Donald Trump Resurrects The Worst Of Clinton Derangement Syndrome
For Donald Trump at least, the start of the General Election campaign is the perfect time to dredge up decades old conspiracy theories.
The General Election campaign has barely started and, already, Donald Trump has chosen to single-handedly drag it into the gutter by turning to a regurgitation of 90s conspiracy theories about the Clinton’s and a visit back to President Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual misconduct:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is reviving some of the ugliest political chapters of the 1990s with escalating personal attacks on Bill Clinton’s character, part of a concerted effort to smother Hillary Clinton’s campaign message with the weight of decades of controversy.
Trump’s latest shot came Monday when he released an incendiary Instagram video that includes the voices of two women who accused the former president of sexual assault, underscoring the presumptive Republican nominee’s willingness to go far beyond political norms in his critique of his likely Democratic rival.
The real estate mogul has said in recent interviews that a range of Clinton-related controversies will be at the center of his case against Hillary Clinton.
“They said things about me which were very nasty. And I don’t want to play that game at all. I don’t want to play it — at all. But they said things about me that were very nasty,” Trump told The Washington Post in an interview. “And, you know, as long as they do that, you know, I will play at whatever level I have to play at. I think I’ve proven that.”
Clinton’s campaign has largely refused to engage the recent attacks directly, instead focusing — as Clinton did Monday during an appearance in Detroit — on Trump’s demeanor and job qualifications.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Monday on Bloomberg TV that Trump’s attacks were part of a “strategy to try to distract from an issues-based campaign, which is what we intend to run. . . . To me, every day he spends in this type of stuff is a misspent opportunity by him in terms of doing the outreach he needs to do to improve his numbers.”
The race already appears to be teed up as a referendum on the two candidates’ pasts rather than their visions for the country’s future. Clinton has increasingly directed fire at Trump’s long history of derogatory statements about women, his bankruptcies and other controversies to argue he is unfit for office.
Trump, meanwhile, has sought to brand the former secretary of state as “Crooked Hillary,” pointing to such issues as the Whitewater real estate controversy in the 1990s and foreign donations to her family’s philanthropic organization over the past decade. Trump also regularly accuses the Clintons of hypocrisy on women’s issues and argues that Hillary Clinton has been an “enabler” of her husband’s actions and attempting to discredit the women in question.
In one recent interview, Trump said another topic of potential concern is the suicide of former White House aide Vincent Foster, which remains the focus of intense and far-fetched conspiracy theories on the Internet.
“It’s the one thing with her, whether it’s Whitewater or whether it’s Vince or whether it’s Benghazi. It’s always a mess with Hillary,” Trump said in the interview.
The presumptive Republican nominee and his associates hope that his tactics will bring fresh scrutiny to the Clintons’ long record in public life, which conservatives characterize as defined by scandals that her allies view as witch hunts. Through social media and Trump’s ability to garner unfiltered attention on the Internet and the airwaves, political strategists believe he could revitalize the controversies among voters who do not remember them well or are too young to have lived through them.
“The Clintons collectively have dodged many, many, many bullets. So much that was suppressed [by the media] is going to get re-analyzed. So many of the things that they slipped by on will get reexamined,” Trump confidant Roger Stone said Monday. “That’s something they should have counted on before getting into the race.”
At the same time, Trump has often dismissed scrutiny of his own behavior, including his questionable treatment of women, which served as tabloid fodder in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. He has regularly criticized the media for reporting on events from decades ago.
“When was this? Twenty-five years ago? Wow, you mean you’re going so low as to talk about something that took place 25 years ago,” Trump said earlier this month when asked about pretending to be his own publicist in the 1990s.
Trump didn’t always feel this way about Clinton’s personal scandals. In the past, Trump was been quoted in interviews as dismissing the importance of the stories about former President Clinton’s sex life, including an interview as recently as 2008 when Trump said Clinton never should have been impeached, said that the former President got into trouble over something ‘totally unimportant,’ and contrasted the impeachment of President Clinton with what he asserted were the more serious issues regarding the record of George W. Bush such as the Iraq War. It’s only been since he began expressing interest in running for President as a Republican four years ago that Trump has shifted ground on the relevance of the allegations against President Clinton and asserted the claim that Clinton’s personal behavior, and Hillary Clinton’s alleged complicity in that behavior, is somehow relevant twenty years later when there is an entire generation of new voters who have no real memory of the more sleazy aspects of the Clinton years. Given the fact that he’s trying to appeal to Republican voters, among many of whom the controversies and allegations of the 1990s are as fresh and relevant today as they were when the likes of Rush Limbaugh were talking about them on a daily basis tw0 decades ago.
On some level, hearkening back to the ‘scandals,’ real and imagined, of the 1990s is simply a continuation of a strategy that Trump has been following since the beginning of his campaign. Just as he was able to successfully undercut his Republican opponents by attacking them as “low energy” and labeling them with nicknames that stuck like clue such as “Little Marco,” Lyin’ Ted,’ and others, Trump has been seeking to get the “Corrupt” nickname to stick to Hillary Clinton for some time now. His stump speeches regularly refer to her as “Corrupt Hillary” now, and by adding in the allegations from the 90s, Trump is clearly attempting to both appeal to the far right of the Republican Party and throw the Clinton campaign off balance by forcing them to address allegations that they haven’t had to face on a regular basis for quite a long time now. Additionally, bringing up the allegations from the 90s, and especially Hillary Clinton’s alleged involvement in attacking these women in the media during the Clinton Administration, is also aimed at undercutting the Clinton’s campaign’s own effort to attack Trump on sexism and gender issues. Ask a Trump campaign adviser about this, and they will tell you that there is an entire generation of young female voters who have no memory of the Clinton Era and for whom these allegations about sexual assault and worse could be seen as far more serious than one might expect. So far at least, there is no evidence in the polls that Clinton’s standing among women at any level has been all diminished by Trump’s attacks.
