This ideological bracket-creep lends a certam absurdIty to the right's determination to interpret the election results as an omnibus revolt against New Deal liberalism and '60s cultural radICalIsm. So enthusiastically are conservatives pushing this line that both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post enlisted me in its behalf, quoting my comment that the Clintons are "inescapably '60s figures." In fact, I was making precisely the opposite point-that Clinton's frantic attempts to distance himself from his "counterculture McGovernik" past and socially liberal impulses had, if anything, increased hIs polItIcal enemies' contempt, while confirming most people's impression that there's no there there. This election was not a repudiation of the leftyou can't repudiate something that for all practical purposes doesn't exist. Rather, it demonstrated that the electorate abhors a vacuum.