New civil rights laws have been passed
> >from the 1991 general civil rights act to the American with Disabilities
> >Act.
>
>-Initiatives of Bush I . . . .
>
>Again- Presidential-oriented bullshit; Bush I fought like hell to restrain
>the 1991 Civil Rights Act, passed to overrule bad Supreme Court
>interpretations of earlier laws. The impulse and support came
>overwhelmingly from Dems in Congress,
No, Buah trashed the superior (granted) 1990 Act; the (very good) 1991 amendments were a compromise. The ADA, which you ignore, was Bush I's baby.
just as Renhquist's vote leading the
>terrible Supreme Court decisions on civil rights came straight from
>Nixon.>Which emphasizes looking at Supreme Court picks (and don't mention
>Blackmun
>who was supposed to be a conservative when picked and went renegade against
>expectations).
OK, what about Stevens? What about Burger, for heaven's sake, who gave us affirmative action in employment (Griggs), school busing (the Charlotte case), upheld the Endangered Species Act (the snail darter case). He was actually fairly liberal, criminal injustice aside. And Blackmun was supposed to be his Twin.
As for the lower courts, we have both read the studies showing that Clinton's nominations were no more liberal than Nixon's.
New books and articles have analyzed how deliberate Nixon's
>pick of Rehnquist was as a way to fuck liberalism--
Yeah, well, the Chiefis a creep, no doubt. But
and Nixon's dead hand
>lives on in the chambers of the Court,
As I've indicared. Nixon had two hands, and his left hand was way left of anything on offer now.
Unlike the
>EPA or most other laws mistakenly attributed to Nixon,
??
>It's not clear to me that the losses outweigh the gains, either in the US
>or
>in the global context, in a world where back then blacks and latinos had
>barely wrested even the basics of equality and Nixon was propping up death
>squad regimes in places ranging from Greece to Iran to Latin America.
Don't start me on Carter's embrace of the Shah or cozying up to Somoza or supporting UNITA or building the MX and the B1, or Clinton's ill-considered globalization initiatives and his cynical wars.
blacks, women, latinos and others unquestionably have more
>rights and equality in our workplaces today than they did twenty-five years
>ago.
That's true. 30 years ago in Virginia I couldn't walk hand in hand, much less kiss in public, with my first girlfriend, a black girl from DC, on this side of the line. At the same time, look at incarcertaion and unemployment rates for minorities. The former have soared logarithmically and the latter have not budged. Poverty rates have only moved downward a bit, and life expectency in DC or the South Brox or South Central LA or the South Side of Chicago is at third world levels for black men.
I grew up in New Jersey and was born in Cleveland and I am acutely
>aware of very real progress that has been made on environmental cleanup
>around the country-- I still find it unbelieveable that people can fish in
>Lake Erie today.
Much of the credit is due to Republican state governments in Ohio, though.
>
>What is true is that the national and global economic environment turned
>harshly against new progressive initiatives.
And the Dems have not been partof that environment?
>the left failed to create a viable alternative in the Rainbow Coalition.
>
I have told the story of how the Dems destroyed the RC I worked for eight years to build in Michigan.
>
>Yes, and my point is that it is the relentless partisanship of the Right in
>the last few decades and the abandonment of partisanship by the Left that
>helped the Right take power.
Oh, so you blame the collapse of the Dems into GOP's less evil twin on me? Look, man, I really tried, it didn't make a fleas fuck of a difference.
>
>Who were the "New Democrats"? They were Democrats out of power for the
>first time in over three decades tryng to figure out how to get it back;
>they were not southern racists like the old conservative wing of the Dems.
No, they were tools of finance capital rather than of the white plantocracy of the old South.
>Most of them were far more liberal in their politics than JFK and far, far
>more liberal than the Democratic Congressional leadership of the 1950s.
I hold no brief for JFK, and if they are better on race, they are far worse on labor and trade, among other things.
since the old rightwing had actively opposed unions, opposed civil
>rights, opposed the right to abortion, and so on.
They didn't all oppose unions: Gore (the dad) and Bumpers come to mind. But the old DP on balance was much much better on labor, and you damn well know it. However it never got the nerve to repeal Taft Hartley or the permanent striker replacement rule.
>
>Clinton was a new Democrat, typical in being a former McGovernite and
>extremely liberal governor in his first term, before being thrown out of
>office in the harsh environment of the late 70s. He tactically moved to
>the
>right in the belief that this was the only way to survive.
There you are, the story of the DP from 1972 to 1988. tactically or not, he moved right. His sincerity is hardly the issue. It's what he did that counts.
And I won't go
>into my list of reasons why I think Clinton was by far the most liberal
>President of the post-WWII period, despite his failures on NAFTA and
>welfare
>reform, other than to note that a similar list of failures by other Dems is
>far, far worse (Truman- launching McCarthyism inside government, the Cold
>War; Kennedy- rightwing tax cuts, starting Vietnam; Johnson- Vietnam,
>Vietnam; Carter- deregulation; Volcker; beginning military buildup).
ANd yet Truman supported national health care and full employment, opposed
Taft Hartley . . . . But I consider this litany an indictment of the DP, not
a defenseo f Clinton.
>
>
And after he lost even that thin working majority in
>1994, he also twice vetoed welfare plans that were dramatically worse than
>the final plan he approved, which was itself far worse than the plan he
>actually supported initially, which had some very liberal elements.
This is a defense? I think it's a guilty plea.
>
Nixon fought
>liberal policies and watered them down where he could, appointed righwing
>judges like Rehnquist, and supported racist coalitions through Kevin
>Phillips "Southern Strategy" that would soon bear fruit in Reagan's
>election.
>
>Clinton fought rightwing policies and watered them down, appointed liberal
>(and at worst moderate) judges, and worked closely with emerging latino,
>black and other progressive forces, which are now bearing fruit in places
>like California and the southwest.
Clinton went much further to the right--I am sure reluctantly--than Nixon went to the left--also reluctantly.
>
>Remove Nixon and his veto and the legislation passed would have been far
>more liberal.
Yes, in retrospect, it would have been better had Johnson run and won, or Humphrey.
Remove Clinton and his veto and the 1990s would have been a
>nightmare of rightwing regression under the Gngrich agenda.
Now this ignores context. Without Clinton and his lightening rod to energize
the right, no Gingrich.
>
>So it's pretty clear to me who was more liberal.
>
Me too, we just disagree.
jks
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