In any case, the fact that Trump has jumped so quickly to what is arguably the sleaziest part of any campaign against Clinton does not bode well for the race going forward. Rather than a serious debate over policy issues and the future direction of the country, the 2016 campaign appears to already be headed down a path that can seemingly only end with both campaigns seeking to hit each other with the worst aspects of the allegations about each other. Given the fact that the Republicans have nominated a candidate who has no substance, no real policy ideas, and regularly displays ignorance about even some of the most basic matters of foreign and domestic policy this is, I suppose, unsurprising. The fact that it’s not surprising, though, doesn’t make it acceptable, and one would hope that the voters would punish a candidate like Trump whose first instinct is to rely on conspiracy theories and innuendo to win an election rather than giving them a reason to vote for him. Sadly, though, the strategy that Trump is following now is the same one that worked for him during the race for the GOP nomination, so he’s unlikely to change strategies unless there’s evidence it isn’t working.
Decades and millions of dollars spent investigating these and they turned up bubkis. Yet these myths continue in the minds of these retards as some sort of truth. Our friend Jenos is the poster child of this conspiracy theory BS. Who needs solid objective proof when you “know it” deep down on an emotional level?
Funny that Trump brings up an alleged Clinton rape when Trumps own wife swore under oath that he raped her because he was angry about a failed anti-baldness surgery. If I had to walk around with that stupid comb-over I’d be pissed too…but rape my wife???
Journalists could frame these as “wild accusations,” or “peddling falsehoods,” or “baseless allegations,” or “fact-free claims.”
But they won’t.
Because they want that sweet sweet white anger. With it comes sweet sweet white eyeballs on ads. And then the sweet sweet white money.
And if it leads to sweet sweet white nationalism, then most journalists will shrug and say, “C’est la vie,” wrap their armbands over their right arm, and go on pandering to sweet sweet racism.
Oh, well. Whatever works.
Clinton can/should respond with Trump’s choice to do business with the mob in NYC.
And the Triad in Hong Kong.
And Trump’s employment of Felix Sater as a senior advisor.
Of course, Benghazi, so both sides do it!
I fully expect Trump to respond to Clinton bringing up Trump’s ties to the mob with some other conspiracy theory nonsense along with saying that he’s “counterpunching.”
Trump is the guy who honks at someone in traffic, gets honked at in return, and then gets road rage because someone else honked at him..
If Trump’s strategy is going to be limited to dredging up the same-old same-old, then Clinton doesn’t have much to worry about.
If Trump’s budget is limited, then he may not have much of a choice. With a lack of funds, he’ll need to rely upon soundbites in order to get attention from the press as a substitute for advertising, which will mean that his campaign will be driven by trolling the media and relying upon social media such as his Twitter account (which often sounds as if it belongs to a 13 year old who spends more time in detention hall than in class.) That could work when all he needed was a slim plurality in a GOP primary, but that may not be particularly effective in winning over a majority during a general election campaign.
@C. Clavin:
There’s a hilarious David Brooks editorial up today, entitled something like “Why is Hillary Clinton Disliked?”. The pundit somehow manages to overlook the decades of smear campaign, and settles on “it’s because she’s a workaholic”.
I kid you not.
Where do they get these people?
Trump has no background or understanding of policy issues, and his entire plan for the future direction of the country is the empty statement “make America Great Again” with absolutely nothing to suggest a path as to how that will be accomplished. Of course he’s going to resort to personal attacks, and he’s going to try and drive her numbers as low as he can because once he’s on a debate stage with her, there’s nowhere to hide his total ignorance on policy issues.
This is a man who can’t pronounce “Tanzania” correctly, for crying out loud. He’s every crappy student who gets to the test and blames everyone else for doing badly on it, and then beats up some poor kid on the playground for an ego boost after failing.
@Jen:
None of that means that Trump is destined to lose. It’s not as if George W. Bush was elected because ordinary folks are policy junkies who considered him to be a genius.
Trump seems to have bigger problems than that: He probably doesn’t have the money or network needed for an effective ground game, nor does he seem to have any ammunition against Clinton that wasn’t already used unsuccessfully before. The whole vincefosterbenghaziemailwhitewaterstaineddress routine plays well to a certain element of the Republican base, but most people just don’t care.
@DrDaveT: As a rabid Republican partisan David Brooks gets paid very well to pretend to be a centrist reluctantly pointing out Democratic flaws. He really is the world’s champion concern troll.
NYT also has a piece today about Ken Starr
As with most GOPs, Starr bemoans how ugly and partisan politics has become while pretending to be innocent of his own prominent role.
Folks,
Saw this elsewhere, and it made me laugh.
If Trump is trying to throw stones, it’s while standing on a YUUUGE pile of broken glass.
Enjoy!
———–
So just the other day, I was in the Trump Steak House in the “Trump Tower Tampa”. I was having a “Trump Vodka” with a splash of “Trump Ice” water. My 3rd wife and I were waiting on our “Trump Steaks” She says , ” We should go to one of the “4 Trump Casinos” on vacation. I say “You know we should, and thanks to my degree from “Trump University” I am doing so well that I just paid off my “Trump Mortgage” we can afford it!” So my wife puts down her “Trump Magazine” and takes out her tablet and goes to the travel site “GoTrump.com ” She books us a round trip ticket to Atlantic City flying first class on “Trump Airlines”. My wife loves to play the slots but I think I will say in the room and watch the “Trump Network” “The United States Football League” game is on and the “New Jersey Generals” are in the playoffs and I don’t want to miss it! We are both excited because it is going to be “Great Again” to go there and get “Tired of Winning”. You know what else I am great at winning at? “Trump the Game” Now some people say, from what I hear that this did not happen. Those people are losers, don’t listen to them! “Trump is a great businessman that never fails, and thanks to him and his products my life is a huge success”
(Please note Trump products mentioned are failed products, resulting in losses for investors)
@Pch101:
I wasn’t commenting on his chances, just his preferred tactics.
