Former President Bill Clinton told Virginia Democrats Saturday that the party has won America's long-running culture war but has to make sure not to squander it with partisanship.





Clinton told more than 3,000 people at a party fundraiser that the nation's natural political base shifted back to Democrats for the first time since 1968, thanks to protracted Republican mistakes and the belief that President Barack Obama represented the solution.



He said Obama's election shows Americans at last are welcoming diversity and accepting differences, the opposite of the political dynamic he said Richard Nixon first used in 1968 to lock in a white, conservative voting bloc that kept Virginia and the South reliably Republican for two generations.



"We have won the great culture war that has divided America for 40 years," Clinton said at Virginia's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. "But before we celebrate too much, we have to realize that people hired us to lead."