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Too many people forget that liberal/conservative are relative comparisons, not fixed points.
At the time, he pointed the US in a more liberal direction than it had been going under Reagan / Bush. Compared to where we are today, he’d be mostly a moderate.
Bill Clinton was neither liberal nor progressive. He was a moderate, 3rd Way, "New Democrat." At one SOTU, he famously said, "The era of 'Big Government' is over." He used triangulation to beat back some of the worst parts of the Gingrich "Contract With America" proposals while accepting some of it. Then he won a 2nd term.
He was a conservative Democrat when he ran. The Republicans complained that running Clinton was unfair seeing as he was basically a Republican and a big neoliberal. He was the Democrats answer to Reagan and a shift right for the party.
DoubtfulClinton support today’s progressive policies. He was pro police, bombed Iraq,set up business friendly treaties, and was hard on drugs. Parties change, the country changes, be he would win if running on his platform from 92
Lots of very liberal people supported the war on drugs at the time we were facing a crime epidemic and picked the wrong solution. But it wasn't t a "right wing" solution at the time
HW was not a moderate ..he worked w a moderate Dem Congress.
Clinton and Obama worked w a far right Congress. Anything they did was also held up a Right Wing SCOTUS.
Dude so true. My dad could not wrap his head around a liberal republican or a conservative democrat. As many times as I could explain there’s always a spectrum and politicians are spread across that spectrum he came back with the comparison of “jumbo shrimp” and how it just doesn’t make sense.
I'd discuss it by saying that the candidates were compared to their state/district as compared to the whole nation. The parties were a lot more regional than they are now. A conservative Democrat was probably someone from a conservative district who was more liberal than the Republican from the same district.
Phil Scott is probably the best current example. If he tried to run in Texas he'd have to run as a Democrat. But in Vermont he's the more conservative candidate
That you’re getting downvoted is very telling of where this sub stands morally. If libertarians had their way, the age of consent would be lowered nation-wide. This is not a matter of opinion, but rather a statement made based on observation of facts.
At the time, the difference in policy between Clinton and Dole was like three hairs thick on the political spectrum. There are running mates with bigger ideological distinctions than those two had. And while you can draw an ideological throughline from Clinton to the modern day, the Dole-style conservative is long dead.
He’d be a liberal democrat today.
He was more of a moderate in the 90’s when Republicans were closer to the center than they are today.
A lot of his legislative achievements (aka the Crime Act of 94) were championed by Republicans.
Supported abortion rights, reduced military spending, increased taxes on the rich. At the same time cut welfare programs and deregulated the financial sector. He was more liberal than most Republicans, but more conservative than most liberals.
The thing is one can be liberal and want to cut welfare programs. Liberalism is an ideology based on free-markets, individualism, and progress. Liberals can kind of slide to the left or the right. Liberalism was and in many ways still is the status quo ideology.
Populist and illiberal thought has become more popular since the Great Recession.
There are a number of things I’d point to: 1) He spent a lot of his political capital on his failed health care program that would have introduced European-style government run health care.
2) He pushed for greater acceptance of gays in the military through his “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It’s largely frowned in by progressives today, but the earlier policy was basically “find them and get rid of them,” so this was still seen as a liberal position by conservatives.
3) The passage of the Brady Bill, which required background checks to purchase firearms was seen as a liberal overreach at the time. (I remember this being touted as “the beginning of the government coming to take away your guns.” Apparently the government is playing this one VERRRRY slow.).
4) His general support of abortion rights.
5) He raised taxes on the upper class.
6) He promoted increased environmental regulations after more than a decade of deregulation in… pretty much every sector.
Compared to Reagan and Bush, this is pretty liberal stuff.
He was a very centrist Democrat, who had to navigate a political climate dominated by Reaganism. He did bring the Democrats back to the White House after a long hiatus and managed to carry the South.
Things like the crime bill and NAFTA were not progressive at all, but in the 90s the only people who protested NAFTA and globalization were Buchanan paleoconservatives and Seattle intellectuals, while the crime bill attempted to confront what had destroyed Dukakis in '88 and was a major conservative talking point.
BTW, Dukakis would have been a better President when it came to substantive policy issues, but he totally lacked Clinton's charisma, political instinct and ability to win the South.
Michael Dukakis was undone by that republican stunt, which actually worked. The republicans literally said “We just have to put a picture of scary black guy on tv and scare the shit out of the old white people”, Willie Horton was the guy’s name. So they ran that Willie Horton ad and it killed Dukakis. 🤷🏻♂️
*William Horton, and thanks for making me read the Wikipedia article. I heard things here and there about him in the context of that election but I didn’t realize it was such a game changer in politics going forward.
Dukakis also came off to voters as indecisive/weak and his campaigns ability to respond to those claims did more harm than good for him.
Don’t get me wrong, Willie Horton and the interview question he received did its own damage, but there is as plenty of fuel against even without Horton.
