Politics before 2010

Allow me to explain one aspect of this. (As I understand it.)

Back in the 80s, and after the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who everyone loved as a guy but were not so complimentary of as a president, Ronald Reagan was so popular that the word "liberal" was toxic to a politician's career.

Carter was therefore a one-term president, and he was a Democrat, which is why being seen as "liberal" like Carter was the surest way to lose voters and Congressional seats.

Reagan made it "cool" to be a Republican again, after the abject failures and scandals of Nixon's presidency that caused him to resign and Gerald Ford to take up the Oval Office. People swung far left after the resignation/failure of Nixon's presidency, which is how Carter became president after Ford.

Because of Reagan's popularity and loosening of financial restrictions and lowering taxes for the wealthy, it created a LOT of powerful rich people who then further contributed to the party that set them up so nicely - they supported the GOP overwhelmingly.

During the 12 years that Republicans ran the USA after Carter (From 1980 - 1992) the left wing started to try to fight back and fix the taxes issue and some other business and financial loopholes. HOWEVER. Since this attacked the heart of the rich and powerful, their counterstrike was to try to murder the careers of everybody who claimed to be liberal and wanted to try to balance things out again between the businesses and the populace and the wealthy and the poor.

During this time, the first President Clinton ran as a Democratic governor of a Southern state. Now, before the era of Civil Rights, most of the south was "Democratic" and had been since oh, about the time of the Civil War (or, as they called it, the War of Northern Aggression - *snort*). This is why Lincoln, as a "Republican" was overwhelmingly supported by the NORTH, and his radical, "liberal" idea of abolishing the abomination of slavery was a "Republican achievement".

So during the Civil Rights era, Southern people were increasingly annoyed with Truman, who ordered the beginning of integrating the USA. Truman was a Democrat. But an "Old Democrat", not a "contemporary Democrat". Because Truman was doing all of this, which pissed off all the racist Southerners who had been "Old Democrats" for generations, the OTHER side, the conservatives on the Republican side, seized upon this anger and began pandering to their bigotry.

Eisenhower followed Truman, and though he also was in favour of integration (but possibly for different reasons than just moral high ground), he also spoke to a lot of issues that the conservatives of the day were in favour of. Nixon was his vice-president.

So here's the 90s, where it was seen that the last "effective" Democratic president was LB Johnson (after JFK was shot), from 63-69, since CARTER was seen as an ineffective president. So 30 years later, Clinton was able to run as and be seen as a "moderate" candidate. And part of the reason the first President Clinton won was that he was not "too liberal". He did everything in his power to be seen as NOT liberal, NOT too far left, yet DIFFERENT and PROGRESSIVE in a way that GHW Bush was not. Republicans voted for Clinton because he was "moderate".

The first President Clinton had to play the game, he had to do some things to keep Democrats happy and do some things to keep Republicans happy. Every time he tried to do something too "out there" he'd be yanked back up. This was when he and Hillary Clinton, as First Lady, was trying to get universal healthcare passed through Congress.

It was the 90s and the Clintons had to play the game, especially before the second election and getting him elected a second time. But the Republicans were so pissed off at Bill Clinton and how effective he was as President that they turned on him and used that stupid scandal crap to impeach him.

So, long story short (too late) - we are JUST NOW coming to the liberal revolution of the USA. The conservatives had theirs when they formed the Tea Party and those idiots began pushing ALL of the Republicans to the right. Moderate Republicans (like John McCain) were targeted every bit as much as liberals and Democrats.

So when you say Hillary Clinton is "flip-flopping" you have to put that into context. Until the Tea Party, the US Government may not have gotten along or agreed all the time, but at least they were able to WORK TOGETHER. And the way they worked together was supporting some things and opposing other issues of the opposite party, ON BOTH SIDES.

But this "fuck you" attitude is fairly new. Since 2010 elections, more or less. That's when the Conservatives and Tea Partiers took the stance that compromise was anathema and stark obstruction was the way to go.

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have both been in politics since far before this "new attitude". They HAD to be "moderate" and support some things they didn't ideologically agree with because that's how stuff GOT DONE in government before 2010.

It is ONLY NOW where people are fed up with the Republican obstructionism and the last recession from the Bush years which began in the Reagan years to say "fuck moderate - we need real liberal policies now because the Conservatives have fucked us over, and if they don't want to play nice, we don't want to either anymore".

And it is ONLY NOW that Democratic candidates, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Tea Partiers and Conservatives, are able to support the issues and policies they REALLY favour instead of fearing that skewing too liberal will kill their career and they'll be voted out by a mob of conservatives.

So Hillary Clinton has been liberal all along. She's just had to be in the closet about it, so to speak, if she wanted to be able to get into a Senate seat and get anything done. She saw in 2008 that Obama, pushing from her left, managed to out-liberal her in many ways, and she has changed strategies now. In some areas where Bernie is more conservative currently, Hillary is coming from his left because she CAN NOW. The rules have changed.

You can't do shite if you're out of the race. Hillary Clinton is an attorney, and she is a politician, and an extremely intelligent woman. She has been doing this shite for a long time. She has calculated exactly how far right or left she can reasonably go without being pulled all the way down and knocked out. Which is why she's still in the game.

But I hope you know WHY now, a little better, Hillary (and Bill too) has been forced to play the game as she has.