Althouse: "Of course, Democrats aren’t going to travel back in time to force Bill Clinton to resign in the late 1990s."

June 9, 2018

"Of course, Democrats aren’t going to travel back in time to force Bill Clinton to resign in the late 1990s."

"But it also now seems clear that Clinton won’t be able to avoid answering these questions in future public appearances, which may well make him less likely to want to make public appearances in the future. There is also a strong likelihood that Clinton, who has been a mainstay of Democratic National Conventions for decades, won’t be speaking in 2020 or deployed as a campaign surrogate this fall for the first time in a generation. Yet it’s also clear that another cohort of Democrats — especially those on the older, maler side — are uncomfortable with the direction Gillibrand is going. That’s in part a disagreement about political tactics, with some seeing it as foolish for Democrats to try to hold themselves to a high standard of conduct when Republicans hold Trump to no standard at all. But it’s probably better to think of it as primarily a disagreement about substance and the still-ambiguous legacy of #MeToo. In one view, the story is essentially that hard-working investigative journalists revealed a handful of cases of spectacularly egregious malfeasance by a handful of prominent men — Roger Ailes and Harvey Weinstein, most obviously — and that’s all to the good..... In [that] former view, nothing in the Lewinsky story is particularly damning (though if you believe Broaddrick, that’s another matter)...."

Writes Matthew Yglesias (at Vox). The other view, the Kirsten Gillibrand view, wants the #MeToo movement to work "a sea change in attitudes, standards of behavior, and evaluation of public figures." In that view, whether you believe Broaddrick or not, "Clinton is exactly the type of person whose conduct deserves a new, much harsher look."

44 comments:

rhhardin said...: It's lucky earth has only one moon. Think of menstrual cycles in Jupiter.; 6/9/18, 8:05 AM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: Has anyone from the media asked Bill if he is afraid he'll be arrested for rape like his friend Harvey?; 6/9/18, 8:05 AM
Jaq said...: Well played, Missy.; 6/9/18, 8:06 AM
rehajm said...: Also from deep thinker Matthew Yglesias: The climate issue is important to solve, but not if the solutions are those of my opponents.; 6/9/18, 8:08 AM
Derek Kite said...: Nothing in the Lewinsky story is particularly damning.

Ok.

though if you believe Broaddrick

It is about you, not Clinton.

The word from on high has been promulgated.; 6/9/18, 8:09 AM
Derek Kite said...: And about hard working journalists.

Are these vox boys slippery!; 6/9/18, 8:11 AM
Earnest Prole said...: Bill Clinton, like Bill Cosby, is rapey -- somehow your poll failed to reference that.; 6/9/18, 8:13 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: Lost me here:

"That’s in part a disagreement about political tactics, with some seeing it as foolish for Democrats to try to hold themselves to a high standard of conduct when Republicans hold Trump to no standard at all."; 6/9/18, 8:13 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Hey, a fleeting reference to Juanita Broaddrick - progress!

I actually love the title of this Vox piece:

"Democrats’ ongoing reevaluation of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, explained"

In other words, when it mattered 20 years ago, we explained it away. Now, that we want to change the rules to nail Trump, we have to re-evaluate.

These are stormy times, no doubt.; 6/9/18, 8:16 AM
Oso Negro said...: #metooJeffreyEpstein; 6/9/18, 8:22 AM
Leland said...: Senator Gillibrand would need a less powerful time machine to change her support of Anthony Weiner.; 6/9/18, 8:23 AM
paminwi said...: Maybe my memory is bad or maybe this is a garbage comparison by Iglesias (wouldn't surprise me!) Was Roger Ailes ever accused of RAPE? I don't think so but I do know with 100% accuracy born Clinton and Weibstein were accused of rape. Billy Boy got away with it but Harvey is going to pay big time.; 6/9/18, 8:24 AM
Curious George said...: (though if you believe Broaddrick, that’s another matter)...."

And Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Leslie Millwee, Eileen Wellstone, Carolyn Moffet, Elizabeth Ward, Sally Perdue, Sandra Allen James, Christy Zercher, and three anonymous women.; 6/9/18, 8:25 AM
Ralph L said...: I want the Democratic Party to pay for nominating both Clintons and supporting them vociferously for decades despite their manifest grievous sins. But Tapper and his co-defendants will cover their ass.; 6/9/18, 8:30 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: He's telling Bill to go away. LOL! I hope you don't end up dead in a ditch, dude.; 6/9/18, 8:33 AM
Michael K said...: None of the above.