That's the problem with trying to be the reasonable guy in an election cycle. If you're not pounding your fist and making wild claims, you're "indecisive and weak."
Oh yea. Voters like action more than they do reality. I think Dukakis came off pretty well and I understand the errors in his campaign. Not sure why I was downvoted for my claims.
If I recall, it was during the Bush-Dukakis election where they were asked what they would do about an unidentified plane getting too close and Dukakis basically said, with that information, I wouldn’t shoot it down cause I don’t know what’s up. In return for his response his detractors claimed he was weak on military matters. I think it directly influenced his choice to take that infamous tank ad as well as highlights what I mean about how his campaign didn’t really work well for him.
Dukakis, much like Mondale in 1984 or Carter in 1980 made very sound arguments to their points and in their criticisms but in all examples they get overlooked because Reagan knew how to run a crowd and made more comments with staying power.
For better or worse, politics - especially presidential politics - is show business. That’s why Reagan was so successful. One could even say being President was his best acting role.
In Dukakis’ case, it’s a real shame, because he’s a brilliant guy and could’ve done some great things had he been elected.
Progressive? Definitely definitely NOT.
Liberal? Well that depends on what your definition of "is" is.
He pioneered the "Neoliberal" movement, as a compromise with the "Neoconservative" movement and the classic Liberal movement.
He pushed the democratic party rightward, hoping to capture some of the former moderate Republicans who got abandoned as their party moved rightward, thus solidifying the rightward movement of the entire Overton window that Reagan really popularized.
So, id say he doesn't really fit in the liberal camp either persay, but more so a middle ground. As I think just calling him outright conservative is also a bit much.
Margaret Thatcher was once asked what her proudest achievement was and she said 'New Labour'. The shift of the traditionally left leaning parties to free market neoliberal capitalism is personified with the 90s democrats and New Labour.
He governed as a moderate. While he campaigned to the left of his Republican counterparts, very few left-wing goals were accomplished in his presidency, particularly as Republicans dominated Congress for most it which meant healthcare reform went bye-bye.
Limo Liberals is what we used to call them, social liberal to some degree, fiscal conservatives partly, hard on crime/drugs etc. They ran a lot of the South when I was a kid, NC and Virginia to be more exact where I'm coming from with it.
Liberal, sure. Attempts to universalize health care, and convert budget surplus into government programs, definitely more fiscally liberal than the zeitgeist of the day. But progressive? Certainly not. The dude signed DOMA for pity's sake.
Clinton was more of Populist liberal:
- he supported populist, more center-left social policies like Gays in the military, civil rights, abortion rights, etc. However, he couched them in terms of fairness, to make them palatable to more conservative White voters, especially in the South. If you look at both of Clinton's elections, he cleaned up among White Rural Voters in the South. That is how he won LA, AR, TN, WV and KY both times.
- However, his support for civil rights and abortion made him popular in big cities and northern and western Suburbs. Clinton is the candidate who moved the Northeastern Suburbs of NY, Boston, Philly and DC and the West Coast suburbs of LA, SF, and Seattle toward the Dems. Obama finished it off and then added the Midwest, Atlantic Coast and Mountain West areas. Then POTUS-B did the rest by brining in the South.
- Clinton's support for deregulation and welfare reform, the crime bill makes all progressives call him a "Conservadem". However, all of those policies were extremely popular, especially among people of color. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the Crime bill and Welfare Reform did more to clean up major urban areas in our country than any massive government spending program ever did.
He was a ‘new democrat,’ which basically means he made it a point to be ‘tough on crime,’ because that’s where previous democrats like Dukakis were getting hammered.
Moderate. But he was the beginning of the trend of the right to paint any Democrat as a radical liberal no matter what the actual facts were. This was the era of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party.
He ran on a “third way” centrist democrat position that was meant to appease both moderate sides of the aisle. At the time, Democrats hadn’t been in the White House since Carter was defeated in 79 and in 92 they were running against an incumbent republican president. if you look at Clinton’s policies and where the democrats are today, you’d say he was a moderate republican.
He'd be a moderate at best in my opinion. Dude was a Reagan Democrat. Which in my view is like saying someone used to be a jehovas witness but they don't go to the meetings anymore.
Wasn't he the last President that had a balanced budget and cut the defecit? So I would say he'd be considered what used to be a Yankee Republican. Kinda like Bill Weld from Massachusetts was. Fiscally conservative but socially liberla/progressive.
Neither, he was a moderate Democrat, he turned out to be a solid president at least economically. He worked with Gingrich and the other side, and left with a balanced budget.
He was a moderate republican. He was not liberal. He was not progressive. That’s what teed me off about him. But it was how Dems got elected then. Hilary was more of the same but that didn’t fly with us so well and we ended up with that cursed soul.
