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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (13437)	11/6/1998 2:00:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Respond to of 67261

Looks like you consult the rear-view mirror to tell you where you are going... The Repubs didn't see the writing on the wall, nay, they didn't even see the wall, and walked right into it. Any more of such stupidity and they will have the roof crashing down on their nutty heads come the year 2000. Dipy.

To: Bill who wrote (13437)	11/7/1998 1:36:00 PM
From: Who, me?	Respond to of 67261

Bill, you are so correct. Seems that Paul Begala and the whole Clinton team are in denial too! The only one's feeling the pain are the House and Senate Dems, being in the minority for the third consecutive Congress! Democrats Far From Pre-Clinton Days An AP News Analysis By WALTER R. MEARS AP Special Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats, their leaders said, are back. But they're not back nearly to where they started before Bill Clinton became President Clinton. After six years and four elections, his party is weaker than he found it. The Democratic numbers in the House were nudged upward by five in Tuesday's off-year elections, upsetting history and the Republicans who had banked on gains. But overall, the Democratic trend has been decidedly down on Clinton's watch. Ironically, one of the best Democratic elections of his administration came as he faced his worst situation -- fallout from the Monica Lewinsky affair and upcoming impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. Clinton didn't acknowledge that, but cited history in calling the election result astonishing,since a president's party had not gained House seats in 64 years in a midterm election. That reversal did come under special circumstances: Democrats lost 52 seats and control of the House in the 1994 elections, won back only eight in 1996, and so were defending a smaller, safer base than in the average midterm voting. By the numbers, before Clinton was elected president in 1992, Democrats controlled the House with 266 seats. They will have 211 plus an independent ally in the new Congress. Down 55. In the Senate, they were in charge with 57 before losing control in 1994. The Democratic minority held at 45 this time. Down 12. There were 30 Democratic governors before Clinton's first election. Now there are going to be 17. Down 13. The pattern holds in state legislatures. Democrats will have full control in 21, down 9. A Clinton political aide calls it a logical fallacy to say it happened because of the president. Aide Paul Begala stresses that the Republicans' money advantage increased over that same span. Still, Democrats boasted that they edged to House gains and a Senate defense in this campaign despite what they said was a $150 million GOP advantage in campaign spending. Begala said Clinton helped rescue the party. ''We had lost five out of six presidential elections in the '70s and '80s,'' he said in an NBC interview. He said Clinton's new Democratic strategy worked and changed that. But not with coattails that helped the party down the ballot. Clinton came to the White House at a time of conservative resurgence, a Ronald Reagan mood after a George Bush pause. Clinton's New Democrat theme moved him toward the center, to the point that his 1996 GOP challenger accused him of plagiarizing Republican proposals. But he had interrupted that course in his first term, notably for the massive health care overhaul he tried to jam through a Democratic Congress that wouldn't even vote on it. That was the signal issue in the 1994 elections that produced the first Republican Congress in 40 years. At re-election risk, Clinton came back in 1996 -- partially at the expense of congressional Democrats protesting his campaign was soaking up money, leaving theirs short. This time, Clinton's campaign was a drive for Democratic dollars, 110 fund-raising events for the party's candidates. Before this week's election set his side back, House Speaker Newt Gingrich ventured his explanation of the downward Democratic trend under Clinton. ''I think only if you see his presidency as an ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the Democratic majority that Franklin Roosevelt created, you really appreciate the scale of what's happened,'' he said. ''I think a lot of it is policy, some of it is personal.'' This election may have delivered early signs that it will not be an ongoing slide. In the South, where Republicans had been gaining steadily, Democrats ousted governors in Alabama and South Carolina, took over a Senate seat in North Carolina and held one that had seemed at risk in South Carolina. The GOP push against an array of House Democrats was a flop. In California, a Democratic governor will oversee the redistricting of 52-plus House seats after the 2000 census. Still, nine of the big 10 states still have Republican governors. And it remains a Republican Congress. With 55 seats, Republicans held at their strongest Senate majority since 1931. For the Democrats, the midterm elections were a good defense, not yet a good offense. ''Democrats are back, back very strong,'' said Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, the party's general chairman. They can claim it, but they haven't proved it. newsday.com