It must be Bash Bill Clinton Day, because everyone seems to want to dredge up the past and go after Hillary for the infidelities of her husband. Donald Trump got it started.
Trump was also asked to account for a tweet on Monday in which he cited the former president’s “terrible record of women abuse,” remarking that “we could name many of them.”
“I can get you a list, and I’ll have it sent to your office in two seconds, but there was certainly a lot of abuse of women,” he volunteered. “You look at whether it’s Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them, and that certainly will be fair game. Certainly if they play the woman’s card with respect to me, that will be fair game.”
Ben Carson piled on.
“I see them becoming coarser and wanting to know what certain things are that they’re hearing about on television — things that they would’ve never known about as kids before. And a certain innocence disappears from our society; I’m sorry to see that happen, and I’m sorry that it was because one of our presidents.”
— Ben Carson, asked about Bill Clinton’s treatment of women, on how children were affected by news reports of Mr. Clinton’s behavior as president.
Carly Fiorina said that it was a poor strategy for beating Hillary but was nonetheless justifiable:
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Monday that Donald Trump is justified in publicly targeting former President Bill Clinton in connection with his wife’s campaign for the White House.
“Of course Bill Clinton is fair game,” she said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “He’s a former president.”
It’s pretty clear that the Republicans aren’t going to be taking the high road in this campaign. Trump didn’t limit himself to talking about the former president’s sex life. He used the old “when did you stop beating your wife” routine to call Bill Clinton a racist.
“The [Obama campaign] said it; I didn’t say it,” Trump continued. “All I said was what they said, Savannah. That’s what they said. They called [Bill Clinton] a racist. I don’t believe he is a racist, if you want to know the truth, but they called him a racist. It was a miserable campaign. He did very poorly and you know, they’re bringing him out again. He’s being wheeled out, and we’re going to see what happens. Frankly, he did very poorly, he was not good for her and obviously, she lost to Obama and that was the end of that. But they brought him out before.”
One thing almost all Republicans enjoy is a little Clinton-bashing, so it makes sense for the candidates to try to outdo each other. Will it be a good strategy in the general election?
I kind of doubt it. A lot of voters don’t even remember the battles of the 1990’s, and those who do are not going to reward people who make us relive them.
It won’t work because it’s already been rehashed…but to be clear…if any new polician had the sexual harassment type history that Bill C had would be toast…period.
In the age of Cosby, Rothlesberger..etc…the “tolerance” for any type of Pol who had any stink of “rape culture”-like behaviour would be thrown to the dogs.
I’d agree if we weren’t talking about Bill Clinton. Both he and Obama were one-in-a-generation politicians. I’d say Obama is more like a once-in-a-lifetime candidate and president and I’m guessing that, with hindsight, we’ll miss him very much. But Clinton, weasel that he is, can easily reframe a little recreational sex on the side and pretty much all of us, myself included (though I’m no big fan of the guy), would rush to his defense against any plausible Republican nominee (then or now).
Honestly don’t get this “one in a generation politician” claim. Now if I were a traditional Republican, I might agree with that assessment of Clinton because he did the major heavy lifting in destroying New Deal regulations that Reagan and GHW Bush could only chip away at.
Not really.Trump has been through three wives and is deeply mysoginistic. He’s probably done ten times what Clinton has, and worse yet, that’s probably why so many people want to vote for him. They want someone who lives out their sick fantasies; beating up immigrants, doing what they want with women, etc.
If I were a conspiracy theorist – I am not – I would say this is an obvious attempt by Donald Trump to shore up Hillary Clinton’s polling in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Because the primary effect will be to piss off every Democrat – and is so doing cause us to rally around the Clintons – and forget about all of the policy differences we have with them.
Trump the candidate is indistinguishable from a Democratic agent provocateur.
I think that, like the McCain/Trump kerfluffle, it won’t have any affect on the race.
Partly because most of Sanders’ support from Dems is ideological, not tribal. But mostly because ressentiment over how unfairly the media treated the Clintons compared to every other President (incl. Obama) and letting it influence your behavior is definitely an older-Dem thing. But these people are already in the HRC camp.
