It had to do with Clinton's strategy dealing with a Republican Congress.
From a wikipedia profile on Dick Morris:
Less sensationalistic but more relevant to political observers was Morris's use of polling data and his "triangulation" strategy in 1995 and early 1996 to outmaneuver Republicans Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole who had won a decisive victory in the 1994 election. Morris led Clinton to co-opt popular Republican initiatives and force the Republicans to justify their unpopular decisions leading to the 1995 government shutdown. Key to this effort was massive early TV advertising in swing states paid for by soft money raised through the Democratic National Committee, which gave Clinton a decisive advantage before Bob Dole won the Republican presidential nomination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_MorrisAnother article from The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200501/toddClintonism, R.I.P.
How triangulation became strangulation
by Chuck Todd
.....
ith the 2004 election past and the losing party's ritual period of self-appraisal about to yield to George W. Bush's second term, the Democrats appear to have learned two small lessons and to have missed a much larger one. Of the two small lessons, one follows naturally from the other: first, the election demonstrated that the Democrats are becoming less competitive in much of the country, and second, it suggested that they cannot hope to regain the presidency or control of Congress until that changes. The reason they've lost ground, we've been told ceaselessly, is that many Americans believe the party is deficient in "moral values" and cast their votes accordingly. There is some debate about whether values played the decisive role or just a minor one—but no debating that something is wrong.
What's been missing is a discussion of how the Democratic Party arrived at this point; that requires a broader view, encompassing both parties' most recent periods of triumph and focusing particularly on the major difference between the evolving political legacies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As a candidate each sought to distance himself from his party's reigning image—Bush through "compassionate conservatism" and Clinton through a "third way" approach between liberalism and conservatism. Each succeeded well enough to win two terms. And each is now viewed within his party as something close to the ideal.
The difference is that Bush measurably strengthened the Republican Party along the way, whereas Clinton worried mainly about his own political fortunes, to the detriment of his party. Every election under Bush has resulted in Republican gains in Congress; in sharp contrast, Clinton assumed office with his party in control of the House, the Senate, and a majority of governorships, and left it with none of those advantages. Since Clinton, Democratic losses have deepened and broadened to include both subsequent presidential races, in which the Democratic nominees dutifully adopted Clinton's strategy of centrist triangulation. The results so starkly apparent on November 2 should prompt a question that, though still heretical to Democrats, is worthy of being posed here: Is it time to retire Clintonism as a political philosophy?
Later it says that Clintonism means moral ambivalence.
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