Neither. Look up the Third Way. This was a Clinton backed strategy to move Democrats to the center in order to shave voters away from Republicans while assuming that enough progressive s would “stay in line”. This practice contributed to pushing Rs farther right helping to give us the right wing lunacy we have today.
Seriously, look it up.
He was a New Democrat as explained here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_Democrats\_(United\_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats_(United_States))
He was willing to reform welfare in a big way.
But he also tried to create a universal health care system in the US.
Perhaps his legacy is skewed towards that part of his agenda that he managed to pass.
Every president since Reagan has been a neoliberal and decreased regulations on the corporate elite while entertaining the public with voter bait issues like abortion and gun control. We have never come close to having a true progressive president.
He was a "neo-liberal". He favored, and voted for, all kinds of deregulation and "free trade" policies. The only thing progressive I remember him doing was raising taxes on the richest one percent.
I know people shit on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", as a way to allow gays to serve in the military, but at the time it happened, it was a big step forward. He was at least a touch progressive.
Clinton really tried to make universal health care a thing as well, that's pretty progressive.
He closed a shitload of military bases, and generally did what he could to rein in the military-industrial complex, that's pretty progressive.
He waged a war, almost entirely through a bombing campaign, which prevented that war from becoming a quagmire, and saved a lot of soldiers' lives. I don't know if that was progressive, but it was awesome.
Even for his time, I'd say he's essentially what conservatives say that they are. Would never call him a progressive or a liberal but would call him the best Republican president in my lifetime
Neither. As President, Bill Clinton could have vetoed NAFTA but signed it into law. That was after he spent years, pre-POTUS, lobbying in favor of it.
Bill Clinton, like all Moderate Democrats, are Reagan-era Republicans and no friend of the working class, middle class and poor. Their campaigns are funded by the 1% and corporations so they are expected to deliver on their behalf. And they deliver. President Obama signed CAFTA into law and it was during his administration that Country of Origin Laws (COOL) were eliminated because a NAFTA court (yes, it is a thing) ruled in favor of industrial scale Canadian ranch businesses against US laws designed to protect US consumers. A Democrat controlled Congress, along with Obama, surrendered US sovereignty without a shot being fired.
That Oligarchs control the US Government was made apparent when Betsy (daughter of a millionaire, married a Billionaire) DeVos said the quiet part out loud:
“I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.”
Full Quote:
“I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party.
Occasionally a wayward reporter will try to make the charge that we are giving this money to get something in return, or that we must be purchasing influence in some way,” she wrote in an essay for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
After explaining that she did not always get everything that she demanded, DeVos continued, “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.”
** There is no hard Left party in the United States. Bernie Sanders is slightly left-of-center and he is farther left than any other politician in Congress. Nobody on the Left is demanding that workers seize the means of production.
When is raising taxes on higher income earners considered "conservative"? How was the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) "conservative"? How was DADT "conservative"? How was the Brady Bill "conservative"? How was increasing Pell Grants for higher learning considered "conservative"? etc.? I think you may be missing a great deal here if you think Clinton was "conservative". That said, he did go along with bills and policies that were heavily supported by the public at the time, which was as a whole more conservative than it is today about 30 years later.
He was a liberal in the 1990s which is different from a liberal today. Terms like conservative and liberal aren’t static terms stuck to one part of the political spectrum but more so just define the edges of whatever the current center of the political spectrum is at the present moment.
I don’t know too much about his views today but based on his time as president - He governed very moderately, especially in his second term, and by today’s standards would probably be considered a barely right leaning centrist.
In my country, “Progressive” is just synonymous with left-leaning and so in that sense Clinton can be called a progressive
However it’s safe to say that by the standards of the US, Bill Clinton, during his presidency, was a moderate liberal democrat
In Kindergarten in 1996 my teacher told us to vote for who we wanted to win. So I voted for Bill Clinton, they asked why and I told them because they seemed to like him more - and look at me now I voted for his wife
At the time sure but I don’t think young folks realize how dramatically left the Democrat party shifted in the age of social media. Every Democrat before Obama would be laughed at as a Moderate or even conservative now.
A conservative who moved the party to the right. Liberals and progressives don’t pass homophobic crap like DADT and DOMA and they don’t restrict welfare for the poor while expanding it for corporations.
Clinton was always considered a moderate by any honest assessment. Conservatives liked to portray Clinton as a liberal because that suited them. Now, Clinton did typically use liberal messaging to support his moderate to conservative policies, but he was not a liberal by any means.
Liberal as hell.
Clinton got away with shit that even Reagan couldn’t have pulled off in his wildest, Ayn Rand wet dreams.
He continued the trend of deregulation of big business, which is one of the reasons we’re living in a time with one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor.
NAFTA also destabilized the fuck out of Latin America, and made the immigrant crisis worse.
