Believing that seems to make big city liberals and obviously a few non big city liberals happy for some reason, but it is completely a-historical. The charge leveled against Clinton the first year or two he was in office was that he was trying to do too much, too fast, and was too liberal: universal health care, criticized as socialist, and not supported by Democrats in Congress; gays in the military, criticized as too much, too fast, and not supported by the Democrats in Congress; the Brady Bill (gun control), passed and supported by the Democrats in Congress; a full attack on the Reagan Republican deficit that, like today, was strangling the economy and making it impossible to pass liberal legislation, criticized by the Republicans but supported and passed the Democrats (only Democrats) which saved the economy and the economic lives of most Americans but which with the collusion of an elitist media allowed the GOP to claim that the Democrats raised taxes on average Americans (only if the average American made more than $100,000--the median income was about $35,000).

Two years after Clinton took office, those things plus the House Banking scandal, the House Speaker Jim Wright book scandal, and endless lies by the GOP leader Newt Gringrich led to the seizure of the House by the radical right and GOP control of the Senate, given Democratic cowards and GOP gains. In order to save parts of his liberal agenda, including an increase in the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit (for the working poor), Clinton was forced to, dirty word, triangulate with the Republicans. He did support welfare reform after vetoing the first bill because it was too harsh, but he had hoped to get health care, child care, and higher education spending to make welfare reform a good program to get people off welfare, which is degarding, and into good jobs.

If the public had been smart enough to see through the GOP, the Congressional Democrats had been braver (the same cowards many moan about now), and the MSM, including the so-called liberals, had not joined the GOP in trashing Clinton and later Gore (remember the MSM and the liberals in it called him a serial liar and loved Bush).

Clinton was a liberal, but he was also a Southerner and he knew that the South and America would not vote for a liberal (remember the GOP had made it a dirty word and no one claimed it except those in safe seats, like Ted Kennedy. He did as many Southern liberals had learned to do, run as a moderate and hide a liberal agenda under a populist banner. Even Johnson had to justify student college loans as National Defense Loans, yes college loans, like the federal highway system under Eisenhower, were promoted defense, anti-communist, projects.

Forgive typos, no time to proof

Go back and read www.dailyhowler.com and The Hunting of the President by Salon's Joe Conason and reporter/columnist Gene Lyons. You have fallen victim to the MSM lies you seem to criticize. Except for Lewinsky there were NO Clinton presidential scandals. Both were exonerated on everything. The Whitewater scandal was a Jeff Gerth New York Times scandal--read Hunting. Bill Clinton was pursued by racists like Jim Johnson (his home was called White Haven) who linked up with Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame to destroy Clinton because Clinton worked hard and successfully to destroy racism in Arkansas, telling Johnson, who ran for governor, that he was disgusting and made Clinton ashamed to be from Arkansas. Clinton took a semester off from college to work for Johnson's opponent. Johnson was the one who pressured Faubus to block black students from Little Rock. FBI, Travel Office, all media excesses created by the GOP--just like the Al Gore serial liar stories. You know he never said he invented the internet, or claimed to be the Love Story model, and he didn't introduce Willie Horton--that, in fact, was Bill Bradley. The reason swiftboating Kerry worked so well was all that practice the GOP got in the nineties when no one, including so-called liberal columnists, challenged them when they went after the Clinton's. Again, go back and reread Bob Somerby's excellent work.

Neither Clinton wants McCain to win because they care about issues like poverty, health care, the environment, and civil rights. They will fall in line, deliver the great speeches both are capable of, and allow Obama and his supporters to continue his dream--that he is the second coming. The press, however may be a problem. Having lied about Democratic candidates for decades (with the help of so-called liberal columnists like Dowd and Rich), they, despite abandoning their first love, McCain, for a younger, prettier love, Obama, may be unable to help themselves and reflexively attack Obama. Democrats need to be ready to keep them honest.