So, wait, it’s supposed to be a problem for Hillary Clinton that her husband cheated on her…? I know these guys can’t resist the forbidden allure of the Clenis, but they at least remember who it’s attached to, right?
Boys will be boys. But women must act with unspoiled morality, or they’re worthless. Screwing around isn’t so bad, if you’re a man. Not leaving your husband for screwing around is unforgivable, if you’re a woman.
Eh? I dunno. IF HRC had left WJC at the time, then the GOP would skewer her (take that any way you want) for not “standing by her man” and for breaking up the “sanctity” of her marriage or some other rightwing folderal.
Then all we’d be hearing now is how HRC isn’t a good Christiany woman bc she left her husband, rather than praying to Jeebus and “repairing” her marriage. It would still somehow be framed as HRC’s fault.
IOW, I always felt HRC was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t. Disclaimer: no big fan of the Clintons. Just saying…
I dunno. Probably a wash with the electorate. The divorce rate is high among rightwing Christiany women; so perhaps more of them could relate to her if she’d left. Not sure it would have had any impact at all among men.
OTOH, if she’d left, being gifted a Senate seat would have been less likely.
Oh totally true about the Senate seat, and my guess (which is worthless) is that HRC stuck around w/WJC bc she correctly calculated that WJC owed her and would be helpful in terms of getting what she wanted. Well… on one hand, who can totally blame her for that (seriously)?
I’m just saying that the rightwing noise machine would have damned HRC no matter what she did, and the framing, I suspect, would’ve been as I suggest (above). And all of those rightwing christiany divorced women would’ve gone along with what Fox & Friends or Franklin Graham or the Christian Broadcast Network told them to think. It just IS that way.
The thing is that Republicans are much better at exploiting and framing whatever happens than Democrats are. Had the 2008 financial meltdown occurred on a DEM’s watch, they would not only have won the 2008 election but also the next three elections.
Fear, greed, and hate are always easy sells than even New Deal/social democracy. Having long given up on social democracy, Democrats offer some mush that only sells after major GOP screw-ups that defy spinning.
All Democratic politicians have the burden of being Democrats. Gore was maliciously maligned. Obama has had the extra burden of being an AA. What neither of them did was give the opposition extra, and IMHO fair, fodder on which to munch.
Well, I’m sure it makes some sense in the mad little world they’ve built, where Hillary Clinton is a lesbian who murdered Vince Foster to prevent people from learning that they were lovers, but outside that mad little world they just look like weirdos.
Disclaimer: I don’t give a stuff about the Clenis. It seems to me a lot of incidents were blown out of proportion to serve various political ends. Also there’s plenty on the R-Team – Arnold Schwartzenegger, I’m looking at you – who’ve done similar or worse. I don’t particularly like it or approve of it or condone it, but there’s always been more moralizing applied by Rs to Ds than the reverse. Appalachian Trail, anyone? Isn’t Mark Sanford back in office?? And he was not only fooling around behind his wife & kids’ backs but derelict in his duties as governor.
I find Carson’s spew pretty specious in that HE is the one causing the little innocent children to have to “suffer” from learning about the facts of life… as such facts play out in these Yew Nited States. So Carson’s so “worried” about innocent kids that he’s willing to reveal to all and sundry what happened… which pretty much didn’t really matter in the scheme of things.
The Starr Report was a many million dollar waste of US Taxpayer’s money in order to give Ken Starr something to fap to in his spare time. Of course, GOPers – who whine about money “wasted” feeding the poorz – were more than happy to waste MY valuable tax dollars on this crap.
But current commentary, especially from the Prime Vulgarian Trump, and his wannabe Vulgarian Fiorina, is to be expected. And there will be more. Why not? The GOPers LOVE to tsk tsk & get their panties inna bunch over the Clenis. It’s their favorite pastime.
At the time I wrote: “The Starr Report is a Penthouse letter written by lawyers.”
