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Notes -
On one hand, there's a fun discussion about how this stuff does genuinely seem to ebb and flow, both at large scale and at small ones, such that people can point to different cruxes and changes and be genuinely correct.
On the other hand, there's a certain tendency for this to be... hard to discuss. It's easy to fall prey to a Great Man of History argument -- you yourself jump from "delegitimize and disenfranchise" in general to Clinton specifically -- in ways that obfuscate the comparisons you're making (eg, for gunnies, Clinton opened his Presidency with Ruby Ridge and the Waco Siege, then jumped over a controversial and painful assault weapons ban, all while ). That's true even where it limits your own political aisle! (eg, the early 90s gay politics were Not Great Bob)
On the gripping hand, it's worth discussing the extent political power has grown from this sort of delegitimization. In the Dubya and early Obama era, there were long and compelling arguments about the tradeoffs between helpful persuasion -- hoping for political change by providing the best arguments and understanding and respecting opponents -- against change as churn -- where political success comes from emphasis on recruiting incoming players while the opponents age out.
And the answer pretty resoundingly has become neither, to such a point that the question is an obvious Morton's Fork and false dilemma today: whether gay marriage, trans rights (from the right and left!), public education (ditto!), college debt, the Affordable Care Act, statues, public protests (ditto again!), it's not just possible but obvious that victory could and did come by persuading people not that your cause was correct, but that opposition or even caution to it was so evil that it could not be tolerated in even hushed whispers. Whatever concern backlash might once have had, it's wrapped up around situations like BLM or school vouchers where the 'backlash' to (sometimes literal) arson was at worst not maximizing territorial gains, or matters like the rise of Trump or Coates that justified only more and harder.
It's Dan Savage's world -- bullying kids as part of your anti-bullying campaign, smearing your opponent's name in literal shit, and all. We're just stuck living in it.
((On the other gripping hand... this is a post where it's really hard for me to resist pulling quotes from the past. Really, Clinton?))
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