Kos: Hillary's Legacy from Bill

Markos Moulitsas has an oped piece in the Sunday Washington Post that reminds us how the Clinton legacy harmed the Democratic Party. (And, no. It wasn't the impeachment or even the blow job).

Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.

He goes on to assert that Clinton's legacy to the party is, "the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.'

Hillary has shown a strong penchant for the calculated triangulation of policy and the netroots blogosphere is not buying it. I'm not buying it. For me, the quintessence of the Hillary dance was her co-sponsorship of an anti-flag-burning bill by Bob Bennett (R-Utah). Note, not an amendment (too far to the right), but a statute (ah, just right). Not even banning all flag burning, but only burning intending to "intimidate any person or group of persons."

Even if Hillary is embraced by the Democratic establishment, she'll have high resistence from the base. Her claim to the 2008 nomination is far from assured.