Clinton and Gore, Clinton and Gore —
Both of them born after the war!
They're not liberals, like before —
Technocratic, to the core.
Clinton and Gore, Clinton and Gore.
— from a poem by Calvin Trillin
By Peter Anderson
The November 3 election of Democratic Party candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore to the US presidency brought a welcome end to a dozen years of neo-conservative Republican government begun under Ronald Reagan. Ironically, while the Reagan-Bush administration claimed to have won the Cold War, the supposed end of "east-west" tension went a long way towards ending the Republicans' rule.
Widespread relief at the downfall of Reaganism, however, will be tempered for many US voters by the knowledge that life may be only marginally better under the new Clinton administration. The Democrats clearly moved to the right to win this election and will be cautious in introducing reforms.
The US electorate has been traumatised in recent years by the realisation that the once dominant US economy no longer rules the world unchallenged. Standards of living are dropping dramatically for most people. The election result may provide an opening for the union, social and progressive movements to campaign for much needed social and economic reforms. Expectations are raised that with a Democratic White House there will be some revival in the economy and relief for the unemployed.
The election result brought into focus the lingering effects of the Vietnam generation and marked a turning point in conventional political wisdom. Social characteristics associated with the 1960s, as opposed to the 1940s, are now acceptable in presidential politics, a feature personified perhaps more by Hillary Clinton than by the president-elect.
But while the continuing political impact of the 1960s generation should not be underestimated, this should not be confused with Clinton's own record. Never an active opponent of the US war against Vietnam, he simply chose to avoid the draft by continuing his studies.
The election of the Clinton-Gore ticket reflected a political shift by a large part of the US business class who decided it was past time to address the economic malaise left behind by a dozen years of Reaganomics. Much of US economic opinion has turned against free-market monetarism and towards a limited form of Keynesianism for which the Democrats are seen as the best choice in the White House.
Exceptionally low interest rates under Bush have not relieved the economic slump brought on by the '80s credit binge. Clinton has ucture investment to spur the economy, and despite the huge budget deficit there is room to move. While the deficit is now high now at 6% of GNP, during the years of Roosevelt's New Deal it went to 47%.
The broadly based liberal and progressive electorate took the opportunity to finally end the 12-year domination of the Reagan-Bush Republicans, and to head off the Republican far-right crusade for a Christian fundamentalist white state, personified by the rightist Republican Patrick Buchanan.
But far from opposing the Republicans' racist fundamentalism, Clinton decided very early on to beat the Republicans at their own game. The underlying racial bias of the Democratic campaign led the Nation to label the Clinton-Gore ticket "a paradigm of white-bread masculinity".
From being the party of southern slave owners, the Democrats were transformed in the 1930s by Roosevelt, who imposed a social contract with the unions, welfare sectors and African Americans. In the wake of the anti-Vietnam war movement, much of the social democratic and African American political leadership went into the Democratic Party in the 1970s, giving it a more liberal face.
Meanwhile, the Republicans under Richard Nixon began to appeal to the "silent majority" of southern white voters who had begun to desert the Democrats, a flow that by the time of the Reagan candidacy had become a torrent.
In the 1968 presidential campaign, racist Democrat George Wallace left the party to run an independent presidential campaign against party nominee Hubert Humphrey. Wallace pointedly appealed to white voters in the southern states that once were the stronghold of the Democrats. Subsequently, these voters fell to the Republicans.
In this election, Clinton deliberately moved into the Wallace electorate. Central to his campaign strategy was the attempt to win back the racist southern white vote, a strategy that explains Clinton's public, carefully managed clash with Rainbow Alliance leader Jesse Jackson during party primaries.
In the event, Clinton won back Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia for the Democrats but failed to win the big states of Florida and Texas along with Mississippi and Alabama. Only a third of the "Reagan Democrats" stayed with Bush this time.
Clinton also went out of his way to drive a wedge between the organised union movement and the Democrats' presidential campaign by publicly supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement constructed by Bush, an agreement the AFL-CIO has opposed.
The expulsion of organised labour from any position of influence in the Democratic Party had been the central mission of the Democratic Leadership Council, the party faction led by Clinton, right to work" state. One of Clinton's main Arkansas backers is Tyson's, the chicken processing giant that caused environmental havoc and was described in one business magazine as treating contract farmers "almost as indentured servants".
To say that Clinton "won the battle of ideas", as Evatt Foundation executive director Peter Botsman has done, could give a false impression of the importance of the Democratic victory. As Botsman himself points out, Clinton has associated himself with "calls for a new era of industrial relations reforms based around 'an enterprise compact' between unions and corporate managers", a phrase which in this country has an obvious, ominous ring.