@Jen: @Pch101:
And what it says about the appeal to a significant fraction of the electorate, Worthy of a Jerry Springer audience.
@Jen:
It will be fascinating, in a grotesque way, to see how Trump conducts himself in a debate with Clinton. Will he keep flinging insults around the stage? Call her “Crooked Hillary”? Yammer on about her husband’s affairs? Or will he simply refuse to debate her?
Trump does not need to dig up any old stuff. He does not need to dig up anything. There is enough new stuff coming out every few days .
Scandals unlimited
@Tyrell:
Well, he IS bringing up the old stuff. Today in the Washington Post he’s bringing up the suicide of Vince Foster, calling Foster’s suicide “very fishy.”
It’s ironic: Trump and his fans object vociferously whenever one of Trump’s past buffoonish/vulgar/bigoted/ignorant statements is quoted, or one of his sleazy actions revealed–but he’s running his entire campaign as a retrospective of the Clintons’ past.
@CSK: I think he’ll refuse to debate her.
After all, he appears to be getting away with not releasing his tax returns. How this clown is seemingly successfully trashing decades’ worth of presidential race norms is beyond me, but he is.
Sure this is all so 20 years ago, but there are a lot of 18-35 yr old voters who have never heard of the many women who made rape, molestation, sexual assault and sexual harassment allegations against Bill Clinton. Nor are they aware of how Mrs. “believe all accusers of rape” Clinton personally attacked these women.
And haven’t these young voters been taught by their universities by Department of Education edict that it’s never to late to decide a sexual encounter was rape and that the accused is guilty unless connected?
This is more than a political tactic against Hillary, it is exposing the hypocrisy of the Left on rape and sexual assault. Apparently, it is okay if the person is popular with the Leftist and happened way back in the past, but not if you speak out in ways unpopular with the Left, i.e., Bill Cosby.
From the looks of it, the Trump run is going to be transformative for American politics whether he wins or loses.
@Jen:
Oh, just wait until he occupies Washington in September with the grand opening of the Trump International hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. Below budget and on-time something not familiar to others along that avenue.
And expect a splashy star-studded event in what will then be the largest ballroom in DC, in say October.
@Jen:
Rock and a hard place for Trump here. If he refuses to debate her, he’ll look like a chicken,which he is. If he debates her, he makes a gigantic–no, a yuuuge–fool of himself, because he’s an ignoramus.
None of that will matter to the Trumpkins–they’d love it if he spent the debate time calling her a corrupt cow with a rapist husband–but it won’t win him additional fans.
@DrDaveT:
Flushing everything down the memory hole is a feature, not a bug.
For David Brooks, everyday is falling off a hay truck.
@JKB:
Where would we be if the right had bigger and more important goals than “exposing the hypocrisy of the Left?”
Once the Left has been exposed, then what?
@JKB:
I believe you’re referring to the grand opening of his new oil drum sized
container of Orange Spray Tan?
@Tyrell: “There is enough new stuff coming out every few days .Scandals unlimited”
Okay, then go ahead and name one. Just one. Not the BS email thing — that’s a year old. You say there are new scandals every day. So name one.
Oh, and the price of snacks at your local movie theater doesn’t count.
@CSK:
“You know, Iraq might not be in this state today if George W Bush hadn’t-”
“That’s in the past! Take responsibility! Stop dredging up ancient history, libtard! Now, let me tell you about how FDR and Jimmy Carter destroyed America and gay married your daughters to ISIS. It all started back in 1882…”
@Tyrell:
Would you care to point out an actual “scandal”?
We’ve has over 25 years of Republican investigation of everything Hillary Clinton has done. Simple question: Has Hillary ever been charged, tried and/or convicted of anything?
For those of you too young to remember the Foster suicide and its aftermath, Booman has a good summary:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/5/24/111749/271
The “vast right wing conspiracy” Hillary complained of was, and is, very real. Republicans have been vile asshats for a long time.
@al-Alameda:
Who needs trials and convictions when baseless accusations and innuendo will suffice?
I don’t mean this as a defense of Trump, but the media does play a part in this by asking him about things like Foster. They’re eager to get the feces-flinging started.
People are in favor of Trump in part because he’s not a politician, not an insider. But he’s really the worst sort of politician: ignorant, empty slogans and promises, lies, no policy substance, nasty. It’s a trend that has been going on for years on the right, and he’s just the latest. Where will it end?
Hillary can’t engage Trump effectively until after Sanders goes away. It won’t work. People are insisting she fight a two-front war. Well, she isn’t strong enough as a candidate to fight a two-front war, she’ll be lucky to win a one-front war. And since she’s the only army we’ve got to go against Trump, it is really, really past time for Bernie and his misogynist die-hards to join the real fight instead of playing the part of fifth columnists.
@al-Alameda:
The biggest scandal about Clinton for most right-wingers is that she’s a liberal Democrat. But they’re such BS artists, you’ll never hear them admit it.
@James Pearce:
In their post-factual world, The Exposure results immediately in a denouement where all of humanity agrees with the error of supporting Crooked Hillary.
Maybe you people would be more sympathetic to her if Juanita Broderick had been carrying a mattress around with her wherever she goes for the last 15 years or so.