Roger Ailes was included just to emphasize that Democrats aren't the only ones.

Gretchen Carlson is busy showing everyone what an SJW has been hiding in plain sight.; 6/9/18, 8:46 AM
traditionalguy said...: OMG. The Great Witch Hunt has turned on outing and burning the Dems who are the real witches.

Expect more suicides.; 6/9/18, 8:54 AM
TRISTRAM said...: OTOH, it could be a simple power grab by the female senator from NY.; 6/9/18, 8:59 AM
Original Mike said...: ”Yet it’s also clear that another cohort of Democrats — especially those on the older, maler side — are uncomfortable with the direction Gillibrand is going.”

Yes, this older male is uncomfortable with Gillibrand’s hypocrisy. Oh, wait. That’s not the Gillibrand behavior Yglesias is referencing.; 6/9/18, 9:10 AM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: I still rank the deception and vengefulness of the Clintons high on my fury list. It's not just having sex with a younger woman. For the general public it was all about the sex. Conservatives tried very hard to keep the focus on the main points in the 90's.

There were also the attacks on the women he accused. Kathleen Willey's was pretty chilling. In that sense the angry attention from #MeToo misses the bigger point. Remember that even Donna Brazile thought she might be in mortal danger for outing a Clinton, and referenced Seth Rich. Though Brazile might be a right-wing conspiracy nut, you never know.; 6/9/18, 9:20 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Bill Clinton, like Bill Cosby, is rapey -- somehow your poll failed to reference that."

No, it didn't.; 6/9/18, 9:29 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I think Democrats would throw Bill Clinton out with the next trash if they could get Donald Trump out too. But they can't! It won't work that way, they know it, and it's infuriating. Many must have thought that holding Franken to account would get the leverage they needed against Trump. I'll bet that's how they got Franken to leave. But it didn't work, and you have to be a staunch Gillibrand to try more moves like that, and people are too much in the political game to be that idealistic.; 6/9/18, 9:31 AM
Michael The Magnificent said...: All the torpedoes the dems dropped in the water in an attempt to sink Trump have circled back around and are sinking their fellow dems, who's bad behavior was never a concern for them before.; 6/9/18, 9:36 AM
Michael The Magnificent said...: Liberals! It's only about sex! Let's Move On!; 6/9/18, 9:40 AM
mccullough said...: Gillibrand’s husband will be an upcoming MeToo accused. She’s going to cry when her house crashes on her. Bill Clinton is going to ruin her.; 6/9/18, 9:46 AM
Birkel said...: 1990s Democrats: We have no standards.
2000s Republicans: That was not a plastic turkey. WTF?
2010s Republicans: We have adopted the rules of the Democrats.
2018 Democrats: We now want to adopt a self-serving standard.
2018 Republicans: These are the new rules. We warned you, you weren't going to like the new rules.; 6/9/18, 9:48 AM
Lyssa said...: I don’t really care about Bill Clinton. He’s old and his presidency is in the history books. I do care about the people who defended him, and claimed the tag of “feminism,” being held accountable for their shameful behavior. And that includes, of course, his most stalwart defender, the recent presidential nominee.; 6/9/18, 9:55 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Shorter Yglesias:

"We failed to get Trump because Trump voters had memories that were too good."; 6/9/18, 10:02 AM
Sebastian said...: This is fun. On so many levels.

It is fun to see Billy Jeff squirm just a bit after all this time.

It is fun to see prog #MeTooism boomerang.

It is fun to see Dems figure out how much of their past they need to erase to keep up with current gospel.

It is fun to see Dems realize that #WeWereRight all along and that now #TheyKnowWeKnewTheyKnew. They will try a Stalinist history-scrubbing, but the taint can't be undone.

It is fun to see Dems realize that the GOP doesn't care anymore, that cynical deplorables are now immune from hypocritical prog imposition of "moral" standards.

It is fun to count the blessings bestowed by Hill's loss.; 6/9/18, 10:06 AM
Mark said...: the Kirsten Gillibrand view, wants the #MeToo movement to work "a sea change in attitudes, standards of behavior, and evaluation of public figures."

No it doesn't. That view want to work a sea change in power. It's all about seizing, holding and wielding power. By any means necessary. Underlying issues are relevant only to the extent that it can be exploited in the quest to obtain power.; 6/9/18, 10:11 AM
cyrus83 said...: None of those options really work. #Metoo has always seemed like a political tactic to appropriate the deserved downfall of some long-time serial sexual abusers and rapists to try and get Trump, but I don't know why Democrats expect it to work.

