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[Boney]

Democracy Now! posted this as part of their election coverage and somehow it feels eerily familiar.

We dip into the Democracy Now! archive to revisit Election Day 2000, when Bill Clinton was calling radio stations to get out the vote for Hillary for Senate and Al Gore for president. He did not expect to spend 30 minutes defending his administration’s record on the death penalty, the Middle East and racial profiling, among other issues. But that is exactly what happened when he encountered Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. At one point in the interview, Clinton accuses Goodman of being "hostile and combative." The next day, the president’s aides threatened to ban Amy from the White House

Here's Washington Posts report from the interview

The Washington Post later wrote of the encounter, "For Clinton it was supposed to be two minutes of get-out-the vote happy talk with a progressive radio show and then: Gotta go." Well, the story continued, "In this insider media age when oh-so-serious reporters measure status by access to the powerful, Goodman is the journalist as uninvited guest," wrote Michael Powell. "You might think of the impolite question; she asks it." And it went on from there.

It's also fully transcripted. Here's some excerpts

AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling radio stations to tell people to get out and vote. What do you say to people who feel that the two parties are bought by corporations and that they are—at this point feel that their vote doesn’t make a difference?

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: There’s not a shred of evidence to support that. That’s what I would say. It’s true that both parties have wealthy supporters. But let me offer you—let me just give you the differences. Let’s look at economic policy. First of all, if you look at the last eight years, look where America was eight years ago, and look where it is today. We have the strongest economy in history. And for the first time in 30 years, the incomes of average people and lower-income working people have gone up 15 percent after inflation. The lowest minority unemployment ever recorded, the highest minority home ownership, the highest minority business ownership in history—that’s our record.

AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, U.N. figures show that up to 5,000 children a month die in Iraq because of the sanctions against Iraq.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: That’s not true. That’s not true. And that’s not what they show. Let me just tell you something. Before the sanctions, the year before the Gulf War—you said this—how much money did Iraq earn from oil? Answer: $16 billion. How much money did Iraq earn last year from oil? How much money did they get, cash on the barrel head, to Saddam Hussein? Answer: $19 billion, that he can use exclusively for food, for medicine, to develop his country. He’s got more money now, $3 billion a year more, than he had nine years ago. If any child is without food or medicine or a roof over his or her head in Iraq, it’s because he is claiming the sanctions are doing it and sticking it to his own children.

AMY GOODMAN: The past two U.N. heads of the program in Iraq have quit, calling the U.S. policy—U.S.-U.N. policy "genocidal." What is your response to that?

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: They’re wrong. They think that we should reward—Saddam Hussein says, "I’m going to starve my kids unless you let me buy nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons. If you let me do everything I want to do, so I can get in a position to kill and intimidate people again, then I’ll stop starving my kids." And so, we’re supposed to assume responsibility for his misconduct. That’s just not right.

AMY GOODMAN: Many people say that Ralph Nader is at the high percentage point he is in the polls because you’ve been responsible for taking the Democratic Party to the right. What do you say to listeners who are listening around the area right now—

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I’m glad you ask that. That’s the last question I’ve got time for. I’ll be happy to answer that.
What is the measure of taking the Democratic Party to the right? That we cut the welfare rolls in half? That poverty is at a 20-year low? That child poverty has been cut by a third in our administration? That the incomes of average Americans have gone up 15 percent after inflation? That poverty among seniors has gone below 10 percent for the first time in American history? That we have the lowest African-American, the lowest Latino unemployment rate in the history of the country? That we have a 500 percent increase in the number of minority kids taking advanced placement tests? That the schools in this country, that the test scores among—since we’ve required all the schools to have basic standards, test scores among African Americans and other minorities have gone up steadily? Now, what—

[...]

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Now, you just listen to me. You ask the questions, and I’m going to answer. You have asked questions in a hostile, combative and even disrespectful tone, but I—and you have never been able to combat the facts I have given you. Now, you listen to this.

Here's Amy on the push back from the interview and how the executive pardon of Peltier went.

Well, a day after that program, I got a call from the White House press office. A staffer let me know how furious they were with me for breaking the ground rules for the interview. "Ground rules?" I asked. "What ground rules? He called up to be interviewed. I interviewed him."

"He called to discuss getting out the vote," they said, "and you strayed from the topic. You also kept him on much longer than the two to three minutes that we had agreed to," she said.

"President Clinton is the most powerful person in the world," I said. "He can hang up if he wants to."

Well, the Clinton administration threatened to ban me from the White House and suggested to a Newsday reporter that they might punish me for my attitude by denying me access — not that I had any to lose. The White House spokesperson said, "Any good reporter understands if you violate the ground rules in an interview, that it’s going to be taken into account the next time you are seeking an interview."

Well, first of all, we hadn’t agreed to any ground rules. Clinton called us. Second, we wouldn’t have agreed to any. The only ground rule for good reporting I know is that you don’t trade your principles for access. We call it the "access of evil."

Oh, and this update: Leonard Peltier remains in jail. President Clinton didn’t pardon him. Instead, Clinton granted a pardon to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who had been living in Switzerland since a 1983 indictment on charges of wire fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and trading with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, was a major donor to the campaigns of both the president and his wife, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Listen to Bill Clinton lose his cool here

 

[Duane Cunningham]

Oy. Eerily familiar indeed. I love Amy Goodman, but it's hard to get behind going after Clinton in 2000 this morning. The last shitty president who narrowly beat the Democrats wrecked the economy, deregulated everything and declared two simultaneous decade plus wars. Liberals let perfect be the enemy of good in that election, and Dubs snuck in by the narrowest possible margin.

And yet W seems so much less scary today than what has now happened.

 

[Boney]

The bigger problem is that the ramifications of the democratic party going centrist and abandoning the blue collar worker in favor of the growing minority population have completely returned and hit them right in the face.

Despite the numerous good programs employed in the Clinton era, it's why the democratic party hasn't been able to appeal to the overall base. It took Obama, probably the most brilliant public speaker in modern history to galvinize people in 2008 just for it to fizzle out in the later years,

 

[Kin5290]

The bigger problem is that the ramifications of the democratic party going centrist and abandoning the blue collar worker in favor of the growing minority population have completely returned and hit them right in the face.

Despite the numerous good programs employed in the Clinton era, it's why the democratic party hasn't been able to appeal to the overall base. It took Obama, probably the most brilliant public speaker in modern history to galvinize people in 2008 just for it to fizzle out in the later years,

You're kidding yourself if you think that appealing to minorities is somehow more "centrist" than appealing to white blue collar workers.

 

[Boney]

You're kidding yourself if you think that appealing to minorities is somehow more "centrist" than appealing to white blue collar workers.

Being centrist isn't about appealing to certain demographics. Trade agreements aren't directly benefiting minorities. Social welfare programs do and they've done a good job with that, but haven't been able to communicate how it also benefits manufacturing america.

 

[Kthulhu]

Being centrist isn't about appealing to certain demographics. Trade agreements aren't directly benefiting minorities. Social welfare programs do and they've done a good job with that, but haven't been able to communicate how it also benefits manufacturing america.

Yup. The DNC completely ignored the rust belt and this is what happened.

I hope that this is the wake up call they needed.

 

[EnlightenedMint]

Goodman is one the best, going to watch this later.

 

[BeforeU]

lol wow