“Alleged” sexual misconduct. Surely you aren’t saying a woman would lie about being raped? It’s that misogynistic attitude of yours that is the whole problem.
@reid:
So are you suggesting that “the media” should avoid holding Trump accountable for his words ?
@John: Counterpoint: the only rape claims conservatives believe are those involving Bill Clinton.
We can, and unfortunately probably will, play this game constantly for the next six months.
@Steve V:
The only rape accusations democrats don’t believe are those against Bill Clinton.
This attack works. One can argue that it’s inconsistent or unproven or exaggerated or whatever, but it does work and it will continue to work. It undercuts HRC’s attack on Trump’s morality, his misogyny, etc… It deprives her of a big part of her arsenal.
@Bob@Youngstown: Of course not. I’m saying that the media is eager to get the nastiness going between Trump and the Clintons, so they ask him about things like this garbage from the ’90s. I thought the Foster bit was in response to an interview question about it, though I’m not sure about that. If Trump brought it up all on his own, then the media gets a pass on that one.
No, but:
1) A number of the Clintons’ business cronies were convicted of felonies, including their Lieutenant governor and closest business associates. Forty felony convictions. That’s four times as many as came out of Iran-Contra, but you would never regard that as a bunch of nothing and a waste of time.
2) Starr’s/Ray’s reports indicate numerous ethical/legal misdeeds that either did not rise up to the level of indictment or that they felt would not results in conviction (in particular, because they did not regard the witnesses as reliable and certain records mysteriously vanished). Example: firing the White House Travel Office staff was not illegal. Lying about why they fired them, resulting in a ruinous trial that ended in acquittal in two hours was not illegal. But it was slimy. And Ray’s report outlined numerous statements by Mrs. Clinton that while false and damaging, were not crimes.
Accepting that the Republicans are crazy does not mean you have to believe that the Clintons are ethical and honest.
It will be interesting to see how the Democrats respond to this. I think that Brodderick, for example, is telling something close to the truth. But I also believe Ivana Trump was telling something close to the truth when she initially said Trump raped her. And Trump’s despicable behavior with women is *way* more relevant to this race than the behavior of the potential First Dude.
@reid: By the way, I already said that I wasn’t defending Trump and that the media is “playing a part”. My earlier post’s second paragraph should make it clear that I’m not a fan of Trump. The media sometimes incites the nastiness, and Trump happily goes along. We, the people that want a reasonable and intelligent process, are the victims.
@al-Alameda: Has Hillary ever been charged, tried and/or convicted of anything?
If you’re still wondering how someone as beyond the pale as Trump could win the GOP nomination and be withing spitting distance of the White House, look no further than the words above. There may be no single more damaging moment in our societal collapse of standards than when Democrats decided “scandal=criminal conviction” and anything short of that is perfectly fine…at least when it comes to Bill and Hillary Clinton and not lesser mortals like Anthony Weiner.
Mike
The Juanita Broderick story is believable, and for whatever reason Clinton managed to be on record saying every story about assault should be believed. Potentially it’s the type of thing that’s going to sway socially moderate upscale white voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, e.g. people fine with gay rights but not at all tolerant of trashy behavior. How Trump plans on capitalizing on any of this is beyond me. I’m guessing he doesn’t know either.
Hillary Clinton is really unpopular. Not in Trump territory. Reading the mainstream liberals in the media I get the sense that they believe she’s actually liked outside of a few places in the Northeast and elsewhere. Not true. She’s as unpopular as hell. People who are going to vote for her are going to vote while disliking her. So you hit hard and you do it better than the opponent does and hope that the stars align. That’s Trump’s strategy..
I am worried as h*ll about this election, but I just keep reassuring myself with what happened in her Senatorial races. Everyone in the yakking class, Repubs and Dems both, “knew” that Hillary was an unlikable, awful crow. “Everyone” had accepted that as true for years. But the actual electorate didn’t view her that way. She won her first term and then was re-elected. There is this mindless feedback loop of “she’s unlikable because everyone says so”. But to most people she just comes off as a bit boring, but concerned and competent.
@MBunge:
To be fair, though, Donald Trump (as opposed to a more traditional Republican) is within spitting distance of the White House because the Republican party has a dysfunctional relationship with their voters.
Blithe dismissals of Clinton scandals might push a generic Republican over the top. But Trump‘s nomination can only be blamed on the folks who voted for him.
@MBunge: Yes, invoking legal technicalities is never a winning political strategy.
The polls of democratic party voters say the exact opposite and you’re wrong.
@MBunge:
You keep saying this, but it is not true and was never true. Democrats are all-too-aware of the difference; the fact that the GOP war criminals of the W white house were never even charged, much less convicted, is quite well known to them.
The difference that the Clinton-haters don’t seem to get is that sliminess is not binary, yes-or-no. The only way this can be a toss-up is if “illegally firing the White House travel office staff” is somehow just as bad for America as “starting a war that’s going to kill hundreds of thousands of people on a made-up pretext”. Hint: it’s not.
Slimy men have been good Presidents. Honorable men have been bad Presidents. Only in the Fox echo chamber is it true that America is necessarily better off with a (hypothetical) moral President, regardless of policies or ability.
@MarkedMan: I agree, especially since I spend a substantial amount of time in class with a lot of college-going youth (born, ironically, during Clinton’s second term) at what once upon a time would have been deemed a conservative university but is now probably considered a RINO university. This is all entirely anecdotal, but I find it interesting, having observed college students over the past 15 years or so. A lot of these students think Hillary is “cute.” They like her pantsuits. Occasionally they pass around the memes on Facebook of her with her cell phone. They kinda sorta know she was married to Bill Clinton, but they primarily seem to know her as one of Obama’s people (“wasn’t she the secretary of something for Obama?”) While as a political junkie I find this infuriating, I feel if these students go out to vote (and are able to vote) I don’t think Hillary will do as badly with them as the pundits might think she would.