While Trump is very far from being a saint in matters of the flesh, unless every woman he ever did something with signed and is sticking to their NDA, so far we're only being presented with one woman who by her chosen profession exploits her body sexually for money. Hooking up with Trump seems like a successful business transaction for her, which is why this story line is having so little effect.

It's hard to get people riled up about Trump being associated with a porn star when sex and porn have been enthusiastically embraced and normalized for decades now. The left didn't want a Christian culture. As one consequence of that, they aren't getting Trump on this angle now - too few people with strict views on sexual matters remain to trigger public disgust.; 6/9/18, 10:12 AM
MayBee said...: I think Democrats would throw Bill Clinton out with the next trash if they could get Donald Trump out too

The Democrats threw Bill Clinton out with the next trash for the 2008 election. DeeDee Myer's husband wrote about his philandering in Vanity Fair, the Obama people painted him as racist. It wasn't until Obama needed the Clinton's donor list and the Clintons needed the Secretary of State position that there was a reconciliation. Remember how Hillary was forced to grovel at the 2008 Convention? Then, by 2012, the Clintons had been rehabilitated enough that Bill Clinton's speech at the convention saved Obama's gravy. Remember how Clinton's speech had the delegates swaying as one organism, so transfixed were they?; 6/9/18, 10:27 AM
AllenS said...: Has anyone seen Crooked Hillary since Bill started his own book tour?; 6/9/18, 10:58 AM
n.n said...: Two moral axioms: individual dignity and intrinsic value, natural, and personal imperatives. Thus, men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. What criteria do they use to classify behaviors for normalization, tolerance, and rejection?

Is the left prepared to sacrifice diversity (i.e. color judgments and discrimination)? Female chauvinism? Abortion rites? Political congruence? Social justice adventures?; 6/9/18, 11:02 AM
Anonymous said...: I am in the none of the above category, but it's hard to take #metoo really seriously when it appears that Ali Watson at the NYT has been using sex to get her stories since she was an intern. Worked really well until they indicted her 58 year old lover. I know it's only one, but it certainly puts a bit of a kink into the females-are-always innocent line. The movie Thank You for Smoking explores this phenomenon as I recall.; 6/9/18, 11:55 AM
Earnest Prole said...: I'm awaiting Gillibrand's mention of Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones, but I take your point.; 6/9/18, 1:06 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “That’s in part a disagreement about political tactics, with some seeing it as foolish for Democrats to try to hold themselves to a high standard of conduct when Republicans hold Trump to no standard at all.”

Ah, for the good old days, when it was just the opposite. Funny how that works.; 6/9/18, 1:43 PM
buwaya said...: This of course is not a situation suited to logical analysis.
An objective analyst would find the lot of them, the participants in these controversies, to have been collusive in the state of affairs they now condemn.

If this all is such a critical issue then the lot of them need to be removed, Gillibrand and her political contemporaries as well as the mass media and all its management.

But its not logical, it is just rhetoric.; 6/9/18, 1:52 PM
Oso Negro said...: @khesanh - #useyourcooter! I would point out that just as in Hollywood, there must be a homosexual equivalent to this in D.C. While "House of Cards" evoked the Clintons, I am now wondering if Frank's bisexuality was really about Obama. It was thoroughly undiscussed in the mainstream media, but there is PLENTY of stuff out there about it.; 6/9/18, 2:43 PM
The Godfather said...: "Clinton won’t be able to avoid answering these questions in future public appearances". Why should he, or any other public figure, EVER have been allowed to avoid answering legitimate questions about his behavior? The answer in Clinton's case has been that he got a pass because he supported abortion on demand. He shouldn't get a pass any more. Unless I've missed something, Republicans have been asked "these questions" all along.; 6/9/18, 5:58 PM
Henry said...: Clinton won’t be able to avoid answering these questions in future public appearances

So he won't take questions.; 6/9/18, 10:08 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/10/18, 1:33 AM
mikee said...: The Republicans had their opportunity to act against corrupt practices with Nixon. They took that opportunity, and got rid of Nixon.

The Democrats had their opportunity to act against corrupt practices with Clinton. They circled their wagons to protect the corrupt practices.

To hell with them, to hell with that. They had their chance, and threw it away.; 6/10/18, 9:26 AM
Jaq said...: I can't believe the number of people who think that Broaddrick is lying. I guess that if you like a person like Bill Clinton, you just don't believe he is capable of the stuff he clearly has done.It's amazing.; 6/10/18, 12:11 PM