I agree it's a terrible campaign strategy. Most Americans aren't partisans and aren't particularly concerned about the strength of the Republican or Democratic parties.

They're concerned about the defense of the country, the strength of the economy and their own health and well-being.

Bill Clinton is now remembered as having presided over a booming economy. He converted huge deficits into surpluses and helped create millions of new jobs. Those are selling points for the Democrats as a party. Anyone who tries to paint him as having failed as a president is making the point that the Democrats are no better than the Republicans.

Neither is the average Republican primary voter thinking about right wing institutions, except perhaps his or her evangelical church if he/she is of the evangelical right wing sort. But those institutions produce activists, writers, talking heads, pundits, etc. In the nineties I knew who Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, the Family Research Council, and others like them were. Who was there on the progressive side? The only porgressive/liberal "institution" I had any regular contact with throughout the nineties was The Nation, Harpers, and KPFK in Los Angeles.
As for what voters remember about the nineties, I don't believe anything but hard facts, i.e., some reliable survey.
Another way to look at your point about the Lewinsky scandal is that, yes, voters remember Clinton surviving it, and they remember they thought the impeachment was nonsense, but they also remember the Democratic party was too weak to nip it in the bud.

"Holding Hillary accountable for the mistakes of the nineties might rub Democratic primary voters the wrong way, because ten years later, what they most remember about that period is Monica. Monica, economic security, and peace."

I think primary voters remember a lot more than that. But that may be an adequate description of what general election voters remember. The bad thing about a Clinton II candidacy is that it doesn't thrill significant portions of the politically active base. For example, a big part of the whole draft Ralph Nader movement was disgust with Clintonism, not dislike of Al Gore per se.

Of course, everyone is just counting on disgust with Bush. It looks like we're in for another "anyone but Bush" campaign like 2004.

The other problem is that it's not enough to say the Clintons can't beat the Republicans, they have to convince Democrats they can do better. With their records, that's going to be difficult, IMO.

John Edwards wasn't nearly as hard on Cheney in his debates in 2004 as he has been on Hillary this year. And while I like a lot of his policies now, he wasn't exactly a firebrand in the Senate. Obama hasn't exactly been taking it to the Republicans either. I still remember him commenting very early in the fight over Iraq funding that in the end the Congress would give the President the bill he wanted because they needed to support the troops (or something like that). It's nice when a Democrat can not only cave before any real negotiation occurs, but use Republican talking points to do it.

I don't always agree with HRC, but I think she's much more sophisticated in her understanding about how the Republican smear campaign works. The MoveOn ad debacle is a prime example. Edwards (or his wife) almost immediately denounced the ad, Obama skipped the vote and issued a statement implying he was above it all (even though he had been there to vote for the Boxer bill), and HRC voted against the smackdown of MoveOn (but voted for the Boxer bill). Now by the Sunday talk shows, she was backpedaling a bit, but by that time, she was one of the few leading Dems left standing on the issue.

Similarly, the current attack on Clinton by Edwards and Obama re her honesty makes me wonder if they understand how the media and Republican smear cycles work. Every Democratic nominee in recent times, not just Bill Clinton, has been labelled a liar or a flip-flopper. So they go with that attack against the current frontrunner, cheered on by the media. I'm sure it polls very well given the twenty years the rightwing has spent pushing this line of attack against Dem frontrunners and nominees, but do they not understand that they're just doing the Republicans' dirty work for them and that, should either of them overtake HRC in the polls, they will be next and the story will be the same? Do they not see the biggest beneficiary from this line of attack - as opposed to policy-based attacks - is the GOP?

Edwards or Obama may be able to sell me on their policies, but they are going to have a very hard time selling me on the idea that they are better at fighting the GOP than Clinton. And that's what they'd have to do with this line of attack - show not just that she hasn't been successful, but that they'd be better.

BDB:
This is a snark free, genuine inquiry.
Can you give me an example, something concrete, of the Clintons beating the republicans politically? I know the government shutdown eventually polled in their favor, but that still didn't help the Democrats win back the Congress. So, any example besides that.
I'm open to believing Senator Clinton knows how to beat republicans, IF someone can give me evidence of it. I think it's significant that Senator Clinton has never faced a strong republican opponent.

I think you could take some shots at President Clinton for signing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. I'm pretty sure that is the act that gave us the term "regime change" as we now know it and it opened the Pandora's Box of the Bush Doctrine.

Regime change used 'Don't dare attack us or we'll change your regime' ala PM Tojo in WWII Japan. President Clinton's signing of that bill codified U.S. interference in other countries national affairs. Lieberman and McCain get most of the blame for being the architects of the Iraq Liberation Act but President Clinton is the one that signed it into law.

"Every Democratic nominee in recent times, not just Bill Clinton, has been labelled a liar or a flip-flopper.... I'm sure it polls very well given the twenty years the rightwing has spent pushing this line of attack against Dem frontrunners and nominees"

Have Republicans really been doing this for 20 years? I'm under the impression that they fixated on this post-Clinton. Because Bill Clinton *was* a flip-flopper. It was part of Clinton's whole MO, the "third way" emerged out of the "triangulation" strategy of Dick Morris. So, this criticism, *does play* with the disgusted Democratic base. Edwards/ Obama are still hoping they can actually win the primary.