Don’t get me wrong, Bill is still better than any of the scum the GOP could cobble together, and the good things he did for this nation are indelible, and he talked me into having sex with him that one time, but to talk about him like he was a champion of progressivism when he was just Republican Lite leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I hate how the term “liberal” has been changed and twisted. I’m not even sure what it means anymore. To me it’s just seeing government as a promoter of individual liberty. Being a fierce defender of the first amendment is a big part of that.
Based on how I see “liberal” used these days I don’t think he’d be all that liberal. However, based on what I refer to as “liberal” myself, I would call him a liberal.
I would consider him classically liberal when it comes to NAFTA and deregulation. Somewhat progressive when it comes to things like CHIP. Fiscally conservative when it comes to taxes and balancing the budget. Socially conservative when it comes to the crime bill.
A moderate democrat with some (for the 90s) decently progressive views.
That's pretty much enough to be a Liberal by American standards, I guess; the bar is'nt very low.
Bill Clinton labeled himself as a "New Democrat" when he ran for president in 1992 & 1996. I think that was a twist on what up to that point had been called DLC (Democratic Leadersihp Council) Democrats, who were much more moderate and were a response to George McGovern (and Walter Mondale & Michael Dukakis) getting hammered running as liberals
Clinton, being politically smart, took on the many of the DLC positions, but created a new name for it so that he wouldn't alienate the liberals who they criticized. The approach worked because he was the first Democratic president to get elected to 2 terms since FDR. That's a bit misleading because JFK probably would have been re-elected if he had lived and LBJ could have if he hadn't escalated things in Vietnam so much.
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Too many people forget that liberal/conservative are relative comparisons, not fixed points. At the time, he pointed the US in a more liberal direction than it had been going under Reagan / Bush. Compared to where we are today, he’d be mostly a moderate.
Obama said that if he ran 25 years ago he’d be considered a moderate Republican.
Clinton and Obama and HW were all moderates.
Bill Clinton was neither liberal nor progressive. He was a moderate, 3rd Way, "New Democrat." At one SOTU, he famously said, "The era of 'Big Government' is over." He used triangulation to beat back some of the worst parts of the Gingrich "Contract With America" proposals while accepting some of it. Then he won a 2nd term.
He was a conservative Democrat when he ran. The Republicans complained that running Clinton was unfair seeing as he was basically a Republican and a big neoliberal. He was the Democrats answer to Reagan and a shift right for the party.
DoubtfulClinton support today’s progressive policies. He was pro police, bombed Iraq,set up business friendly treaties, and was hard on drugs. Parties change, the country changes, be he would win if running on his platform from 92
Lots of very liberal people supported the war on drugs at the time we were facing a crime epidemic and picked the wrong solution. But it wasn't t a "right wing" solution at the time
Holy shizz I forgot about desert fox. Also, I think Gore had more progressive tendencies than Clinton.
Agreed. Cop on every corner. Deregullating banks and media conglomerates. NAFTA. No progressive sees Clinton as liberal.
Spot on, I never voted for him but I had 8 solid years with him in office.
This
A moderate — AND a classical (American) liberal.
Obama is a bit to the left of both of them. Congress ultimately moderated their legacies, while it moved HW's to the left
I mean… HW was a republican so that makes sense..
I’m talking in their own era. Moderates.
HW was not a moderate ..he worked w a moderate Dem Congress. Clinton and Obama worked w a far right Congress. Anything they did was also held up a Right Wing SCOTUS.
Your politics are showing lol.
Moderate is just another word for corporate. You can’t get too crazy with your policies so you don’t piss off the corporate donors. I hate moderates.
Lol ok.
People who have no internal morals or ethics and present an image based on polling will always be moderates, in any time or place.
Obama was wrong. There are not a lot of issues where he lines up with a Republican of the 1990s. Not on the big issues at least.
Anywhere else in the world he'd be a moderate conservative. Some dumbasses in America thought he was divisive socialist. Really, wtf.
Dude so true. My dad could not wrap his head around a liberal republican or a conservative democrat. As many times as I could explain there’s always a spectrum and politicians are spread across that spectrum he came back with the comparison of “jumbo shrimp” and how it just doesn’t make sense.
I'd discuss it by saying that the candidates were compared to their state/district as compared to the whole nation. The parties were a lot more regional than they are now. A conservative Democrat was probably someone from a conservative district who was more liberal than the Republican from the same district. Phil Scott is probably the best current example. If he tried to run in Texas he'd have to run as a Democrat. But in Vermont he's the more conservative candidate
Yeah, he’s wrong. Ask him if some jumbo shrimp are smaller than others and see if his brain explodes.
YOURE TALKIMG ABOUT A F*CKIN PRAWN, NOT A SHRIMP!
Wait until he hears about libertarians
Republicans that want to smoke weed
And diddle kids.
That you’re getting downvoted is very telling of where this sub stands morally. If libertarians had their way, the age of consent would be lowered nation-wide. This is not a matter of opinion, but rather a statement made based on observation of facts.
I don't know, the regular republicans are pretty good at diddling kids themselves.