@MBunge: So let me see if I understand your new standard: When anyone in political office is accused of a crime — even if it’s by a political enemy who has no evidence whatsoever, just an accusation — that person should resign or our society collapses?
So when right wing hero Eric Erickson called a sitting Supreme Court justice a “goat f*cking child molester,” the fact that Kennedy didn’t immediately resign his seat helps destroy the fabric of our society?
And when that insane woman running for Texas state school board insists that Obama worked as a gay prostitute, Obama should also resign, lest his staying in office hurt our moral fabric?
What if I say that Paul Ryan masterminded the Isabella Stewart Gardner art theft? Is he now required to step down from congress?
Or does this new morality of yours only apply to people you don’t like?
@Hal_10000: ” I think that Brodderick, for example, is telling something close to the truth.”
Of course Ken Starr, who was desperate to pin anything on the president, and who had access to all the evidence and to Brodderick herself couldn’t bring himself to believe her. But you know so much better, because — well, because you hate Democrats, and that means whatever you “think” must be true!
@reid: Rodger Stone has been pushing this Foster conspiracy for almost a year now.
So Donald says (in his own way) ‘ the whole Vice Foster thing is very fishy’ . Implying that Vince Foster’s death has not been sufficiently investigated.
Agree that the media is always ready to “dish the dirt” and Trump is more than happy to throw dirt for the media to capitalize on.
What’s disheartening is that the “media” seems to be unaware that they are being used in this way.
What I expect from a good reporter/investigator is a demand for evidence. Will it change minds? Probably not among the core Trump supporters.
They don’t need no stinkin’ evidence.
@steve s:
Here’s one poll:
Even more worrisome for Clinton’s prospects are voters’ views of her as a person: 71 percent say she would “say anything to get elected,” 66 percent say she is not “honest and trustworthy,” and 57 percent say she lacks “strong moral values.
But regardless of polls, I don’t see Hillary Clinton enjoying strong support. I live in the heart of a Liberal/Left bubble. I don’t actually know any Republicans, and there’s nobody who is enthused about Hillary. It’s all exasperation with Sanders and fear of Trump and the GOP. Also, I live in a voting district that is heavily African-American, and despite the support by African-Americans for her I’m not seeing anything. I haven’t even seen signs, and we had a competitive primary.
So because of Trump and his base, many people will try to make her better than she seems to be, which is understandable. Trump’s strategy is to turn this act into a thoroughly degrading affair.
@Blue Galangal:
Both Clinton and Trump have net unfavorable ratings. These don’t matter so much right now, but the trend could become an issue for each or both of them as the election nears.
Both of them will need to improve their own favorable ratings and/or exploit the other candidates unfavorable ratings. I suspect that Trump’s blue collar appeal will come up short in comparison to Clinton’s outreach to women and minorities and that she’ll win with a comfortable electoral vote lead, but the popular vote may be tight and November 8 will prove to be a nail biter.
Arguing that she is competent and less offensive than the other guy may be enough to win, but it’s not exactly the most compelling value proposition, either. She might be a one-term president.
Ha…
So much for that paragon of truth and protecting women everywhere.
@wr: Well, I happened to be looking at this Governor Macauliffe flap, and low and behold if there is not a Clinton connection !
But that is okay, I doubt if nowadays you could find anyone without a bunch of beer cans dragging behind them. Things are not like they used to be: honor in politics.
Even all that, I will probably end up voting for Hillary; strong organization, experience, and knows Washington – no having to learn on the job. Also, tough and pragmatic.
Unless Iron Mike or Powell jump in.
@Pch101: I dunno about one-term – it depends on what happens if she gets into the White House, as is so often the case. If she has a Democratic Senate, for instance, she might get some reforms put through that will raise her profile with some demographics. If she has a Republican Congress, McConnell’s vow re: Obama could well be true about her, given that Obama has had a remarkably scandal-free administration that Hillary may be unable to duplicate (on the other hand, she might be more, er, disciplined than her husband).
Anyway. They thought the same about Obama being a one-term president, and I think there was a period in there after the first mid term where I wondered if he would win re-election. But then Romney won the nomination… But generally speaking, I agree; and as I said, this is entirely anecdotal. It also depends on the GOTV (for both sides, and, again speaking anecdotally, college students seem quite difficult to get to the polls).
@DrDaveT: You keep saying this, but it is not true and was never true.
No Republican EVER said of Ronald Reagan, “Well, he was never convicted of a crime!” They may have said a whole bunch of other BS in defense of the man, but they never implied or stated that criminal conviction should be the standard for Presidential or political behavior. I don’t think anyone ever made that excuse even for Nixon.
The whole “if it’s not a criminal conviction, who cares?” is pretty exclusively something Democrats came up with and only apply to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Mike
@DrDaveT: You keep saying this, but it is not true and was never true.
No Republican EVER said of Ronald Reagan, “Well, he was never convicted of a crime!” They may have said a whole bunch of other BS in defense of the man, but they never implied or stated that criminal conviction should be the standard for Presidential or political behavior. I don’t think anyone ever made that excuse even for Nixon.
The whole “if it’s not a criminal conviction, who cares?” is pretty exclusively something Democrats came up with and only apply to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Mike
@wr: So let me see if I understand your new standard: When anyone in political office is accused of a crime — even if it’s by a political enemy who has no evidence whatsoever, just an accusation — that person should resign or our society collapses?