But, like a lot of other things, Obama just can't pull this one off-- his whole "bipartisan" line just sounds like advanced triangulation. I actually do think that there is some point to bipartisanship but I don't see anything from Obama that supports him doing so and producing any kind of progressive policy. He's too bought out, and I think he likes it that way. (How many autobiographies does he have out there already?)

So, personally, I'd prefer someone who came out swinging a little more. If they can win the general election, I'm not so sure. But I'm also not sure that "anyone but Bush" really cuts it either.

Dave, I appreciate the inquiry. The Clintons didn't have that many victories against the Republicans, although I think I'd count the 1996 re-election in a very tough atmosphere (only some of it was self-inflicted) and the impeachment as the bigger ones, although there were other, smaller ones.

While there is no doubt Bill Clinton caused part of the impeachment problem, I think it's pretty clear that's where all the Whitewater and other investigations were headed from day one. Obviously the Lewinsky part of it was self-inflicted, but I think the fact he beat back the impeachment and that his administration is now seen favorably is the result of a lot of work by Hillary Clinton. From what I know, she's the one, along with Sidney Blumenthal, who began the pushback against Ken Starr, including seeking to discredit him and his office through press stories and otherwise. She's the one who worked to rally Dems in the 1998 election, which led to Democratic gains in the Congress and staved off impeachment.

Bill Clinton certainly helped the Republicans with his behavior, but I think too many people see impeachment as a personal fight of his and not what it really was - an attempt to dislodge a Democratic president and discredit the party. That this effort was unsuccessful is a good thing for Democrats and progressives, not just the Clintons. A large part of that victory, frankly, is Hillary Clinton's doing (she was reportedly one of the few to clearly see what impeachment was really about).

I also think it's unfair to blame the Clintons for all of the failures to beat the Republicans in the 1990s. The Republicans had plenty of help in Congress with the same lovely, spineless Democrats we see caving to George Bush today. These same folks - and others like them - were only too happy to join their colleagues across the aisle to demand more answers on Whitewater, side against Clinton on gays in the military and other early issues (i.e., nominations), and generally be unsupportive of the new President (who admittedly made his share of mistakes). It's easy to forget now, but in 1992, the Clintons were outsiders in the Democratic party and they paid a price for that with the media (the NYT's coverage of Whitewater was a travesty) and with other Democrats, who were often slow to defend them, not recognizing the damage wasn't just to the Clintons, but to the Democrats. But this is the party who still - even with all the progressive institutions built since then - made Peter Stark apologize on the floor over his innocuous remarks about Bush. The idea that they were some strong political machine in the 1990s, united and determined to beat down the rightwing only to be undermined by that damned triangulator Bill Clinton is, IMO, misremembering the 1990s. They should've been strong, but they weren't. And, of course, it's to Congressional Dems favor to blame the failures of the 1990s - the loss of the House in 1994, healthcare - on the Clintons since it erases their own contributions to those losses.

I also think it's wrong to discount the work the Clintons and their people have done to build progresive institutions since then. It would've been better if they'd done it in the 1990s, but at least they've done it and they deserve credit for it.

More recently, the Clinton people were behind the defeat of the initiative to split the California electoral votes. That initiative is back and we'll see what happens, but the NYT called the Clinton operation against the initial push "fierce" and said that HRC's people had totally outmaneuvered Guiliani's people (who were behind the initiative). When was the last time you heard a Democratic operation called "fierce"? And where were the Obama and Edwards people on an issue that could decide the 2008 election?

Also, just to be clear, I'm not sure Clinton will be able to beat the Republicans in policy fights or that she has some magic formaula to build a progressive majority. The Clintons' record against Republicans is mixed, at best. I think we need to be much more focused on Congress than the Presidency because that's where the potential for disaster in the next Democratic administration lies - with Congressional Dems scattering to show how bi-partisan and "reasonable" they are by siding with Republicans.

As for the Dem candidates, Clinton at least has a record of fighting Republicans. I'm not sure the same can be said of Edwards and Obama. If nothing else, both she and her husband were elected despite the right-wing smears. That's not nothing, ask Al Gore or John Kerry.

None of which means Edwards or Obama couldn't fight Republicans or won't, I'm just not sure attacking Clinton on this issue is going to get them very far since they themselves don't have very much to shout about in this area.

"The idea that they were some strong political machine in the 1990s, united and determined to beat down the rightwing only to be undermined by that damned triangulator Bill Clinton is, IMO, misremembering the 1990s. They should've been strong, but they weren't."

Yeah, you're right. We need to face it that most Democrats in Congress really just want to save their own individual butt, and really aren't all that opposed to Republican policies, especially if it means cozy business relationships and whatnot for themselves. Maybe it's a good thing that this is seeping out into the presidential campaigns so the public can more readily take a look at it.

In which case, no one is going to be fighting the Republicans, which is pretty much what we're seeing.

They won.