Democrats seek another Clinton

MSNBC ^ | Tom Curry

[McGruff]

The activists who gathered at California's Democratic Party convention this weekend would like to see the 2004 election as Bush vs. Clinton. Not Sen. Hillary Clinton, but Bill Clinton. California Democrats are searching for the winning candidate and many say he should resemble the last Democratic president.

"I'VE REALLY GOT to tell you, I miss Bill Clinton," said Red Blum, a veteran Democratic operative from Fullerton, Calif. "He was a charming rascal, but he was intellectually curious -- he could talk all night about anything. He left us a big budget surplus. He had people in the Middle East talking to each other, they were making progress. It's all been abandoned since then." Asked what he is most looking for in the party's standard-bearer, Glenn Goldstein, a landscape architect from Brea, Calif., had a succinct answer: "Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was great for the country. I think Bill Clinton had the qualities that it took to ride above all the nonsense the press might have given him."

'THE CLINTON CHARISMA' Barbara Schraeger, a Sausalito Democrat who helped put together a fund-raiser Thursday night for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, gave Kerry the ultimate compliment: "I think he's got the Clinton charisma. Bill Clinton had the ability to look you in the eye and you'd be the only one in the room that mattered. Kerry has that."

What some non-Democrats may forget about Clinton is that in the early stages of his presidential bid in 1991 he met personally with many of these Democratic fund-raisers and precinct organizers -- and they're still in awe of his personal magnetism and encyclopedic knowledge.

The Democrats have a field of nine to pick from, with others such as ex-senator Gary Hart and retired Gen. Wesley Clark poised to enter the fray.

At this stage, most California activists are undecided -- waiting for one of the hopefuls to show a charismatic spark. But among the rank and file, the great unifying emotion is pure contempt for President Bush.

Attending a gathering of Democratic activists in 2003 and listening to them assail George W. Bush is very much like attending a GOP activists' meeting in 1997 or 1998 and hearing their descriptions of Bill Clinton. In each case, the intensity of their disdain for the president is overpowering.

Along with that contempt goes a belief among attendees that Bush will be highly unpopular by the time voters go to the polls in November of 2004.

"He is obsessed" with Iraq, scoffed Blum. "The economy is in the tank, it's going deeper and he doesn't have a clue!"

Despite some anger at those Democratic contenders, such as Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who voted for last October's resolution giving Bush authorization to use force against Iraq, "the party can unite on a candidate just because of who is the White House right now," said Tim Steed, chairman of the Orange County Young Democrats.

"I think George Bush is a uniter of all Democrats who just want to get him out. In his words, he is the 'unificator' of the Democratic Party because his ideology is so contrary to much what pretty much every Democrat believes in."

Steed is backing former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean but would be willing to settle for some other candidate in order to beat Bush. "It is a kind of a shame that you are going to choose the lesser of two evils, but the way George Bush is running the country, I would choose the lesser of two evils," he said.

SADDAM AS DISTRACTION If the weekend meeting here was any indication, Democrats harbor a deep suspicion of Bush's motives for leading the nation into a war with Iraq.

The convention crowd cheered Rev. Al Sharpton when he declared that Bush was "trying to take young people who you won't give public education at home and send them to Iraq."

Sharpton also charged that Bush was using Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as the "bogyman" to scare Americans and distract attention from the economy.

John Burton, president pro tempore of the California state Senate, told convention delegates that although North Korea has nuclear weapons and Iraq may not, Bush is intent on attacking Iraq. Burton's explanation: "The only difference I can tell is oil. I guess it shows what you get when you have an oil man as president, an oil man as vice president and a national security advisor who sat on the board at Chevron."

Above all, California activists are searching for authenticity. They want someone who is not afraid to passionately declare Democratic ideology: gay rights, racial equality, abortion rights, closing the California coastline to oil drilling, and so on. Many say the party's leaders in 2000 and 2002 muted their true Democratic rhetoric and beliefs.

"Never again will the Democratic party go into an election without a Democratic message saying who we are, what we stand for, and what we will fight for," declared House minority leader Nancy Pelosi on Saturday to rousing cheers of the crowd.

It was an implicit criticism of former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, now a member of the pack of presidential contenders, who tried his hardest to make last year's elections a referendum on the economy but backed Bush on use of force in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Dean won a clamorous round of applause when he told the convention, "I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" -- implying that other Democratic leaders had drifted from the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedys.

Jo Anne Marquardt, a teacher from Sacramento, backed Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, but she was toting a big "Dean for President" sign at the Sacramento convention, supporting the former Vermont governor primarily because he is against the Iraq war.

"I don't follow politics that much," said Marquardt, "but I heard Howard Dean on NPR and it was like, 'Wow, he is saying what I want to hear.'"

DEAN TOO FAR LEFT? Some Democratic strategists worry that Dean, who signed a civil unions bills to legalize gay and lesbian couples in Vermont and who calls for universal federally-mandated health insurance, might not be able to win the general election.

"I do think he's going pretty far to the left, to be honest," said Garry South, the strategist who masterminded Gov. Gray Davis's re-election campaign last year.

But Dean's rousing speech to the convention on Saturday had delegates and political professionals buzzing with excitement.

Dennis Washburn, a city council member from Calabasas, Calif., said Democrats were looking for intense, foot-stomping rhetoric from their presidential candidate and Dean gave them a supersized serving of it.

[RipSawyer]

"After all there are pimps with more charactor then Clinton."


Absolutely, and that is why I stopped referring to BJ as "white trash" and I now strenuously object when anyone refers to him that way, it is a needless insult to white trash. No doubt your average pimp is a far better person than BJ.

[derlauerer]

Three thousand dead civilians wish that Clinton had been "obsessed" with Osama bin-Laden.

I know it's nitpicking, but your otherwise accurate comment should be prefaced with "The families and surviving friends of"

The worst of the PIAPS's "husband"'s malefactions against our nation was his depletion of our arsenals. May I live long enough to celebrate his arrival in Hell!

Not that I'm bitter or anything...

[oyez]

needless insult to white trash

LOL I'm hip. Clinton is white trash that got all the right breaks only somewhere along the line he parted ranks and hitched up with evil, almost like he signed a contatct with Faust. Another thing, Clinton dosen't seem to have friends. He has people that are friendly to him, but I don't think he has buddies.

[razorbak]

Democrats seek another Clinton

Sorry, but God doesn't let people out of Hell.

[Liz]

"Bill Clinton had the ability to look you in the eye and you'd be the only one in the room that mattered."

.........all the while he's picking your pocket........