The major policy accomplishment of Bill Clinton before the 1994 election was the NAFTA accord, drafted by the then-dictatorially empowered Mexican President, pushed by the Republican Party under Bush Sr. and a coalition of corporate backers. It was completely an accord drawn up and favored by U.S. Republicans and major corporation, and was passed by the exact strategy of triangulation: with a strong majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress and a minority of Democrats against and over a majority of Democrats, in both houses. And against the most mobilized labor and progressive trade community in decades.

There is simply no way to characterize that as "left" in any fashion, nor to deny its simple "triangulation" nature even before the '96 campaign in which Dick Morris would reveal the term: Choose Republican-backed policies, and pass them with a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in order to undermine the liberal and labor Democrats.

This isn't surprising -- it was the declared analysis of the Democratic Leadership Council that the weakness of the Democratic Party was precisely its labor and liberal wings; it was time to move toward much stronger corporate and conservative support. Their analysis.

The failed 1993 health care reform given to Hillary Clinton's charge, was delayed to prioritize NAFTA, and that deal of itself was set up by plans drawn up among the 5 largest HMO's and insurance companies in the USA, and those 5 largest mega-corporations would have controlled most of U.S. health care under the "managed care" model drawn up at the Jackson Hole retreat which planned the initiative.

So it was a plan to give control of health care to a tiny minority of the largest corporations, thus setting up for an easy battle for the Republicans to collect all the other insurers and HMO's to their cause. Which is what happened, and why Newt won that battle, which should have been obvious given the new Congressional Republican leaders' reliance on more funding from smaller and medium insurers, for this precise reason.

And there's plenty of insider revelation on how early on Bill Clinton had a sit down with the brilliant, awesome, super-knowledgeable Robert Rubin, who so recently helped CitiBank out so much, and Rubin told him his populist economic agenda would have to be dropped, given Wall Street considerations.

Hence the 'Third Way' eagerness to assist deregulatory Republicans like the recently Republicanized Phil Gramm in deconstructed the old, outdated liberal establishment regulations separating banking and investment, and we liberals were criticized at the time as Luddite holdouts for our concerns.

Of course, there are many who see it as a situational requirement, that Republicans were headed to control Congress and thus this was the only way forward out of gridlock.

And we've surely seen the benefit of having a vastly competent, concerned President such as Clinton presiding over policies which I and others concluded (accurately, I believe the times have shown) to be more harmful than their alternatives, versus a callous incompetent mean jackass like Bush Jr. presiding over anti-Constitutional and nation-shredding thuggery.

But all Clinton did with this success at backing moderated Republican agendas was to further infuriate the Congressional Republican establishment and the lunatic ultra-right media echo chamber, who (rightly) sensed blood in the water and hated Clinton because they felt so close to absolute power.

Clinton's reward for such a moderate, pro-Big Business agenda and competent leadership was to be impeached by the same bunch of Reaganite crooks who loved Reagan's wars against Central American and Southern African civilians but fainted at the notion that Clinton had an affair outside his marriage.

Absolute power that they would achieve only 2 years after Clinton left. And it took the devastation wrought by their absolute power to finally put an end to the Reaganism that dominated this country the last 28 years, since Democrats had long since concluded, at least in their establishment, that there was no point in taking on Reaganism directly.