Loafer 1996 Full Movie
Norine Wiltshire
Loafer is a 1996 Indian Hindi-language masala film directed by David Dhawan and produced by Surinder Kapoor and Boney Kapoor. It stars Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla in pivotal roles.[1] The film was a remake of the Tamil film Velai Kidaichuduchu.
That doesn't mean it's irrelevant, of course. This summer's Senate hearings on campaign finance have amply illustrated the almost desperate desire of United States political parties for contributions.
It does mean that big bucks don't equal automatic victory. Some research indicates that money affects the outcome of House races only on the margins - and that other variables, such as the partisan nature of a district, are far better predictors of electoral outcome.
The lesson of this could be a reassuring one: that voters are swayed less by clever campaign ads than by a candidate's substantive beliefs. "We should give voters a lot more credit than we do," says Robert Richie, executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy here. "They have a coherent political view of the world, and they vote coherently within an election."
A quick glance at recent spending records would lead one to believe that money actually is the end-all of politics. In 1996 elections for the House of Representatives the better-funded candidate won 90 percent of the time.
But a large percentage of these races involved an incumbent. Name recognition and the power of office make incumbents tough to beat - and thus a good bet for contributors. They didn't necessarily win because they had more money, argues Mr. Richie. Rather, they attracted more money because they were likely to win.
Seats with no incumbent running may be a better indicator of money's power. Better-funded candidates did quite well in this electoral category in 1996, too - winning 75 percent of the time. But a Center for Voting and Democracy study points to what it calls a clearer correlation: the presidential vote. Democrats won all 18 of the open seats where President Clinton polled higher than his 49 percent national average. Republicans won all 11 open seat districts where Clinton's vote was lower than 41 percent.
Thus the report's conclusion: House districts have a distinctive political identity which money cannot reverse. One Democrat running in an open seat outspent his GOP foe by 2 to 1 - and lost. At least five open seat candidates spent more than $400,000 (a relatively large sum) and still went down to defeat.
That US Congressional districts have a distinct party preference is a less obvious conclusion than one might think. Scholars say it's a reflection of a return to straight-ticket voting that's been building throughout the 1990s.
The 1970s and '80s saw a growth in the number of voters who punched their ticket for Democratic House candidates and GOP presidential contenders, or vice versa. But since 1992, US citizens have cast close to the same percentage of votes for each major party for president and Congress, notes political scientist Michael Barone in his introduction to the just-issued "Almanac of American Politics 1998."
The political math for 1994 and '96 was scrambled by the complications of the electoral college system and the candidacy of Ross Perot. That's why the US has a GOP-led Congress and a Democrat in the White House, despite the rise in straight-ticket voting.
But overall "one of the striking features of the 1996 election results is how voters in Democratic regions have become more Democratic, while voters in Republican regions have become more Republican," writes Barone.
Second, some of each election cycle's most hotly contest votes aren't GOP versus Democrat general elections. They're party primaries, where Democrat fights Democrat and Republican fights Republican, and funding can have a profound effect.
Finally, money is a megaphone. Big spending on ads is almost the only way a challenger can build name recognition and erode the advantages of incumbency. A large war chest may not guarantee victory. But lack of same might guarantee defeat.
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
The healthcare reform battle that Bill Clinton initiated in 1993 was thegreatest, domestic reform attempt since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 that createdthe modern New Deal, and modern American government. It was an attempt tobring about a century-long agenda, for the American people, to secure healthsecurity. Theodore Roosevelt talked about it, Woodrow Wilson talked about it.Harry Truman talked about it. Nixon had a more ambitious plan than even BillClinton. But by the '90s, when he came into the office, the President of theUnited States, Bill Clinton, a series of events had converged to make it, therewas a bipartisan consensus, that something had to be done. Healthcare costswere bankrupting every governmental entity from the Congress, to the mayors,the state houses, right down to county commissioners. You couldn't restrainthe cost of government unless you dealt with the exploding cost of healthcare.Where an aging nation, with new technologies that extends life, the costs areexplosive. Also, the downsizing of America, with more and more and morepeople, millions of people losing their jobs, and losing their benefits, meantthat people who were not concerned before, suddenly felt threatened andanxious. Therefore, comes this attempt across the board-- liberal, Democrat,conservative, Republican. Bob Dole led 23 Republican senators to call foruniversal healthcare when Clinton became President.