See, the point I’m trying to make is that there’s a whole lot of behavior that falls short of criminal which should still be unacceptable in politics. But it clearly isn’t and a big reason for that is people like you who blithely excused and willfully ignored a whole bunch of previously unacceptable things when it came to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Mike
Re: Vince Foster.
People enjoy conspiracies and deception in the same way they enjoy religion and Chemtrails. The GOP made up a bunch of things in the 90s in order to justify their witch-hunt, but they didn’t really get–because they were a bunch of repressed tools (for example, Kenneth Starr)–to use it. Bob Dole was happy to lose from day one, and Bush II ran on the profit of the witch-hunt, but that was it. Trump is using the nonsense, and debunking it is pointless, because its point is in being fictitiously and magically true. It’s better than the awful Jesus of the fundamentalists, who has now devolved into being concerned about public restrooms.
The story is that of lizard-people betrayal, and this is the most universal story in modern American history. Blacks believe a ton of things about the US government, some of them, such as the CIA selling crack and heroin being sort of true. Your average liberal/leftist believes that corporations rule everything. Trump’s offering up to people who want to make America great a view that contradicts this idea of America–it was always lizard people and murderous oligarchs and it’s far more fun to be a bad citizen and believe that than believe in the gruesome pedantry of the founding fathers and the constitution.
@James Pearce: But Trump‘s nomination can only be blamed on the folks who voted for him.
That’s like saying you can’t blame an arson on the person who soaked the place in gasoline, just the guy who lit the match.
Mike
@MBunge:
I’m pretty sure the same group had the gasoline and the match for the Trump nomination.
Now there were a bunch of people saying that soaking the house in gasoline wasn’t a good long term plan, but hey, Clinton once littered while jaywalking, so ¯|_(ツ)_/¯
@John: Broaddrick swore under oath in an affidavit submitted to Court in the Paula Jones case that she was not assaulted by Clinton and he made no untoward advances. So she is a liar: she either lied then or is lying now. Given that her prior statement was under oath, that’s the one I’m going with.
@Modulo Myself:
Not arguing with you Modulo, as the numbers are the numbers, but this drives me nuts. People, especially the punditry, have two completely conflicting certainties about Clinton. 1) She will say anything that her audience wants to hear and 2) She splits hairs and nuances (TM, my new verb) everything she says. I’ve listened to her for years and she is one of the most straightforward politicians you are going to get. Ask her about a $15 minimum wage and you get a very detailed policy about when and where it is good and when and where it is not, because she had really, really thought about this. That is anything but “saying anything people want to hear”. so that second charge, about being overly nuanced, is closer to the truth. But I don’t think she’s usually trying to obfuscate, it’s just who she is. She is a policy wonk and knows that the devil is in the details.
People talk about how you can’t pin her down. For crying out loud, go to her website! She has detailed positions,in writing for dozens of different things. They are at a much higher level of detail than what you would see from 98% of candidates. But, truth be told, no one wants to read them. But they are there, and they are explicit and you can bet that she will be executing on them if she becomes president.
How was she successful in the Senate? By understanding laws at the detail level and always volunteering herself and her staff to write up those details. Most politicians and especially nowadays most Republican politicians, don’t understand the importance of the language of a law. Heck I suspect most modern day Republicans would rather their laws didn’t pass. You can’t get blamed for something that never made it into law because it certainly would have been perfect if only the traitors hadn’t let you down.
@John:
Which of the accusations do you believe?
Juanita Broaddrick? Sure she doesn’t remember when the alleged rape occurred but that’s to be expected when one waits over 20 years to make the allegation. The only thing for certain is that it could not have occurred on the day she initially claimed it did.
Paula Jones? A Republican Judge did throw out the case due to a lack of merit. But who knows, maybe she was all part of the Clinton Cartel..
Kathleen Willey? Well, she managed to dodge perjury charges thanks to Ken Starr’s grant of immunity but honestly, he didn’t believe her and if you can’t convince Ken Starr you’ve got problems. And of course it didn’t help that Linda Tripp of all people also thought Willey was lying.
@Tyrell: ” Well, I happened to be looking at this Governor Macauliffe flap, and low and behold if there is not a Clinton connection !”
The governor of Virginia, who is a friend of the Clintons, is being investigated for campaign contribution issues. If that’s your idea of a scandal, then there is no one in the world who is not somehow part of one.
@MBunge: “But it clearly isn’t and a big reason for that is people like you who blithely excused and willfully ignored a whole bunch of previously unacceptable things when it came to Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
For God’s sake, SUCH AS WHAT?
Bill slept around. I don’t care. Some people they knew in Arkansas went to jail. I don’t care.
The reason no one listens to you is that you take right-wing fever dreams about their evil, assume it’s all true, and then decry the left for not having the morality to join you — when in fact, we (or let me just speak for myself here — I) simply don’t believe the swill you choose to wallow in.
And of the two presidents you’re comparing, only one of them was involved in a conspiracy to sell arms to a declared enemy of the US in order to funnel money illegally to a right wing death squad trying to overthrow a legitimate government.
So please forgive me if Clinton’s sex life doesn’t send me to the fainting couch. Unlike the Republicans around here I care more about a president willfully violating the constitution than I do one who fools around.
@MBunge:
In fairness the only people who might have been pressured to give evidence of a possible crime by Reagan were pardoned by Bush.
@MBunge:
Except that there were (apart from the sting that netted Ken Starr Lewinski’s Clinton-stained blue dress) no actual scandals. Yes, really. Briefly, the obvious “scandals”
Whitewater? **Nope
White House Travel Office? **Nope
Rose Law Office? **Nope
Suicide of Vince Foster? **Nope
Charges, trials, convictions? Nope, nope, nope, and nope.
