You’d better sit down for this one….I found myself gaining a small amount of respect for former President Bill Clinton yesterday. If you didn’t see it, Clinton was campaigning on behalf of his wife in New York Thursday when a group of Black Lives Matter protesters started heckling him about signing criminal justice and welfare reform bills that they believe put too many African-Americans in prison and took too many Blacks off the dole.
Clinton proceeded to put the protesters in their place reminding them that in the 90’s urban areas were drugged-up killing fields and that Black poverty rates actually fell during his administration as welfare-to-work requirements went into effect. After seeing video of the nearly 15-minute exchange (which I’m sure horrified Hillary campaign handlers) I realized that Bill Clinton will probably be the last Democrat to expect some form of personal accountability and responsibility from Americans.
You never heard Clinton use President Obama’s favorite phrase “through no fault of their own” to create new groups of “victims”. He never proposed legalizing harmful drugs or practices just because “too many of a certain kind of people” were being imprisoned for repeatedly violating the existing laws. He certainly didn’t propose making things free just because enough people complained about having to pay for them.
The Democrats who have followed Bill Clinton are now returning those drug-pushers and violent offenders to the neighborhoods they used to terrorize. And some think just giving them free college tuition will make all of their problems go away (along with free treatment of their gunshot and stab wounds). All the while, entitlement and public assistance programs have been greatly expanded–putting more people under the control of the Government.
Yesterday’s nasty little exchange shows the ever-widening gap that exists within the Democratic party as the aging Baby Boomers are challenged by the Entitlement Generation for control. When the “establishment” Super-delegates provide Hillary Clinton with the nomination at the party convention this summer, there is no way that she gets the Bernie Sanders supporters behind her for the general election. She made the mistake of once demanding accountability and responsibility from people–and they now expect to do whatever they want without reproach or punishment–while someone else picks up the tab.