So it was a titanic struggle, that directly would affect the lives of everysingle American, and directly affect the entire American economy forgenerations to come. That's how big it was. It was a tragedy, because, notthat the Clinton plan was failed or flawed, it was, terribly. But thatsomething out of that background should have happened. There should've beensome move, the political system is designed to deal with real needs that affectreal people, their lives. It's made to sort of deal with war and peace, withravages of the Depression, with things like the evils of slavery, or in thiscase, protecting and preserving and helping one's own life in this Americansociety. And it failed across the board. Nothing happened. Everybody failed.The Republicans failed, Bill Clinton failed, his wife failed, the Democratsfailed, the Congress failed, the press failed, and in the end the people werelost, left with 43 million without health insurance, 3 years later, when 37million had it when it began. That's how big this was.
FL: In your book, you vividly and dramatically describe the President's speechoutlining his vision for healthcare reform and how embedded in what happened,is the metaphor for the entire Clinton presidency. Describe what happened,and what it said.
The night that Bill Clinton finally came before the American people, to lay outhis long-promised health reform plan, he had the entire country watching. Itwas a joint session of Congress. Everybody's in the room. A hundred millionpeople are watching over satellite television. It's the most important speechof his life and of his presidency, it's going to define him. He goes up intothis, it's live now, 9 o'clock at night. He goes up there, and he looks outover this incredible hothouse of a chamber, of a joint session of Congress,with the galleries packed with all the VIPs. And he sees in the lectern, he'sabout to speech, there are the texts of a speech that he gave 8 monthsbefore. And he looks and he said, God must be testing me, I shouldn't begiving this speech. And then he realized, he said, I've got to do it, if Idon't know it now, I'm lost anyhow so I just reared back and did it. Whathappened was, they got the wrong speech, because of all the last minute,changes, the hectic, the desperate maneuverings, including his own, right up tothe last minute, he was making changes in the limousine, going up to theCapitol. Making the changes in the speech so that by the time they got there,the poor military computer operator who was operating the computer, because itwas so chaotic, had as a preservative, had put in another speech just to testit out. And then they got this new thing in, but he pushed the wrong button.Instead of purging the old speech, he saved it, and therefore it resided ontop, 8 months ago. Clinton in that moment, and you, I, I've often thought whatit would be like, he's totally what he felt, but I still can't imagine what youmust be going through at this moment. He did give a great speech. The peopledown below were desperately concerned about this calamity, this disaster thathad befallen, because they knew it wasn't in there and then all of a suddenthey finally fixed it by, seven minutes of dead silence on that screen. Theyfinally cut the screen off. So he was looking at a blank screen. That'sanother thing. He's speaking, and, the TelePrompTer goes off. So he's, he'sreally on his own. On his own before the whole world. And the whole world'swatching, and as he does it, all of a sudden the people down below thinking adisaster, he had cheers. And there was the Congress, his enemies, his rivals,in both parties, say he's giving the greatest speech of his life. And thenfinally, seven minutes later it clicks in, and he's back on track. And it wassuch a high moment, that when he left there, people across the board assumedthat this would be, he couldn't fail now, he was going to be vindicated withthis problem.
But the way that that speech was designed, the chaos that pervaded it, the lackof discipline, the many drafts that went through it. The fact that it was 9months late, by the way, in getting to final legislative form, all of that, ineffect, doomed it. That was his highest point. From there on in, it was alldownhill. Another 2 months would elapse, before the actual bill lands beforethe Congress. By then, almost a year of his presidency has been flitted away,and his enemies have mobilized and something called Whitewater is about [to] burstupon his presidency, and trust would begin to erode and viciously and quickly,and from that point on, the opportunity for this, really the best opportunityin the century, to make a genuine difference in people's lives was lost.
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