The long, crooked path from triangulation to populist rage started in the ’90s—and it’s time we faced that.

So here we are.

The Trump years came in like a wrecking ball and left us choking on dust. And now everyone’s asking: How the hell did we get here?

Well, pull up a stool. I’ll tell you.

It didn’t start with Trump. It started with a saxophone-playing smoothie from Arkansas named Bill Clinton.

Clinton smiled like your cousin at a wedding who wants to borrow twenty bucks. Said all the right things. Ate at McDonald’s. Played the middle like it was jazz.

They called it triangulation. A fancy word for trying to make everyone happy while doing what rich donors wanted anyway.

Let’s look at the hits.

Health care? He botched that right out of the gate. Brought in Hillary with a 1,342-page plan. Congress didn’t even bother to vote.

Then there was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” A policy that told gay troops: “Go ahead and serve your country—just lie about who you are.”

He signed NAFTA. Said it would bring prosperity. It did—for CEOs. Meanwhile, factories packed up and headed south like geese in November.

Then came welfare reform. The man who grew up poor signed a bill that kicked millions off support. It looked tough. It was tough—on single moms and kids.

The crime bill? That filled prisons faster than Cubs fans fill Wrigley when we’re winning. Targeted the same neighborhoods politicians forget—until election season.

And deregulation? Clinton gave Wall Street the keys to the vault. Ten years later, the whole thing blew up, and we paid the bill.

He signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Then he bombed a Sudanese aspirin factory. Said it was a chemical weapons site. It wasn’t.

He helped China join the WTO. Big win for billionaires. American workers? Not so much.

And while all that was going on, the real scam was rolling under the radar.

The power players were moving jobs overseas. Bill Gates was smiling on camera about the Indo-Asian tech miracle in Mumbai. Al Gore said he invented the internet—sure, he misspoke, but still.

Clinton? He was promising tech jobs to every kid who could work a mouse. What we got was a generation of would-be tech workers who couldn’t get in unless they knew a guy who knew a guy.

Nobody’s said boo about how they abused the H1-B visa system.

In 1995, a level one tech support job paid $25 an hour.

By 2011? $14, if you could even find one.

In 2017, GoDaddy paid $17 and called it “customer service.” A rebrand and a pay cut—how American.

Gee, thanks, Bill. Who wants what for free?

Let’s keep going. Clinton ignored the genocide in Rwanda. He bombed Iraq during his own impeachment trial. He expanded private prisons and starved Iraq through sanctions.

And when people begged him to pardon political prisoners like Leonard Peltier? He shrugged.

But boy, did he look good doing it.

By the time he left office, folks were still clapping. They remembered the charm. The saxophone. The booming economy—built on sand.

Then the sand gave out.

People got angry. The middle class shrank. The jobs vanished.

And in walked Trump, waving a red hat and yelling about forgotten people.

Well, they weren’t forgotten. They were sold out. Starting with Clinton.

Now we sit here, dazed, wondering what went wrong.

Here’s a thought: maybe we stop trusting politicians who campaign like FDR and govern like Reagan.

Maybe we admit that Clinton didn’t save the party—he sold it to the highest bidder.

Trump didn’t come from nowhere.

He came right down the road Clinton paved.

And it’s time we stop pretending otherwise.