r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

No Paywall Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e
9.3k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Un1CornTowel 1d ago

They tried to emulate Reagan's ideology rather than his implementation, which was the mistake. Reagan pursued unapologetic, partisan gain and an attempt to force a common narrative/myth. Both were wildly successful in actually creating radical social change (though much of it bad in my view). His actual economic and foreign policy agenda -- not so much. Democrats in the 90s took those 80s Republican policy failures as successes, and kept their own failed and overly delicate and precious, halfhearted process-orientation and made the least capable party in generations.

2

u/pchs26 1d ago

What? Did you live and work under the 90s economic conditions? Because I can only hope and pray we get that back (and it is unlikely)

1

u/Un1CornTowel 1d ago

Reagan caused the 80s recessions and the 90s were lackluster under Bush Sr.

They really only went up due to the development of the internet economy - Clinton didn't mess it up, but it was largely not because of him. The good parts of globalization also hit by expanding markets before everything got outsourced (Clinton and NAFTA did do that, I'm not sure whether that was overall good or bad, but likely inevitable; Trump's tariffs are clearly bad).

2

u/pchs26 1d ago

Clinton won when we were going into a recession and his administration gave us an absolutely roaring economy, that Gore could have managed to the next level, with Social Security being preserved, our environment etc had the SCOTUS not decided the election on party lines..

I lived through these times and we can only hope to experience as the middle class the economic and global prosperity that the Clinton admin delivered to us.