Have the Democrats Really Changed?

Published May 31, 2012 6:24pm ET



The Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore offers a typically dyspeptic response to my piece about Clintonism in the Democratic party.

Suffice it to say all this revisionist history revolving around Clinton has the transparent purporse [sic] of projecting the Republican Party’s steady drift (and then, more recently, violent lurch) to the right in recent years onto the opposition party. It helps that the Democratic Party is sufficiently diverse to support all sorts of interpretations of what it means to be a Democrat. But at bottom, the Donkey Party hasn’t much changed recently, with the important exception of its growing acceptance of LGBT rights. The Obama administration, stuffed with Clintonites, is championing the tax rates, the approach to health care and the environment, the fiscal and monetary policies (including a cautious openness to big changes in Medicare), and the international policies, of the more conservative elements of the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton seems to “get” this. It’s about time Republicans stopped presuming to speak for him and his legacy. 

Put aside Kilgore’s armchair psychoanalysis, and his suggestion that the only person who has a right to interpret the Clinton years is Clinton himself (!). Let’s get down to brass tacks: has the Democratic party changed much recently?

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