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As the campaign drew to a close, I made several...
5:38 AM, Tuesday, March 9, 2010
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As the campaign drew to a close, I made several stops in California, New York, Florida, and Maryland and went with Hillary to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to see John Glenn blast into space; the Republican National Committee began a series of television ads attacking me; Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ruled that there was probable cause to believe that Starrs office had violated the law against grand jury leaks twenty-four times; and news reports indicated that, according to DNA tests, Thomas Jefferson had fathered several children with his slave Sally Hemings
On November 3, despite the huge Republican financial advantage, the attacks on me, and the pundits predictions of the Democrats demise, the elections went our wayInstead of the predicted loss of four to six Senate seats, there was no changeMy friend John Breaux, who had helped me restore the New Democrat image of the administration after the 94 election and was a staunch foe of impeachment, was overwhelmingly reelected in LouisianaIn the House of Representatives, the Democrats actually won back five seats, the first time the Presidents party had done so in the sixth year of a presidency since 1822
The election had presented a simple choice: the Democrats wanted to save Social Security first, hire 100,000 teachers, modernize schools, raise the minimum wage, and pass the Patients Bill of RightsThe Republicans were against all thatBy and large they ran a single-issue campaign, on impeachment, although in some states they also ran anti-gay ads, essentially saying that if the Democrats won Congress, we would force every state to recognize gay marriagesIn states like Washington and Arkansas, the message was reinforced by pictures of a gay cartier pasha crono couple kissing or at a church altarNot long before the election, Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, was beaten to death in Wyoming because of his ***ual orientationThe whole country was moved, especially after his parents bravely talked about it in publicI couldnt believe the Far Right would run the gay-bashing ads in the wake of Shepards death, but they always needed an enemyThe Republicans were also weakened because they were deeply divided over the late October budget agreement; the most conservative members thought they had given away the store and gotten nothing in return
In the months before the elections, I had decided that the sixth-year jinx was way overrated, that citizens historically had voted against the Presidents party in the sixth year because they thought that the presidency was winding down, that the energy and new ideas were running out, and that they might as well give the other side a chanceIn 1998, they saw me working on the Middle East and other foreign and domestic issues right up to the election, and they knew we had an agenda for the coming two yearsThe impeachment campaign galvanized the Democrats to vote in larger numbers than they had in 1994, and blocked any other message swing voters might have heard from the RepublicansBy contrast, the incumbent Republican governors who essentially ran on my platform of fiscal responsibility, welfare reform, commonsense crime-control measures, and strong support for education did very wellIn Texas, Governor George WBush, after handily defeating my old friend Garry Mauro, gave his victory speech in front of a banner that said Opportunity, Responsibility, two-thirds of my 1992 campaign slogan
Large turnouts of African-American voters mens cartier watch helped a young lawyer named John Edwards defeat North Carolina senator Lauch Faircloth, Judge Sentelles friend and one of my harshest critics, and in South Carolina, black voters propelled Senator Fritz Hollings to a come-from-behind victoryIn New York, Congressman Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of impeachment with a strong record on crime, easily defeated Senator Al DAmato, who had spent much of the last several years attacking Hillary and her staff in his committee hearingsIn California, Senator Barbara Boxer won reelection and Gray Davis was elected governor with far higher margins than their pre-election polls indicated, and the Democrats picked up two House seats on the anti-impeachment momentum and a large turnout of Hispanic and African-American voters
In the House elections, we won back the seat that Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky had lost in 1994 when our candidate, Joe Hoeffel, who had lost in 1996, ran again and opposed impeachmentIn Washington State, Jay Inslee, who had been defeated in 1994, won his seat backIn New Jersey, a physics professor named Rush Holt was behind by 20 percent ten days before the electionHe pushed one TV ad highlighting his opposition to impeachment, and won a seat no Democrat had held in a century
We all did our best to close the vast fund-raising gap and I taped telephone messages that were directed to the homes of Hispanics, blacks, and other likely Democratic votersAl Gore campaigned vigorously all over the country, and Hillary probably made more appearances than anybody elseWhen her foot became badly swollen during a campaign stop in New York, a blood clot was discovered behind her right knee and she was put on blood thinnersMariano wanted her to louis vuitton backpacks stay in bed for a week, but she kept going, giving confidence as well as support to our candidatesI was really concerned about her, but she was determined to push onAs angry as she was with me, she was even more upset about what Starr and the Republicans were trying to do
Surveys by James Carville and Stan Greenberg and by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman had indicated that, nationwide, voters were 20 percent more likely to vote for a Democrat who said that I should be censured by the Congress and that we should get on with the publics business than for a Republican who favored impeachmentAfter the results came in, Carville and others implored all the challengers with a chance to win to adopt this strategyIts power was evident even in races we lost narrowly that the Republicans should have won easilyFor example, in New Mexico, Democrat Phil Maloof, who had just lost a special election in June by six points and was down by ten a week before the November election, began anti-impeachment ads the weekend before the electionHe won on election day, but lost the election by one percent because a third of the voters had cast early ballots before they heard his messageI believe the Democrats would have won the House if more of our challengers had run on our positive program and against impeachmentMany of them didnt do so because they were afraid; they simply couldnt believe the plain evidence in the face of the massively negative coverage I had received, and the near-universal view of the pundits that what Starr and Henry Hyde were doing would be bad for Democrats rather than Republicans
On the day after the election I called Newt Gingrich to talk about some business; when the conversation got omega speedmaster olympic special edition around to the election, he was very generous, saying that as a historian and the quarterback for the other team, he wanted to congratulate meHe hadnt believed we could do it, he said, and it was a truly historic achievementLater in November, Erskine Bowles called to tell me about a very different conversation he had had with GingrichNewt told Erskine that they were going to go forward with the impeachment despite the election results and the fact that many moderate Republicans didnt want to vote for itWhen Erskine asked Newt why they would proceed with impeachment instead of other possible remedies such as censure or reprimand, the Speaker replied, Because we can
The right-wing Republicans who controlled the House believed that they had now paid for impeachment so they should just go on and do it before the new Congress came inThey thought that by the next election there would be no more impeachment losses because the voters would have other things on their mindsNewt and Tom DeLay believed that they could bring most of the moderates into line through pressurefrom right-wing talk shows and activists in their districts; with threats to cut off campaign funds, or to come up with opponents in the Republican primary, or to take leadership positions away; or with offers of new leadership positions or other benefits
The right-wingers in the House caucus were seething over their defeatMany actually believed they had lost because they had given in to too many White House demands in the last two budget negotiationsIn fact, if they had run on the balanced budgets of 1997 and 1998, the Childrens Health Insurance Program, and the 100,000 teachers, they would have done well, just as the Republican governors pink gucci watch had
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