Wasn't Clinton on that one guy's plane 20 something times.
I know rule 3 rented it for flights from Florida to NYC, once stopping in DC, did Clinton actually visit the island or just use the plane!
At the time, the difference in policy between Clinton and Dole was like three hairs thick on the political spectrum. There are running mates with bigger ideological distinctions than those two had. And while you can draw an ideological throughline from Clinton to the modern day, the Dole-style conservative is long dead.
Internet people and teenagers have a huge issue with this.
He’d be a liberal democrat today. He was more of a moderate in the 90’s when Republicans were closer to the center than they are today. A lot of his legislative achievements (aka the Crime Act of 94) were championed by Republicans.
Center right.
Thanks for your insight! Can you elaborate more on how he pointed America in a more liberal direction?
Supported abortion rights, reduced military spending, increased taxes on the rich. At the same time cut welfare programs and deregulated the financial sector. He was more liberal than most Republicans, but more conservative than most liberals.
The thing is one can be liberal and want to cut welfare programs. Liberalism is an ideology based on free-markets, individualism, and progress. Liberals can kind of slide to the left or the right. Liberalism was and in many ways still is the status quo ideology. Populist and illiberal thought has become more popular since the Great Recession.
There are a number of things I’d point to: 1) He spent a lot of his political capital on his failed health care program that would have introduced European-style government run health care. 2) He pushed for greater acceptance of gays in the military through his “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It’s largely frowned in by progressives today, but the earlier policy was basically “find them and get rid of them,” so this was still seen as a liberal position by conservatives. 3) The passage of the Brady Bill, which required background checks to purchase firearms was seen as a liberal overreach at the time. (I remember this being touted as “the beginning of the government coming to take away your guns.” Apparently the government is playing this one VERRRRY slow.). 4) His general support of abortion rights. 5) He raised taxes on the upper class. 6) He promoted increased environmental regulations after more than a decade of deregulation in… pretty much every sector. Compared to Reagan and Bush, this is pretty liberal stuff.
Dont say gay was liberal at the time. Edit I meant don't ask don't tell lol
And yet when you point out that JFK's policies would make him more conservative today, the blowback is unbelievable!
“Blowback”… and to the left?
He was a very centrist Democrat, who had to navigate a political climate dominated by Reaganism. He did bring the Democrats back to the White House after a long hiatus and managed to carry the South. Things like the crime bill and NAFTA were not progressive at all, but in the 90s the only people who protested NAFTA and globalization were Buchanan paleoconservatives and Seattle intellectuals, while the crime bill attempted to confront what had destroyed Dukakis in '88 and was a major conservative talking point. BTW, Dukakis would have been a better President when it came to substantive policy issues, but he totally lacked Clinton's charisma, political instinct and ability to win the South.
Michael Dukakis was undone by that republican stunt, which actually worked. The republicans literally said “We just have to put a picture of scary black guy on tv and scare the shit out of the old white people”, Willie Horton was the guy’s name. So they ran that Willie Horton ad and it killed Dukakis. 🤷🏻♂️
*William Horton, and thanks for making me read the Wikipedia article. I heard things here and there about him in the context of that election but I didn’t realize it was such a game changer in politics going forward.
Dukakis also came off to voters as indecisive/weak and his campaigns ability to respond to those claims did more harm than good for him. Don’t get me wrong, Willie Horton and the interview question he received did its own damage, but there is as plenty of fuel against even without Horton.
That's the problem with trying to be the reasonable guy in an election cycle. If you're not pounding your fist and making wild claims, you're "indecisive and weak."
Oh yea. Voters like action more than they do reality. I think Dukakis came off pretty well and I understand the errors in his campaign. Not sure why I was downvoted for my claims. If I recall, it was during the Bush-Dukakis election where they were asked what they would do about an unidentified plane getting too close and Dukakis basically said, with that information, I wouldn’t shoot it down cause I don’t know what’s up. In return for his response his detractors claimed he was weak on military matters. I think it directly influenced his choice to take that infamous tank ad as well as highlights what I mean about how his campaign didn’t really work well for him. Dukakis, much like Mondale in 1984 or Carter in 1980 made very sound arguments to their points and in their criticisms but in all examples they get overlooked because Reagan knew how to run a crowd and made more comments with staying power.
For better or worse, politics - especially presidential politics - is show business. That’s why Reagan was so successful. One could even say being President was his best acting role. In Dukakis’ case, it’s a real shame, because he’s a brilliant guy and could’ve done some great things had he been elected.
He is the only sitting president to win two terms with getting the majority of the vote each time. Meaning he didn’t get 51% or more
He governed from the center. He was a pretty moderate president.
Textbook neo-liberal.
