Word: democratizer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most historic thing that happened on Tuesday was not that a Democratic President was re-elected for the first time since 1936 or a Republican Congress for the first time since 1930. Nor was it that both things happened at the same time. In 220 years, no Democrat has been elected to the White House when the Congress was controlled by the opposition. We have never been here before, ever...
...promising to tinker at the margins--and won. And that show of modesty, however carefully staged, was enough to convince a majority of voters that maybe he could now even be trusted to do the big things. He passed the test. As a result, the first Democrat in two generations to win a second term may actually have earned the chance to make some history...
...Republicans' spin on the history question is that history is still on their side, and its unlikely messenger is Bill Clinton: he "stole" the election by campaigning as a Republican. But this is a tremendous exaggeration. Clinton did not campaign (or govern) as a McGovernite Democrat any more than Bob Dole campaigned as a Goldwaterite Republican. Both parties and both men have accommodated to history; neither can claim history's momentum. Dole, who voted against the creation of Medicare in 1965--a principled, conservative stance--spent the 1996 campaign passionately insisting that he wanted to "save" Medicare...
...found him somewhat withdrawn," recalls Schoen. "There was a sense that the air had been taken out of him." Clinton asked for Schoen's analysis of the situation. "I remember you from our Arkansas work," Schoen told him. "Our polling then showed you as a middle-of-the-road Democrat. Now you have to get back to the center." He wasn't saying anything the President didn't know. Since November, Morris had been whispering in Clinton's ear about "riding the wave" of the G.O.P. tsunami. Clinton started paddling that way with his middle-class Bill of Rights speech...
Frequently, where Democrats won, they succeeded by presenting themselves as politicians who had learned a lesson and were less ambitious to extend government than before 1994. In a North Carolina district adjoining Funderburk's, Democrat David Price won back the House seat he had lost in 1994 largely by making that pitch. Noting that so-called control of the House is a matter of a few votes, Price said, "both parties have now been burned by overreacting. People are hungry for more practical and less ideological leadership. What that should mean is that whatever party is in control will have...