The Starr Report is bizarre in its needlessly detailed and largely speculative descriptions of sexual acts and personal motivations. It’s amazing that it was produced by a prosecution team in response to a prominent Federal government inquiry, given how openly partisan it is in its attempts to incite public shame and anger. These seemed employed as a substitute for the report’s relative lack of legal findings.
It felt to me like Starr (and perhaps his team, but certainly him personally) developed the opinion that no one who had engaged in the consensual acts of infidelity that Clinton did should keep the Presidency, and that he wanted to oust Bill from his office by any means necessary.
But who’s speculating now? lol
I agree with that. Right-wingers feel reverence toward trappings of power like the Oval Office. I think they were genuinely outraged that Clinton got a blowjob there. But sorry, that’s not grounds for impeachment.
I think the RWers’ reverence for the Oval Office all depends on who’s in the office. They didn’t like and mocked the hillbilly Carter Administration, they didn’t like the hillbilly Clinton Administration even before the Lewinsky scandal, and they sure as heck don’t like the black Obama Administration. And we can confidently predict that they won’t like a Jewish (Sanders) administration–Israel be damned–or a female (Hillary) administration.
They’re going to attempt to hit her over the head with the misdeeds of her husband. Yeah, not working in the general. Bill Clinton is still amazingly popular.
Republicans bashing Clinton? There must still be oxygen on planet Earth.
Tea-bagging conservative Republicans are not too good on the strategery part of national politics. Bashing Clinton feels good – but if their game plan will be to bring him in as an issue in the general they are going to suffer big time.
After all, he presided over the greatest job growth in 2 generations, didn’t invade a single country, balanced the budget, had no Katrina’s, etc.
His blemishes are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
Contest of Misogyny/racism Trump wins hands down.
That’s not difficult if one is lucky and the poison pills put in place to accomplish that are ignored.
Once told an employer, “You want high double digit growth and phenomenal profits over the next three years? I can do that. Of course by year six or seven, you’ll be out of business.”
This is now the business model of most publicly listed companies; stock buybacks with borrowed money? Really? They don’t even care about growth and profits, just stock value and dividends.
A good and timely research project for a business grad student would be to drill down on the borrowings for stock buybacks. A confounding variable is the “lemming factor,” more often described as “fashionable current” practice, but it really is lemmings.
While I haven’t thought it all the way through, seems to me that borrowing for stock buy-backs by companies with strong and profitable foreign operations with large off-shore cash balances that will remain so for tax avoidance remain interested in growth, profits, and stock value. The lemmings are quite possibly playing a dangerous game — but heh, bankruptcy never hurt Trump.
Given what you’ve hinted about your career history I’m going to take what you say in these matters as authoritative. I have lost any confidence I once had in the foresight of our industry leaders; there seems to be a lot of short-term profiteering going on at the expense of long-term sustainable profitability.
Please don’t. Not on this issue as I’ve only casually read about the trend and recalled that I’d seen it when looking at the tax avoidance methods being used by one large corporation.
My comment was generic and conservative. Reflecting my bias that debt isn’t a good substitute for capital. Some extremely wealthy people would scoff at my bias because debt is what enriched them. I’m also enough of a patriot that I don’t respect officers/stockholders that engage in financial trickery to avoid paying taxes. The end game that the big boys are playing is global monopoly and all of them want to be among the winners.
wrt any individual company, I’d have to study it, the industry its in, and how both fit into the economies they operate in. And let’s be honest, analysts that actually specialize in any industry don’t have such a great track record at long-term projections.
With considerable interest as much of the underlying background to the GFC and those responsible and it is a discouraging pastime. No lessons really learned by anyone concerned. And I don’t understand the global economy but I now know nobody else really does either.
Degree of difficulty, proper assignment of credit, downstream impacts are all debatable about the 90’s job growth, nonetheless Clinton is primarily identified with the success of that era.
Even better for him, Greenspan went on to squander any credit and credibility, Gingrich and impeachment folks are disassociated from the 90’s success. Finally Dubya proved that it’s not true that any dunce could do what Clinton presided over (not necessarily drove).