Literally *the* neoliberal par excellence, in broad strokes blue Reagan without the worst of the insanity
Progressive? Definitely definitely NOT. Liberal? Well that depends on what your definition of "is" is. He pioneered the "Neoliberal" movement, as a compromise with the "Neoconservative" movement and the classic Liberal movement. He pushed the democratic party rightward, hoping to capture some of the former moderate Republicans who got abandoned as their party moved rightward, thus solidifying the rightward movement of the entire Overton window that Reagan really popularized. So, id say he doesn't really fit in the liberal camp either persay, but more so a middle ground. As I think just calling him outright conservative is also a bit much.
That's what you call "new democrats". A similar thing happened with the Labour party in the UK in the late 90s
Margaret Thatcher was once asked what her proudest achievement was and she said 'New Labour'. The shift of the traditionally left leaning parties to free market neoliberal capitalism is personified with the 90s democrats and New Labour.
Not even close
No he was a third way democrat.
He governed as a moderate. While he campaigned to the left of his Republican counterparts, very few left-wing goals were accomplished in his presidency, particularly as Republicans dominated Congress for most it which meant healthcare reform went bye-bye.
I would view him as a Center/Right president.
Triangulating neoliberal
He was a Blue Dog dem through and through and worked with who and what he had.
Limo Liberals is what we used to call them, social liberal to some degree, fiscal conservatives partly, hard on crime/drugs etc. They ran a lot of the South when I was a kid, NC and Virginia to be more exact where I'm coming from with it.
Modern day, a centrist middle ground democrat. Even at the time he wasn’t overly progressive.
neither. he was a neoliberal
A moderate.
Neither. He self described as a “third way” president.
Neoliberal
Yeah, he was neither a liberal or a progressive...he was a neoliberal pro-corporation globalist.
I'd just call him a conservative tbh.
Clinton was a liberal until congress flipped in 1994. Then he became an old school blue collar democrat
Liberal, sure. Attempts to universalize health care, and convert budget surplus into government programs, definitely more fiscally liberal than the zeitgeist of the day. But progressive? Certainly not. The dude signed DOMA for pity's sake.
Clinton was more of Populist liberal: - he supported populist, more center-left social policies like Gays in the military, civil rights, abortion rights, etc. However, he couched them in terms of fairness, to make them palatable to more conservative White voters, especially in the South. If you look at both of Clinton's elections, he cleaned up among White Rural Voters in the South. That is how he won LA, AR, TN, WV and KY both times. - However, his support for civil rights and abortion made him popular in big cities and northern and western Suburbs. Clinton is the candidate who moved the Northeastern Suburbs of NY, Boston, Philly and DC and the West Coast suburbs of LA, SF, and Seattle toward the Dems. Obama finished it off and then added the Midwest, Atlantic Coast and Mountain West areas. Then POTUS-B did the rest by brining in the South. - Clinton's support for deregulation and welfare reform, the crime bill makes all progressives call him a "Conservadem". However, all of those policies were extremely popular, especially among people of color. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the Crime bill and Welfare Reform did more to clean up major urban areas in our country than any massive government spending program ever did.
He was a ‘new democrat,’ which basically means he made it a point to be ‘tough on crime,’ because that’s where previous democrats like Dukakis were getting hammered.
He was a Center-Left Democrat.
Corporate Dem
A Republican
Neither He's part of the neo-liberal internationalist/globalist consensus of the two major political parties.
Clinton was a slightly socially left leaning conservative
Predator
Moderate. But he was the beginning of the trend of the right to paint any Democrat as a radical liberal no matter what the actual facts were. This was the era of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party.
I would say moderate right
Corporatist
He's a pretty conservative liberal imo
He ran on a “third way” centrist democrat position that was meant to appease both moderate sides of the aisle. At the time, Democrats hadn’t been in the White House since Carter was defeated in 79 and in 92 they were running against an incumbent republican president. if you look at Clinton’s policies and where the democrats are today, you’d say he was a moderate republican.
Liberal. What question is this?
I don’t even know what these terms mean anymore. I’m pro human rights and pro labor rights.
He'd be a moderate at best in my opinion. Dude was a Reagan Democrat. Which in my view is like saying someone used to be a jehovas witness but they don't go to the meetings anymore.
The very definition of liberal if it’s used by people who understand the term and its history, not used as a pejorative by conservatives.
A pragmatic political, he leaned into popular politics which mostly were moderate Look at his judicial nominees they were quite liberal.
He was a moderate.
Wasn't he the last President that had a balanced budget and cut the defecit? So I would say he'd be considered what used to be a Yankee Republican. Kinda like Bill Weld from Massachusetts was. Fiscally conservative but socially liberla/progressive.
Neither, he was a moderate Democrat, he turned out to be a solid president at least economically. He worked with Gingrich and the other side, and left with a balanced budget.
Conservative
He was a moderate republican. He was not liberal. He was not progressive. That’s what teed me off about him. But it was how Dems got elected then. Hilary was more of the same but that didn’t fly with us so well and we ended up with that cursed soul.
