Posted on 12/04/2002 8:27:34 AM PST by GulliverSwift
NEW YORK (AP) - In his first major speech since the midterm elections, former President Clinton (news - web sites) said the Democratic Party needs to communicate clear, fresh ideas on the economy and national security if it wants to recover from election losses.
Clinton's remarks came during a speech Tuesday to the Democratic Leadership Council, a national network that Clinton helped found in the 1980s to steer the party toward a more centrist image.
He reflected on the mood of the party back then to look ahead to the party's next step.
"We had a strategy rooted in new ideas ... we didn't have to wake up the morning after the election and wonder what it was we were going to do," Clinton said. "We knew what we wanted to do, and we set about doing it."
He suggested the party draft unified plans on national security and reviving the economy — issues on which he said Democrats floundered in their campaigns this year. Republicans increased their narrow margin of control in the House and took back the Senate in the November elections.
"Democrats have to have ideas to win," Clinton said. "Republicans will always have more money, more powerful interest groups, the fervor of right-wing emotion."
The Democratic Leadership Council's ideology of a "third way" between the traditional left and right is credited with propelling Clinton to the presidency in 1992.
The audience of about 200 people at New York University chuckled after Clinton quoted his own 1991 remark about the struggling party:
"`I've read all the people who say the Democratic party is dead, but I respectfully disagree' — I said that on May 6, 1991. I believed it then, and I believe it today," Clinton said.
Much of the party's weakness now, he said, can be blamed on Democrats' failure to stand up for each other when they are attacked by other politicians and "extreme right-wing elements in the media."
"We have to be firm and clear and strong and positive and prepared to defend our positions and those who are brave enough to stick their necks out," he said.
Clinton said the party's national security plan should emphasize action like going after terrorists and planning for specific types of attacks — tasks he said should take priority even over weapons inspections in Iraq.
"Al-Qaida should be our top priority," Clinton said. "Iraq is important, but the terror network is more urgent in terms of its threat to our security."
He said Democrats this year failed to highlight the idea that putting together the newly formed homeland security department should take a backseat to other national security issues.
"We didn't say it in the last election, and if we had, it would have made a difference in some of these races," Clinton said.
Meanwhile, the party's economic plan should stimulate in the short run while being responsible for the long term, he said. It also should include a balance of corporate accountability.
"What we need to do is say, 'What we're after is the abuses, but we want to hold up the entrepreneurial giant that made this economy grow in the 1990s,'" the two-term president said. "We can do it in a balanced way that 90 percent of the American people will approve of and will generate a lot of support for the Democratic party."
Algore is out by most accounts, the DNC doesn't think Hitlery can pull it off, Kerry is on the fringe, Gephardt dropped House Minority Leadrship and the Bent One has been largely silent until Nov 6th...now he's all over trying to rally his troops.
It looks kinda ominous to me...anyone else??
This from the man who turned down Osama bin Laden's head on a silver platter.
How true. I almost got in a fight with some hammerhead who boasted voting for the bastid.
If you vote Independent party or Libertarian, what you get is a democrat!
Some people are just plain stupid!
You'd rather have a more sensational, specious one?
Hey, the Dems have Nader.
We need to encourage the left to vote for Nader and make sure no new Perots show up.
LOL! It's conservatives who have the ideas, and left-wingers who operate on emotion. Their display of left-wing emotion, bordering on hysteria, at the Wellstone funeral cost them the election, and not just in MN.
======================
The former Sink-er-ator in Chief is still delusional. The right wing is about ideas. The left wing is about emotion. Go to a rally attended by those on the right. It will be characterized by decent people, good ideas, and creative chants. "Get out of Cheney's house" will forever be a classic. At the Federal Building in L.A. during recount 2000, we chanted "Algore we are getting mad...you can kiss my dimpled chad." Now, go to a rally attend by those on the left. It will consist of every whacky left-wing group out there -- socialists, communists, no-growthers, save the San Bernardino sap sucking fly, free Mumia, don't execute child murderers, etc. They will appear to be the scum of the earth and they will smell. When challenged, they have no real argument --- they recite from the talking points. At an anti-Bush, anti-Simon rally in Los Angeles I talked to many of these people. They are not just out to lunch. The lunch is on a different planet. One tree-hugger actually believes that we should only stop forest fires if they are set by humans. If nature started them, let them burn. When I challenged the airhead young woman with some logic, she didn't quite know how to react. I suggested that cancer in natural. If her body was being eaten by cancer, should that be stopped? She was flustered.
If Clinton was a Republican he'd be in federal prison or far worse for the heinous and treasonous crimes he perpetrated upon the American people.
"They have a destruction machine -- we don't," Clinton told his audience at New York University. "What was done to Tom Daschle was unconscionable, but our refusal to stand up and defend him was worse." SFGate.com
I suppose he thinks what the Rat party has done to Bush (i.e., alleging his responsibility for the dragging death of a black man in Texas), was all okay and not part of the "destruction machine" of the Rats. The examples that could be listed in innumerable.
I hope not. He's such an embarrassment, he didn't have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. He got a blow job from her talking to a southern Democratic Congressman about the war in Bosnia. The only show remaining is how will Hillary destroy Nancy Pelosi. This is disgusting.
He would start by squishing his fat, pink, blob into a pair of XXL jogging shorts, and, with cameras rolling, lumber down Madison Avenue in search of McDonald's and Pizza Hut flanked by Secret Service agents.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.