Consequently, the Republicans can’t even share credit for the 90’s and with Dubya can’t win any contrast between the two admins.
That’s why bringing ex-POTUS Clinton into the mix is a losing proposition. It doesn’t work on any level. Plus Clinton knows how to campaign better than any public candidate in either party.
What do you base that on? Obama won twice and with better popular vote margins than Clinton.
He stumped for a lot of candidates in 2014. Few of them won. And why didn’t his brilliance shine through in ’08?
Away from the distractions, Cass Sunstein is a present danger to the Bill of Rights.
Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept, “Those demanding free speech limits to fight ISIS pose a greater threat to the US than ISIS”
We have been this route before since World War II, and it cost us the labor movement and the entire left wing of US politics.
Who the hell cares what the clown car thinks about Bill Clinton? The last Clinton foot-in-mouth action in 2008 essentially cost Hillary the nomination. It was its own punishment. If he tries to dogwhistle whitey again, it will have even more immediate consequences.
More interesting is that Johnathan Chait (NewYork) is calling Cruz an (closet? dogwhistling?) isolationist.
Trump doesn’t seem to understand what the words racist and sexist mean. And how that differs from “playing race, racist, sexist, or gender cards.”
He’s playing the “me, white man” (or me, angry white man) card to the hilt. And Clinton’s playing the “I am woman” card. Both are entitled to those cards because it’s who they are.
Bill Clinton and Ferraro used the “race card” against Obama in ’08 — urging white people not to vote for a black person because he’s Black. Reagan played the racist card in 1980 by assuring racists that he was with them. Trump is leading the way on playing the racist card, but so far none have played the race card.
Trump’s attacks on Kelly and Fiorina were sexist because he employed negative stereotypes of women. Those attacks differ from the “sexist card” that was used in 1984 against Ferraro. What Democrats shouldn’t overlook is that Ferraro’s husband was considered fair game that year as well.
Attacking Clinton for her over-long lav break was sexist. (He is much too crude to appreciate that he could have made a decent point about that incident.) Sexist and/or bullying attacks on Clinton always benefit her and it’s odd that Republicans have yet to figure that out.
Sexist and/or bullying attacks on Clinton always benefit her and it’s odd that Republicans have yet to figure that out.
I think they have figured it out. They know exactly how, and who, it benefits. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room too, therefore Democrats never accomplish anything even if they attempt to. It’s all part of the con.
I don’t think that any part of the con relies on Dems getting more tribal and uncritical of their leaders thanks to unfair attacks.
The GOP’s only hope in the short-term is to cause Democratic disillusionment. Replacing that disillusionment with anger, even if the anger is misplaced or unhelpful, only hurts GOP electoral chances.
You seem to be attempting to define the term “card” in a way that works for you, but isn’t similar to general use. The term is mainly white supremacist, in that it is used to silence people of color who attempt to point out how they are being treated. It’s sometimes also used in gender politics in the same way.
There was agreement among at least half of Democrats that Bill and Ferraro played the “race card” in 2008. Yet it wasn’t done to “silence” POC, but to discourage white primary voters from voting for Obama. It accomplished that goal in NH with somewhere near five to ten percent of the electorate, but backfired in SC b/c it led to AA voters abandoning Clinton in favor of Obama.
Bill has often played the “race card,” and from that hasn’t been called a racist by Democrats and continues to enjoy significant AA support. I appreciate that some of this gets intertwined in partisanship — ie AA (like DFHs that are frequently thrown under the bus by DEMs) have no other place to go. However, seems to me there is a difference between “race card” and “racist card.” Trump calling Mexicans criminal and rapists is a “racist card.” If he were reminding Republican voters that he’s white and Carson is black; so vote for me, that would be playing the race card.
Maybe some folks don’t remember the 90’s, but the groups most likely to vote do (voting goes up with age). And I remember very clearly that polls showed over and over the public thought the GOP attacks on Clinton, and Ken Starr, was pure politics, and they didn’t like it. And Clinton left office with a very high approval rating. His weak, unsupported successor (that nobody – especially grassroots activists – even gave any money to) still won the popular vote, for God’s sakes.
