Yesterday, Digby wrote about Matthew Dowd as an example of someone who had disappeared his own Bushian past, and was now sternly warning against Obama getting too carried away, and governing too far left, like Clinton did when he took office. She quotes Dowd:
I think everybody, including Bill Clinton himself, said that the mistake he made when he first took office was that he governed way too far to the left when he started and that after the Republicans took the house in 1994 he moved more to a centrist policy. that's when his numbers went way up, that's when he preserved his reelection. And if Barack Obama starts the same way Bill Clinton does that is a huge problem, I think.
It's good for the Republican party if he does that. But I think Barack Obama is going to have to govern to the center which is where the majority of the country is.
The history of 1992 contains a clear warning that a centre-left coalition can fall apart quickly if the policies are seen as too far left. In 1993, Mr Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, adopted the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, proposed and lost universal healthcare and adopted gun safety measures, banning assault rifles. (emphasis added)
This narrative is utterly and totally false. And that's completely apart from the fact that 2008 is nothing like 1992. But the biggest lie involves how the false narrative about 1992-94 obscures the connection between then and now.
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