. And of course the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that the corporate sector had been working to advance for years was signed into life by Bill Clinton.
The DLC-Clinton Administration rightward shift has typically been framed (and discussed in the corporate-owned media) as a movement "to the center", and that has, over recent years, changed the entire public perception of what it means to be liberal or conservative, right or left. Even as the DLC was moving the Democratic Party to the right, the right wing sound machine continued to refer to it as "liberal", simultaneously demonizing the "L word" itself. In truth, the left barely exists as a viable political force, and what does exist has been openly attacked by the so-called "New Democrats" of the DLC. Clintonian "neoliberalism" and its "free market" have by now simply been accepted as facts of life not to be seriously questioned and seen as "centrist".
Hillary Clinton's part in this transformation of the Democratic Party has been overlooked to a surprising degree. Regardless of whom one favors in this long (too long?) campaign to the Presidency, Obama is correct in his assertion that Hillary Clinton "can't have it both ways". If she is going to stand on her experience and her ability to function "on day one", she cannot rail against those spotlighting her association with NAFTA or any other policies of the Bill Clinton Administration. Was she a principle advisor in her husband's 8-year Administration? Well of course. It would be naive to think otherwise, just as it would be naive to assume she would be radically different as President than her husband.
