Volume 39, Number 20 · December 3, 1992
What Clinton Won
By Thomas Byrne Edsall
Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency was a calculated drive not only to win the White House but to restore the coalition that used to make up a Democratic majority, both in the country and in the Congress. Judged by this standard, it was a remarkable success, producing the first effective alliance of black and white voters in favor of the Democrats since the height of the civil rights revolution in the mid-1960s. Of all the Democratic candidates since Franklin Roosevelt, only Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, had a bigger margin of victory. With a ruthlessness and determination largely unnoticed during the campaign, Clinton set out to rebuild the Democratic Party. By supporting capital punishment, making a point of repudiating the antiwhite comments of the rap singer Sister Souljah, and advocating limits on welfare, he was able to extend the base of the Democratic support among previously hostile voters; yet he did not estrange either black voters or liberals who oppose the death penalty.
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