My instinct would be to compare the employment stats.

Median income adjusted for inflation etc.

Given the differences in stats that existed between the late 80s and the bulk of the 1990s I'd be inclined to dispute the quoted assertion.

Ironic that the Obamans are doing the exact same thing they always accuse Hillary of doing.

I also concluded that doing so would result in a Kamikaze situation where 8 good years of economy would be erased from our collective party stump speech.

Obama has Carter's legacy to run on...oops no he doesn't (and who would want it?)....well he's got LBJs great society...ah no not now, what about JFK?  

Missile crisis and bay of Pigs, the start of Vietnam and McNamara's genius?

He can't pretend to be Truman (nagasaki and Hiroshima--without batting an eyelid G*dD*mn AmeriKKKA!

And he's dissed FDR's New Deal enough times that he can't invoke the greatest ever Dem. He's got, he's got GHW Bush and Reagan.  

By continuing to lump Bill Clinton's presidency in with that of Bush, Obama is running away from the positives he ought to be embracing - positives that could actually help get a Democrat elected.

But he's more worried that praising the Clinton years would be seen as boosting the fortunes of his Democratic opponent, and once again shows the short-sightedness of his campaign.  For sure, if he is the candidate, Obama's refusal to embrace the policies of the Clinton years that most definitely benefited a lot of people is going to boomerang back at him from the McCain campaign, and it will stick.

What it is, is simple elitism:

The "creative class" types would rather lose than be directly accountable to the great unwashed masses, who are supposed to blindly vote for the all-knowing upper-crust Brahmin and profit indirectly from noblesse oblige.

But what I would really like to understand is:  Why should there be SUCH HATRED for the Clintons?  Can someone please list their "sins" that warrant this hatred?  And please exclude Lewinsky because that had nothing to do with the policies during the 8 years of the adm. and Hillary certainly was not involved.

We can put a stop to the FL - MI problem. Take the pledge:

"If MI and FL are not brought into the national picture immediately and their votes counted, and if Obama is the Democratic nominee, I will not vote for president in November.  If MI and FL are returned to the national picture immediately and their votes counted, then I will vote for the Democratic nominee whomever it is".

2) Ayers might have been right to use violence.
By a funny coincidence, he is giving a lecture on Ayers today, but he didn't know of Obama's connection.

Here's a good one..... Bill's more upset that people feel able to finally say, "you know what, I lived through the Clinton years and I didn't benefit at all", because there are in fact more of us who can say that than there are the opposite..blah, blah..
but really, nobody is making the allegations Bill is all upset about..blah, blah..Obama is right, and Clinton can't face it...blah, blah..he's damn lucky in a way that he was succeeded by Bush to make him look good by comparison.

BTW, I won't go to that place to read the entire thing either.

Because there are no facts, there is no truth, Just data to be manipulated

There's another bad sign as well. Among the online progressive groundswell for Obama there seems to be a growing clamor for sharply narrowing what it means to be a Democrat. The dominant theme seems to be some version of "Obama's Democratic opponents can longer be called Democrats - because they oppose Obama." Clinton, in particular, comes in for this party-scrubbing routine. Here's Markos Moulitsas, capo di tutti capi of all things blogworthy on the left, after last night's dilly in Philly:

In one of the threads last night, commenter theran made a good observation: At some point the concept of "Republicans will do X" has turned into a license for Hillary to do all the same things. It's bizarre, but I don't really consider her a Dem any more. Yup.

What else can he do and win?

Bill is that good... if you can't get his support you have to do what Obama is doing.

It's a contest of character and the polls indicate Hillary is loosing that contest and so is Bill.

I'm sorry about your view of the damage to the party but the game is a full contact sport.

Obama doesn't use most of the Clinton era the way the Repugs will... and that's a fact.

I want those Dem Party years back!

I'm resolved to the fact that Sen Obama will be the nominee. (Not to my liking) And if the Dem Party loses the GE, I am going to revolt! As we all should.

I think they find perfectly acceptable not winning in November: in addition to beating the a Clinton, it also gives them 4 more years of republican rule to rail at.

But by its very definition, a movement excludes those who are not a part of it.  It invites in some people* the you're either "with us or against us" mentality because that's how you hold a movement together.  Which Kos and other bloggers are smart enough to pick up on and use.

What's happening on the blogs is that they are run by people who want to be players in the democratic party, just as Obama wants to become the head of the democratic party.  Kos wants to be the new DLC, maybe not in terms of mirroring their policies, but in terms of their influence.  He wants YearlyKos to be the new Renaissance Weekend.  His success depends on Obama's success.  Having backed the movement, Kos and the other blogger boys now need it to succeed.  Otherwise their standing in the democratic party will be hurt.  Any attack on Obama, is an attack on them and, from their perspective, the party because they need Obama to be the party's future.

This is how we get to the new definition of the democratic party as being essentially the Obama movement and so, if you aren't part of the movement, you aren't part of the party.  If you aren't for him, you're against not only him, but all of the people depending on him to lead them to the promised land.

My husb and I were at a dinner party recently and he and another person there were discussing the Watergate era and getting into a bit of a mixup over it some of what went on. It was pretty entertaining. One of the other guests, who would have been somewhere between his late teens early twenties at the time said "Wow, you two really know your stuff."

The thing is, most of the stuff the debaters were talking about wasn't arcane, hard to dig up Watergate-geek information but stuff that was in the news back when news had, ya know, NEWS in it.

(Husb was a mere babe at the time, in the rattle and mashed carrots flinging sense, and maintains that he and Nixon were both sh!tting their pants at around the same time, though husb for more socially and age-appropriate reasons.)

And the guy who always gently reminds me at certain social events to count to 329347948729847 before lunge-ing at the jugular of, eg, a Smirk Administration admirer or blowhard neo-con, or at least wait until I hear the squeal of the getaway car out front, just blew a gasket.

How could this person be in the middle of such a historically defining time be so out of it? It's not like anyone could easily miss FRACKIN WATERGATE, &c. (After kicking his shins black and blue I had to pull out the emergency ball-gag.)

How could anyone even now, say, above adolescence, be so unaware of immediate events that impact directly on their lives, or not know, from school about recent presidencies?

I'm practically an idiot and by the time I was in middle school, watched the nightly news, read the newspaper at least a couple of times a week and ALWAYS read the fat weekend papers. I also had the benefit of learning what went on in domestic and world affairs from school.

It's not that the kids are dumber; I know a lot of smart, quick, sharp kids who are well informed in certain areas, but only a few who have a broad interest in current events outside entertainment industry dreck, trends and, um, more entertainment industry dreck.

Dean: vote their conscience, that is what they are called upon to do.

Dean: McCain in the low 40s, our candidates with spirited debate in the 40s.  McCain is Bush, polls mean nothing about Nov.  We will see what the polls say when we have our nominee.

Wolf: Clinton ttacking Obama, (oops, he pulls up) chipping away at each other?

Dean: you worry about that some, focus on Iraq economy, media is part of that (attacking), American people will not want Bush, millionaires (oops, isn't he?), gazillionaires, health care McCain does not support, McCain a step backwards.

I really do not recall any Marxist society that helped anyone but a select few.  I am sorry, I just do not agree with your arguments.  

I have also noted that this extreme left shift is fueling the undercurrent of exchanges.  Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  I think we need to discuss these ideas that are paraded as change which is circulating in certain circles.