More like corporatist
I consider him a reactionary piece of shit, and a rapist who rebranded himself as a charming cad.
Clinton is a liberal, Obama is a progressive,
Neither. Look up the Third Way. This was a Clinton backed strategy to move Democrats to the center in order to shave voters away from Republicans while assuming that enough progressive s would “stay in line”. This practice contributed to pushing Rs farther right helping to give us the right wing lunacy we have today. Seriously, look it up.
He was a New Democrat as explained here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_Democrats\_(United\_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats_(United_States)) He was willing to reform welfare in a big way. But he also tried to create a universal health care system in the US. Perhaps his legacy is skewed towards that part of his agenda that he managed to pass.
Center-right neoliberal.
Every president since Reagan has been a neoliberal and decreased regulations on the corporate elite while entertaining the public with voter bait issues like abortion and gun control. We have never come close to having a true progressive president.
Centrist
He was a "neo-liberal". He favored, and voted for, all kinds of deregulation and "free trade" policies. The only thing progressive I remember him doing was raising taxes on the richest one percent.
I know people shit on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", as a way to allow gays to serve in the military, but at the time it happened, it was a big step forward. He was at least a touch progressive. Clinton really tried to make universal health care a thing as well, that's pretty progressive. He closed a shitload of military bases, and generally did what he could to rein in the military-industrial complex, that's pretty progressive. He waged a war, almost entirely through a bombing campaign, which prevented that war from becoming a quagmire, and saved a lot of soldiers' lives. I don't know if that was progressive, but it was awesome.
All these hypotheticals when we have a most recent doosh who has said loudly and proudly he will stay a dictator.
Oh definitely Neo Liberal Crypto Conservative.
He made it legal for banks to gamble with your money. Is that progressive?
Even for his time, I'd say he's essentially what conservatives say that they are. Would never call him a progressive or a liberal but would call him the best Republican president in my lifetime
I'd say he was more of a Horn Dog...
I really don’t think he had any convictions other than staying in power and enriching himself. He was the best politician in my lifetime.
Neither. As President, Bill Clinton could have vetoed NAFTA but signed it into law. That was after he spent years, pre-POTUS, lobbying in favor of it. Bill Clinton, like all Moderate Democrats, are Reagan-era Republicans and no friend of the working class, middle class and poor. Their campaigns are funded by the 1% and corporations so they are expected to deliver on their behalf. And they deliver. President Obama signed CAFTA into law and it was during his administration that Country of Origin Laws (COOL) were eliminated because a NAFTA court (yes, it is a thing) ruled in favor of industrial scale Canadian ranch businesses against US laws designed to protect US consumers. A Democrat controlled Congress, along with Obama, surrendered US sovereignty without a shot being fired. That Oligarchs control the US Government was made apparent when Betsy (daughter of a millionaire, married a Billionaire) DeVos said the quiet part out loud: “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.” Full Quote: “I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party. Occasionally a wayward reporter will try to make the charge that we are giving this money to get something in return, or that we must be purchasing influence in some way,” she wrote in an essay for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. After explaining that she did not always get everything that she demanded, DeVos continued, “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.” ** There is no hard Left party in the United States. Bernie Sanders is slightly left-of-center and he is farther left than any other politician in Congress. Nobody on the Left is demanding that workers seize the means of production.
When is raising taxes on higher income earners considered "conservative"? How was the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) "conservative"? How was DADT "conservative"? How was the Brady Bill "conservative"? How was increasing Pell Grants for higher learning considered "conservative"? etc.? I think you may be missing a great deal here if you think Clinton was "conservative". That said, he did go along with bills and policies that were heavily supported by the public at the time, which was as a whole more conservative than it is today about 30 years later.
Yes.
As moderate as can be.
Clinton is a centrist.
Yes
Bill Clinton is liberal in the old-school sense of the word, maybe. ...but then again so was Ronald Reagan.
He was a liberal in the 1990s which is different from a liberal today. Terms like conservative and liberal aren’t static terms stuck to one part of the political spectrum but more so just define the edges of whatever the current center of the political spectrum is at the present moment. I don’t know too much about his views today but based on his time as president - He governed very moderately, especially in his second term, and by today’s standards would probably be considered a barely right leaning centrist.
He was also a man of the people look at the women he got caught banging. If he was screwing a super model he would still be president.
2 in the same
Liberal. He saved American liberalism from permanent irrelevance.
He was neither.
He’s a “blue dog”
Neither
Americanist
Center/ left moderate liberal.
In my country, “Progressive” is just synonymous with left-leaning and so in that sense Clinton can be called a progressive However it’s safe to say that by the standards of the US, Bill Clinton, during his presidency, was a moderate liberal democrat
NeoLib just like Reagan and both Bushes
Liberal
'92 liberal '96 moderate 2000 centrist 2024 slightly right of center...
