Clinton in the Park

I expected, having been delayed in writing about Bill Clinton’s rally in Reid Park for Pederson, to have found all the bloggy goodness already squeezed out of the event. But other than some brief mentions and a some quick notes on the action of the Bill/Janet/Jim show in Phoenix, I see nary a peep about the event. So I have a few thoughts about the event.

First, I was floored by the turnout. The organizers claimed 8K. I don’t think 8K would even fit on the DeMeester lawn, but it was certainly at least half of that and possibly more. Parking capacity at the park was red-lined and the place was packed, a sea of Democratic humanity. I was up by the stage, so I could look back at the mass of people behind me. When Gabby Giffords asked everyone to hold up their cell phones, it was a lovely and impressive site. When she asked everyone to dial three friends, I could well imagine the local cell towers melting into heaps of slag.

Janet, Jim, and Bill arrived by motorcade from their rally in Phoenix for Harry a little late. Janet was the first to speak. She was great at making the case for her re-election, though the matter is really moot with her 26 point lead. Arizona loves Janet. Simple as that.

Jim spoke next, and he completely changed the energy of the crowd from boisterous to pensive. I was really amazed that Jim decided to address an obviously partisan and wound-up audience with a message of bi-partisanship. He was very effective; much like your wise grandfather warning his grandkids about the way things really are. His low, steady voice, common sense, and self-deprecating good humor had the crowd really listening to him.

Jim pointed out that to win in statewide races in Arizona, Democrats have to reach across the aisle and welcome those Independents and traditional conservatives who share our values and goals in order to win races and govern. We don’t have the luxury of alienating and marginalizing those who don’t share all of our beliefs. You would never hear such an admonishment to a partisan audience at a GOP rally: never. They are now all about how to pursue a Leninist exercise of party control by dominating a bare majority of a bare majority of a bare majority of a barely majority party. To regain power, Jim tells us we have to open our tent, not systematically kick people out.

Unsurprisingly, Clinton echoed this theme, but did it in a rousing and rhetorically satisfying manner that left the crowd completely satisfied. That man is the FDR of our age; he’s going to hold together a center-left coalition as long as he draws breath, simply by the brute fact of his existence. And some help from an incredibly inept and unwise GOP leadership who is chasing the middle class right out of the tent, of course.

Clinton built on Jim’s lecture by premising his oration on the premise that Democrats are the party of America. He made three simple assertions: Americans are a practical, progressive people, and not rigidly ideological; Democrats are the party of common sense and facing reality, while the GOP has become inept, corrupt, and in denial about reality (and reality keeps winning, nonetheless); and that the Democratic party has become, by default, both the progressive party, and the party of traditional conservatism.

He argued that the only valid way to judge an office-holder’s job performance was simply by whether people are better off after a term than at the beginning of it. By any such reasonable measure, the Bush Administration and the GOP’s control of Congress have been a massive and undeniable failure for Americans. Their rejection of reality has led them to argue that deficits don’t matter, that Iraq would be an cake walk, and that trickle-down economics would make life better for everyone. Reality won, and we got trillions in deficits that our children will have to pay, an impossible guerrilla war with no end in sight (they say we’re cut-and-run, but we’re really just stop-and-think, quipped Clinton), and a jobless, wageless recovery that has boosted corporate earnings while leaving workers in misery.

Clinton argued that the GOP has become addicted to using fear to motivate and control voters. He encouraged us not be like Pavlov’s dog. He floored the crowd by poking fun at their strategy of fear, saying: They want you to believe that Democrats are going to tax you into the poorhouse, and on the way there, you’ll meet a terrorist on every corner, and when you turn to run away, you’ll trip over an immigrant.

But throughout the ridicule of the GOP, Clinton emphasized that the Democratic Party is now the home of all those Independents who want common-sense, non-ideological solutions, and those traditional conservatives who have been abandoned by the Republican party. Democrats stand for such conservative bedrock issues like balanced budgets, realistic military policy, and the rule of law, and the GOP no longer does.

Bill concluded by encouraging all of us to find those voters who have the ‘diving board problem’. They’ve never voted for Democrats before, and like a novice swimmer on the high dive, taking that plunge is proving difficult (especially when the GOP is standing pool-side and trying to scare the crap out of them). We need to take the hands of these Independent and traditionally conservative voters and leap into the future.

Save the slightly incongruous liberal Raul (who none-the-less strongly supports Gabby), Janet, Jim, Gabby, and Bill standing on that stage together, advocating opening the Democratic tent to traditional conservatives represented very clearly the triumph of centrist politics in the Arizona Democratic party. And it appears to be working.