Lying about having adultery sex with the owner of said stained blue dress? That one is not on Hillary, but yes, said husband was impeached, not convicted.
Seems to me that the fact that years of Ken Starr’s investigations resulted in no charges or convictions entitles Democrats to say that, in those cases that supposedly involved Hillary, no conviction (let alone no nothing) = no “scandal.”
Finally, a societal collapse of moral standards because Democrats do not believe that those non-scandals resulted in non-charges, non-trials, and non-convictions? I’m calling bulls*** on that, you probably don’t really believe it yourself.
@MBunge:
That’s a great metaphor, even if it doesn’t exactly fit.
This is Hillary’s second presidential run. Two out of 3 GOP nominees since that first run have been guys not named Donald Trump. You could draw a straight causal line from Hillary’s presence in the race to Trump’s dominance, but you’d have to skip over the Tea Party and 8 years of Republican incompetence first.
He’s the GOP nominee because the GOP is in disarray.
I have said, though, that Hillary’s presence in the race has made them reckless. But I’m not going to buy the “Look at what you made me do” rationale.
@James Pearce:
Did I say 8? I meant 16.
Outside a few Supreme Court victories, what accomplishments can they point to? “Kept us safe” after 9-11, a couple dumb wars, the worst recession in a generation, the Tea Party and government shutdowns, and now Donald Trump?
You don’t have to be a lefty to want nothing to do with that level of failure.
@MBunge:
Regarding Iran Contra at least, yes they did.
@wr:
Yeah, yeah, keep spinning. He didn’t disbelieve her. Her testimony was not relevant to his investigation because she said Clinton didn’t pressure her to stay silent. Starr wasn’t investigating Clinton’s alleged harassment or rape; he was investigating his obstruction of justice. Do try to keep up.
@JKB:
She never said “believe all accusers of rape”
So which JKB are you today? Lying JKB? Ignorant JKB? Some sort of crossover perhaps?
@wr:
You are forgetting one of the cornerstones of conservative thinking. If anyone, anywhere is getting laid, they will be unhappy…
God, the energy we’re all putting into this…nothingness.
Is this how the next 5+ months is going to go? The New York Times runs a story about Trump’s issues with women, which he perceives as a Clinton attack along with the super PAC advertisement using his own words–and his response is to snap back with conspiracy junk (Foster) and allegations about *Bill* Clinton that are decades old and as others have noted the claims are all over the map. I heard Trump say “well, they said some really nasty things about me…”
Trump is going to wear himself out pretty quickly if this is how he addresses things going forward. Maybe that’s the entire strategy of the Clinton Super PAC: wear the toddler out so that he’s napping during the dinner party and let the adults talk.
@MBunge:
If you like. The part you don’t seem to get is that this is only after the “we’re going to convene a kangaroo court to investigate everything you’ve ever done, in order to be able to nail you for SOMETHING” treatment. At which point… crickets. What do you think similar scrutiny would have revealed about Dick Cheney, or Trump himself?
Like almost all politicians, the Clintons are occasionally slimy. (Note how I concede your probably unjustified point of treating them as a pair, rather than as individuals.) Unlike most recent Republicans, they have not done anything that is actually either (1) really bad for America, or (2) an actual crime. Their downside is… occasional sliminess. This is clearly orders of magnitude better than the downside of the opposition at this point. That matters.
@Modulo Myself:
Ditto from Marin County. I saw my second Hillary bumper sticker today, the first being the one on my car.
If she were better at this she could swing into it and defuse it. Walk out and say, “Listen, you don’t have to tell me about my husband’s failings. Guess what: I noticed. But that’s going to be my name on the ballot. That’s H-I-L-L-A-R-Y, not Bill. You want to tell me I shouldn’t consult Bill Clinton from time to time? Then you’re a fool, because smart is in short supply in this world and he’s smart and experienced. I always want good advice, hell I’d even take Trump’s advice if I needed to know how to bankrupt a casino and rip off college kids.”
@DrDaveT:
Indeed. If you follow MBunge and Hal, the Clintons misdeeds, proven and unproven, are as bad as GWB leading us into a stupid war that cost 4000 dead. Well, no they’re aren’t, so spare me the purity trolling.
Let’s take a look at some of the actual folks that have been President. Ulysses S. Grant had corrupt and unsavory friends. JFK ran around on Jackie O. LBJ was an often crude and cruel man. And of course there are all the slaveholding Presidents and Founding Fathers. So the pre Clinton Presidents aren’t baby Jesus pure, but they all did their part for America.
My view of Presidents is strictly instrumental. They don’t have to be moral exemplars; they are there to do what is best for America. Hillary could eat kittens for breakfast on national TV, but if she appoints three liberal Supreme Court Justices and runs a competent shop , i.e. doesn’t tank the economy or get us into a ruinous war, then mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned. (Hopefully, she’ll do better than that).
I’m voting for Clinton with my eyes wide open. She is no Virgin Mary, but she doesn’t need to be. All she has to be is a better candidate for President than anyone else running for office this year, and she clears that bar easily.
@DrDaveT:
This goes to why most Americans don’t give a crap about Benghazi. Even if one accepts the laughable proposition Mrs. Clinton herself screwed that up so badly it led directly to the deaths of four Americans, it would not even begin to approach the level of horror G. W. Bush’s galactic fvck-up in Iraq did, with its loss of four THOUSAND Americans and uncountable Iraqis, and the broad, bright line that can be drawn between that and the rise of ISIS.
No wonder the Republicans want to keep reminding us of spooge on a dress.
