I found an article in the International Socialist Review ("Journal of Revolutionary Marxism") that does a pretty good job of showing how Clinton was the Republicans' Trojan Horse. There's a compelling historical parallel here: Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy and Reagan-Bush-Clinton-W. Roosevelt and Reagan were idealistic populists who hauled us out of a depression by drastic new economic innovations and war; Truman and Bush were vice-presidents running on the reputation of popular presidents, shrewdly consolidating their gains but losing office to the opposition party; Eisenhower and Clinton came from the party opposed to the general drift of the times, were popular and successful by being very "moderate" and thus reconciling their parties to the changes the other party had pioneered, and presided over a prosperous, peaceful, and complacent age; and with Kennedy and Bush, the dominant party reclaimed the White House and pushed their program forward on the wings of triumphalist rhetoric.

The ISR thinks "welfare reform" and "economic globalism" and the rest are retrograde. But this shows a critical weakness of the left. The left has long believed in the progress myth ("every day in every way things are getting better",) and been cocksure that they are the vanguard of all that is "progressive." But the liberals have been on the outs for twenty-four years now, in the US. "Progress" is marching on, but it is leaving the left behind. It is the conservatives who take pride in the present and look with hope to the future now, while the left wants to turn the clock back. How much cognitive dissonance can these people take?