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How can we put bitterness aside when you continue to distort the value of people we respect? Bill Clinton didn't have anything to do with the right-wing takeover of government. It started in the early 70's when people like Scaife decided that the only way to promote the Republican Party was to fund thinktanks to rephrase their message in a way that American's could stomach and to create media empires to spread the word. It really took off with Reagan's election. He was a potemking President, but he was a very good speaker and had good material to work with, as well as a nation that was sympathetic to his words because they had been softened up by 10 years of neocon lies (or rather "frames", a word not in common usage at that time). The whole "government is not the solution, it is the problem" and "all Taxes are evil" meme started back then. The "welfare queen" concept, and the "War on Drugs", and starting wars to distract people from their problems ... Reagan era ideas.
Bill Clinton won because of a schism in the Republican Party, old school Republicans v. Neocons. He won with less than 50% of the vote, and proceeded to work with Congress to implement policies that resulted in lower poverty, more civil rights, a balanced budget, and increased world respect for America. He was helped along by the tech boom, but, unlike Bush, he used that prosperity to help Americans instead of giving tax breaks to fat cat friends. There are reasons that Clinton was considered a friend to minorities - because he was. He was a damned good President whose administration was marred by scandals created by neocons who literally spent millions of dollars to create stories with which to tar him, culminating in an impeachment hearing about the ridiculous topic of his lying about getting a blow job. He didn't foment the revolution - that's why it is called the "Reagan Revolution". If anything, he undid a numbe of the setbacks that Reagan had initiated.
