I don't know where you get this. Maybe you didn't read the excerpt carefully.
There was this: "That is indeed how many of us remember the betrayal of the poor that year."
and
"So, as Mr. Reich goes on to relate in excruciating detail, Mr. Clinton - who was at that stage twenty points ahead in the opinion polls - signed legislation that was more hasty, callous, short-term, and ill-considered than anything the Republicans could have hoped to carry on their own. He thus made sure that he had robbed them of an electoral issue, and gained new access to the very donors who customarily sent money to the other party. (Mr. Reich has good reason to remember this episode with pain. His own wife said to him, when he got home after the vote: "You know, your President is a real asshole.") "
>Hitchens is even more wrong to suggest that the right sees clearly that
>Clinton delivers for them. If they did, they would have been celebrating
>their victory, rather than apoplectically trying to destroy him for the
>last 6 years. They are obviously less clear about what Clinton represents
>than the left is. I'm not arguing with the premise that Clinton says left
>and does right. I'm arguing that the people that understand that best are
>on the left and they say it all the time. The right by and large thinks
>that Clinton is a leftist.
Maybe you missed this (coincidence?): "Writing in Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard of February 1999, Mr. Frum [a conservative] saw through Clintonism and its triangulations with an almost world-weary ease: <block quote> Since 1994, Clinton has offered the Democratic party a devilish bargain: Accept and defend policies you hate (welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act), condone and excuse crimes (perjury, campaign finance abuses) and I'll deliver you the executive branch of government ... Again since 1994, Clinton has survived and even thrived by deftly balancing between right and left. He has assuaged the Left by continually proposing bold new programs-the expansion of Medicare to 55 year olds, a national day-care program, the reversal of welfare reform, the hooking up to the Internet of every classroom, and now the socialization of the means of production via Social Security. And he has placated the Right by dropping every one of these programs as soon as he proposed it. Clinton makes speeches, Rubin and Greenspan make policy; the Left gets words, the Right gets deeds; and everybody is content. </block quote>"
Clinton is to the left of a lot of them, which isn't saying much. Hitchens is saying that the right has gotten the most out of Clinton, more than if Bush had been reelected. Speaking of celebrating victory, I heard on the radio that there was going to be a welfare reform party here in Chicago at Navy Pier, but then people thought it might be unseemingly to have movie stars and rich folks celebrating kicking poor people in the teeth. Honestly. The social conservatives really hate Clinton, something I'm sure Hitchens touches on. Jeez, you have everything ass-backwards.
>Lastly, Hitchens is right that Congressional bigwigs have lots of reasons
>to prefer a president of the opposite party to one of their own. In a
>nutshell, it makes them first string players rather than second string.
>But this has nothing to do with Clinton or triangulation, as his own
>examples make clear. Tip O'Neill preferring Reagan and Gingrich
>preferring Clinton should have told him something else as well, namely
>that the antagonism goes both ways, and rifts usually originate in the
>Congress. Before Clinton cut himself free of the Congressional leadership
>in 1994-96, they had undercut his initiatives throughout 1992-94, piqued
>at their fall in their status and his unwillingness to suck their boots.
>The leadership and the president deserved each other, pigs both.
Bullshit. I'm not saying guys like Rostenkowski were the greatest, but of course you remember the scene in Bob Woodward's book The Agenda, where Clinton wails that he's an Eisenhower Republican after scrapping his public investment plan? Clinton went with the economic conservatives which is not surprising considering he helped to found the DLC. I'd guess this book is directed at all of those liberals who touted Clinton from day one.