it was a grinding victory, dispiriting for the country and of little but defensive value to progressivism...

It can indeed be argued that Penn's smallball approach was the most viable strategy for 1996. The problem was, Clinton never really moved beyond that during his second term, when the pressure was off him electorally.

He had plenty of opportunity during his second term (1998 excepted, of course) to use his bully pulpit to make a powerful argument that left-of-center values were fundamentally the right ones for America. Instead, he and the Democrats seemed to be in a never-ending slow retreat, trying not to yield too much ground to Gingrich's army at any one time, but never developing an ideological counteroffensive.

This is, and has always been, my main beef against Bill Clinton's Presidency. I can't blame him for not seeing that the era of Congressional bipartisanship was over until it was too late to save universal health care. And the circumstances of 1995-96 argued for playing intelligent defense.

But once the initiative had slipped through Gingrich's fingers, and the Presidency was safe for another four years, it was time to redefine liberalism, or progressivism, or some sort of left-of-center-ism, for a new day.

Instead, we got 'wins' that were things like keeping the estate tax from being repealed. Argh.

I often suspect that this sort of "Penn-think" is behind reports that HRC says (and believes) privately that Obama can't win. I actually think she's being sincere, because she really does view the world through the 1990s lens: i.e. the country is basically conservative, so the only way to win is to shave off tiny slivers of middle America. No amount of data will convince her otherwise. In a way it reminds me of Mickey Kaus, fretting that Obama can't possibly win unless he talks tough on welfare reform and a whole bunch of other issues that people stopped caring about ten years ago. Ultimately, they may be right, but I think there's a powerful case to the contrary.

What Kevin says is right on target, IMHO. Working from there, it's always seemed to me that the smallball approach is based on a belief that the Dems need to fool people into voting for them, by getting voters to buy into school uniforms or some such, even though they don't agree with you on fundamentals.

That may work for an election or two. But in the long run, you're going to have to persuade people on the fundamentals. And that means figuring out what your core beliefs are, and persuading voters of their rightness.

I think that's why Obama's been as successful as he's been: on his good days, that's exactly what he does. And whether Obama can or can't win in November, eventually our Presidents and Presidential candidates have to make the larger case for liberalism, regardless of what they call it.

There's something here that has bothered me about Clintons + Penn that Ezra has put his finger on by mentioning the strong economy of 1996. You know, putting both the merits of Penn aside (let's posit he's great) and my own advocacy for Obama aside, lots of counterfactuals would have resulted in a Clinton victory in 1997, and fetishizing Penn to this degree is an insult to Bill's own political skills and to the Democrats who supported him.

Hillary may not see it, but her attachment to Penn has slowly become a key argument against her. Not Penn himself; her attachment to him.

Typo on the year there.

the forecasting models showed him winning with a solid 53 percent of the vote... As it was, Clinton won by far less than 53 percent (though the question of how much he could have won by is complicated by Perot's involvement).

I'm afraid you're misreading that forecast data: Clinton was projected to win 53% of the two-party vote; he actually outperformed that prediction and won 54.7% of the two-party vote. The prediction model does not account for third parties; you'll note that the numbers for other years with major third party candidates are also different from the real popular vote percentages. This is all clear in Henry B's commentary that you posted yesterday.

"she really does view the world through the 1990s lens"

This is exactly right. Bill Clinton may have been referred to as "Elvis" by the Secret Service, but really he was more Sinatra; the coolest act, the biggest talent in town, for a couple of decades. Even hung with the president ...

All of which ended the day the Beatles showed up on Ed Sullivan. He was an instant anachronism, which of course meant he hated them.

Obama may or may not be the Beatles, but doing this in a powerful, grassroots-based style is the equivalent. I don't want to stretch the analogy too far, but a lot of the anti-Obama angst is boomer narcicism, watching it's best being passed by.

You are so right- god damn 1996, What a low point. We did so much better in 2000 and 2004. The country fucking elected George W Bush twice, and Reagan and Bush one for 12 years before that. Damn the Clintons for not making us a liberal utopia in the 90s. You people got in W with your stupid ass Nader fetish in 2000, and you in your stupid arrogance are the best thing John McCain has going for him.

I'd say it's precisely Clinton's failure to paint a larger vision of what liberalism (or center-leftism by whatever name) should be about, that led to our getting rolled in 2000 and 2004.

It was precisely because nobody had made it clear what the Dems stood for, exactly, that Ralph Nader was able to bamboozle people into believing that there really wasn't much difference between the two parties, which was why we lost in 2000. And if we win 2000, then Bush doesn't happen, 9/11 doesn't happen, and we find ourselves in a very different world.

I think too much has been made of Mark Penn all along, and letting him go is overdue. But really, blaming for 1996 and the low turnout and lack of youthful energy etc is a stretch - once the Republicans nominated Bob Dole (again... Bob. Dole.), it was clear that we were in for a dreary affair which excited basically no one. Even Republicans knew Dole had little chance, and as the election season progressed, that chance slipped to about zip, Perot or no. That Penn may have counseled a "safe" approach is probably so... but honestly, who wouldn't have? I thnink Penn is a fine pollster and probably a fine analyst of data; I think he's less useful in the Chief Strategist role because he's not, apparently, a great spokesman. But Bill Clinton, in 96, didn't need that, at least not from Penn.

Hopefully Penn will never work on another big Dem race again but I doubt it.

Maybe you can ask Schmitt what would have happened if Gore won in 2000. (lock box, climate change, middle class tax cut and no 9/11 and Iraq War look pretty great now) and what role the Bradley campaign played in weakening Gore.

I was a little young at the time -- not old enough to vote for the Big Man until 2000 -- but earnestly interested in politics anyway. Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don't remember ANYONE seriously thinking that Bob friggin' Dole of all people was going to beat Slick Willy. Maybe I didn't have enough liberal paranoia yet, but this whole argument seems a little irrelevent to me.

ERM, nobody sane though Bill Clinton could lose by the time 1996 actually rolled around. however, the Democratic party had at that point convinced itself it had a god given right to the congress, and they all went insane with fear when 1994 happened.

In retrospect, its fairly obvious Republican control of the congress was the result of partial realignment. They had won the south, but that victory had not yet cost them their seats in more moderate districts. At the time, I'm sure it looked like Armageddon. A lot of Democrats really are pansies.

what role the Bradley campaign played in weakening Gore.

Little if any of Bradley's critique of Gore was picked up by Bush, so I don't think Bradley can be described as weakening him for the election from that quarter. Some irreconcilable Bradley voters might have wound up voting Nader, so perhaps there was damage there.

Bush didn't pick up Bradley's critique the media did.
The 'invented the internet' answer was to a question about how Gore had distinguished himself in the Senate compared to Mr. Tax Reform. No Bradley vanity run and Al Gore is president right now.