Bill is a net positive for Hilary’s campaign, as a campaigner himself and because people have, on the whole, positive feelings about his presidency, especially compared to his successor. So naturally the repubs are going after him, trying to drive up his negatives as they have done rather successfully with Hilary over the past year.
Speaking of which, a movie about the Heros of Bengazi is coming out in a month.
I don’t think their effort will be successful in Bills case, if anything it will backfire.
If she hadn’t been First Lady, no one would be talking about her now. I doubt if she would have become junior Senator from New York and if she had, I doubt of she would have become SoS.
It’s nostalgia. it’s longing for a female Bill Clinton.
The general electorate looks at the 90’s and think that is when times were really good in this country. It was a time of relative peace and economic prosperity. Yes the more informed know of the bad legislation that was signed during this period that played a part in the great recession but frankly most people are not that informed.
Also the Republicans are idiots. They know going after Clinton for his infidelities backfired back when he was President. Why try to again now? Secretary Clinton won’t make the same idiotic mistake Gore did by trying to disassociate himself from Clinton.
I came so close to tweeting @realdonaldtrump may be a little jealous because Bill’s wife cared enough to try making it work instead of just going for the big payout.
That would have been very unkind to Ivana as well as being false. She tried, and none of us have any idea if either of his ex-wives cared less for him than Hillary does for Bill. They may have cared more and worked harder to save their marriage. The divorces didn’t cause Trump to lose his professional standing and public reputation.
Well, then I’m glad I made a fool of myself here among friends instead. I wasn’t really thinking of the women in question as subjects at all, but what I imagine is Trump’s point of view of them. Anyway it was a tasteless and thoughtless comment, sorry.
That’s okay — we all have the occasional impulse slip-up. I appreciate that you took my criticism with the well-meaning spirit in which it was offered.
The Village is in on the act too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-right-bill-clintons-sordid-sexual-history-is-fair-game/2015
/12/28/70a26bdc-ad92-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html
Ruth Marcus was on MSNBC yesterday to defend this mess and basically stated that because Clinton was impeached that he was therefore guilty of sexually harassing a subordinate.
I was happy to hear the show host remind Marcus and the audience that it is patronizing to hold the candidate responsible for her husband’s personal behavior in this select way. Marcus was defensive as hell; you could sense she had gotten a bunch of “WTF?” Emails/calls.
She hung her thin reed on the idea that Hillary is sending Bill out as a surrogate, so she is accountable for his personal past. She used the metaphorical parallel that if a candidate sent out a white supremacist to campaign for them, that candidate would be accountable for their surrogate’s past. This defense made a bit of sense to me for about five seconds, until I realized Ruth was asking us to accept a direct parallel between a open white supremacist and an accomplished ex-POTUS who engaged in a very inadvisable but consensual sexual affair with an adult. So, you know, fuck her and her “He trashed the place, and it’s not his place” Villagespeak.
Not sure why the GOP bothers: after all, there’s no shortage of Clinton bashing in the “progressive” blogosphere already.
I’m all for valid critiques of Democratic Party leaders based on factual representations, but an unfortunate percentage of progressive critiques range from unsubstantiated to flat wrong. An example was recent fretting by a few commenters here about a coming loss of the youth vote from the Obama coalition in 2016.
See the results at the https: link below of a broad set of polls throughout 2015 which show that voters under 40 are migrating even more substantially into the Democratic column than they voted in 2012:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXeyijlWEAAE14J.jpg:large
The trend by whites under 40 to move into the Democratic camp between 2012 and 2015 is as strong or stronger than the trend in the same direction by Hispanics.
Our fretting commenters have just flat out claimed that Obama hasn’t done anything meaningful for young people, and that Hillary’s campaign isn’t offering anything to them either. These claims not only run into the realities of Obama’s accomplishments and Hillary’s campaign platform, it also runs into the realities of how young people have voted in the last decade and how they are responding to pollsters this year.