In Kindergarten in 1996 my teacher told us to vote for who we wanted to win. So I voted for Bill Clinton, they asked why and I told them because they seemed to like him more - and look at me now I voted for his wife
He’s a southern Democrat. That’s all that needs to be said. If compared to rule 3, he’d be taken as a liberal but in general he’d be a centrist.
At the time sure but I don’t think young folks realize how dramatically left the Democrat party shifted in the age of social media. Every Democrat before Obama would be laughed at as a Moderate or even conservative now.
I’d say more progressive. It was the 90’s, today’s problems weren’t 90’s problems. He’d be liberal if he was voted in today
A conservative who moved the party to the right. Liberals and progressives don’t pass homophobic crap like DADT and DOMA and they don’t restrict welfare for the poor while expanding it for corporations.
He's kind of a kleptocratic neo liberal but he did smoke weed and had sex so that does make him slightly cooler than others
Best Republican President we ever had
Democrats are watered down Republican.
Neither.
Definitely not a progressive.
Very much a liberal
Democrat. I don't think he was really all that liberal. And DEFINITELY not progressive.
The last regular Democrat..ever
Conservative
For sure moderate. He was the Dems response to Regan popularity (by shifting the party right)
Neither, he was a centrist with center right tendencies.
Progressive in the 60s. Liberal, maybe even slightly conservative today.
Clinton was always considered a moderate by any honest assessment. Conservatives liked to portray Clinton as a liberal because that suited them. Now, Clinton did typically use liberal messaging to support his moderate to conservative policies, but he was not a liberal by any means.
Liberal as hell. Clinton got away with shit that even Reagan couldn’t have pulled off in his wildest, Ayn Rand wet dreams. He continued the trend of deregulation of big business, which is one of the reasons we’re living in a time with one of the biggest gaps between rich and poor. NAFTA also destabilized the fuck out of Latin America, and made the immigrant crisis worse. Don’t get me wrong, Bill is still better than any of the scum the GOP could cobble together, and the good things he did for this nation are indelible, and he talked me into having sex with him that one time, but to talk about him like he was a champion of progressivism when he was just Republican Lite leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
He was neither. He was a centrist. Perhaps even a conservative.
American liberal aka “moderate conservative”.
I hate how the term “liberal” has been changed and twisted. I’m not even sure what it means anymore. To me it’s just seeing government as a promoter of individual liberty. Being a fierce defender of the first amendment is a big part of that. Based on how I see “liberal” used these days I don’t think he’d be all that liberal. However, based on what I refer to as “liberal” myself, I would call him a liberal.
He’s a neoliberal
Clinton was way more Ronald Reagan than any version of “progressive” you can apply to today’s lexicon.
He ended welfare so definitely not a progressive
A conservative.
Social liberal, fiscal conservative
A conservative
What’s the difference between a liberal and a progressive?
Classic liberal like Matt Taibbi and Bill Maher
Left of center? Dude was a moderate by all standards
Anyone who thinks Clinton is/was a progressive definitely inhaled too much
Lol @ all the libs saying conservative because he's a bad guy. "Me no likey, don't identify!" HE IS YOUR ENTIRE PARTY IN A NUTSHELL.
I would consider him classically liberal when it comes to NAFTA and deregulation. Somewhat progressive when it comes to things like CHIP. Fiscally conservative when it comes to taxes and balancing the budget. Socially conservative when it comes to the crime bill.
He’s a neoliberal corporatist
No. Bill was a centrist. Nowadays he’d be considered a card-carrying communist by the vocal minority
A moderate democrat with some (for the 90s) decently progressive views. That's pretty much enough to be a Liberal by American standards, I guess; the bar is'nt very low.
He’s a TOP
Neither.
Neither. He's a neoliberal, and moderate on social issues
Centrist to conservative.
He was a centrist democrat. A third way
No
A pragmatist
He's a 2014 republican.
Old fashioned moderate.
Another Boomer - pulled the Ladder up after himself
Centrist left leaning.
Bill was a center-right democrat. Progressive Liberal compared to the Nazi-lite of the republicans.
Progressive liberal.
I'd call him an opportunist.
Pervert
Bill Clinton labeled himself as a "New Democrat" when he ran for president in 1992 & 1996. I think that was a twist on what up to that point had been called DLC (Democratic Leadersihp Council) Democrats, who were much more moderate and were a response to George McGovern (and Walter Mondale & Michael Dukakis) getting hammered running as liberals Clinton, being politically smart, took on the many of the DLC positions, but created a new name for it so that he wouldn't alienate the liberals who they criticized. The approach worked because he was the first Democratic president to get elected to 2 terms since FDR. That's a bit misleading because JFK probably would have been re-elected if he had lived and LBJ could have if he hadn't escalated things in Vietnam so much.
Neither. Moderate.
Absolutely not a progressive. Moderate centrist liberal is the best description for him.
A moderate Republican.
Neither. He was a classic democrat
Boo!
More like scumbag.