@MBunge:
Odd that you would argue this. Ronald Reagan IMO did worse than Bill Clinton ever did, as wr pointed out. Yet to most right-wingers, he is Saint Ronaldus Maximus, the greatest President who ever lived, the Moses who put the USA back on to the path to righteousness. When you mention the Iran-contra thing, they brush that aside as a mere peccadillo-when they admit he knew about it all.
If we had the same attitude toward Clinton as right-wingers do towards Reagan, we would be insisting the his name go on airports and highways all over the land , and calling for him to be on Mount Rushmore. Try again.
@stonetools:
Sorry, when did I ever defend anything that craptastic President did? I must have missed it. Clinton, for whatever misdeeds he committed, real or imagined, was a much better President than W. I’ve said so on many many occasions.
(With that specific allegation, I don’t think Bush “misled” as much as “failed to ask important questions”, which is almost as bad a failing.)
@Modulo Myself: Oh you mean the Juanita Broderick that filed an affidavit stating no sexual assault had occurred? You remember when she was subpoenaed for the Paula Jones case?
It’s almost amusing how she made all kinds of claims right up till she was going to be held legally responsible for lying. Then suddenly she recanted everything she had been claiming. Once she was no longer legally liable she went back to her old habit.
So no her story isn’t believable.
I imagine the Vince Foster bullshit is being brought up so Trump can react to the above information by claiming that Jaunita only claimed no sexual assault occurred because she didn’t want to be Vince Fostered or something…
The Clintonistas have had close to 20 years to rewrite history, and it’s been a good run. Too bad reality is finally biting back. Time to lay down some truthbombs.
1) Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath.
1A) Bill Clinton lied under oath about an extramarital affair with a subordinate in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment of a subordinate when he was governor of Arkansas.
1B) The questions he lied in response to were perfectly legitimate under the laws governing sexual harassment, including a law he himself signed.
1C) Clinton finally settled the lawsuit for a hefty hunk of change.
1D) Clinton settled the perjury by surrendering his license to practice law.
2) Doug, you said:
In November 2015, Hillary said “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.” In 1998, in an interview on the Today show in 1998, speaking of the women accusing Bill of sexual harassment and sexual assault, Hillary said “I think we’re going to find some other things. And I think that when all of this is put into context, and we really look at the people involved here, look at their motivations and look at their backgrounds, look at their past behavior, some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.”
Now, as far as the “old news” element, last week the New York Times ran a piece on Trump’s relationships with women back in 1991. I don’t recall any mention of that here, denouncing it as “old news.” I also don’t recall any mention of how it was exposed as a smear almost immediately, with the Times’ main source immediately coming out and saying that she was misquoted. and the Times had completely and willfully misrepresented what she told them.
The main difference between calling something “totally unconscionable” and dismissing it as “politics ain’t beanbag” seems to be the angle of attack. If it’s against the left, it’s the former. If it’s against the right, it’s the latter.
And Doug, if you can pry yourself away from updating your inevitable “holding my nose and endorsing Hillary” piece you’ve been polishing for a couple of years now, there are some really interesting stories that have somehow escaped your notice.
A) Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, longtime Clinton crony, is under FBI investigation for financial matters dating to his tenure at the Clinton Foundation.
B) A federal judge in Texas hearing the deferred-immigration case just smacked the Justice Department for repeatedly lying and making material misrepresentations to the court, and ordered every Justice Department attorney to take mandatory legal ethics courses AND stripped them of their right to appear in any court without being licensed in that court.
I probably mangled a few details on it, but here’s a good account.
Idanian out. (Mic drop)
There is an episode of BBC´s Panorama, where a reporter asks Donald Trump about his ties to the mafia, and the Donald simply leaves the room. He shouldn´t be toying with that.
@Jenos Idanian: (Click)
You were right, it’s a good app to add.
@C. Clavin: “Ha…
Kenneth Starr has reportedly been ousted as Baylor University’s president in the wake of the Texas university’s sexual-assault scandal.
So much for that paragon of truth and protecting women everywhere.”
He did his job as he was paid for. At Baylor, it was aiding and abetting rapes by a winning football program.
@MBunge: “No Republican EVER said of Ronald Reagan, “Well, he was never convicted of a crime!” They may have said a whole bunch of other BS in defense of the man, but they never implied or stated that criminal conviction should be the standard for Presidential or political behavior. I don’t think anyone ever made that excuse even for Nixon.”
Yeah, right.
@MBunge: “That’s like saying you can’t blame an arson on the person who soaked the place in gasoline, just the guy who lit the match.”
Well, wrong, but do go on.
Trump is the GOP Base personified.
@Jenos Idanian:
Is that really the only difference you can find between, say, “Started an endless unwinnable war in Iraq on false pretenses, getting tens of thousands killed and destabilizing the whole region” and “Had sex with a White House intern and then lied about it repeatedly” or “Exclusively used a private email server for official business, in probable violation of semi-official State Department IT policy”? Really?
When you can start enumerating the things either Clinton did that seriously damaged America or American interests, you will be on your way toward maybe eventually having the beginnings of a case about who should or should not be President.
@DrDaveT: Seriously, dude? “But Bush! Iraq!” is the best you can do?
As far as “When you can start enumerating the things either Clinton did that seriously damaged America or American interests,” that’s a way, way too fertile field to tackle on such short notice. But I’ll give you a teaser: Bill signed the Iraq Regime Change bill that led to that war, Hillary voted for it, and Hillary oversaw our relations with Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, and Russia while Secretary of State.
The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.
@Jenos Idanian: Yes, Little Jenos, it was the Clintons who invaded Iraq.
Is it possible you’re getting dumber?
@wr:
Hey, it was predictable. “Look what you made me do” is practically the GOP motto.
Don’t forget, the Clintons were also responsible for 9/11…