Handicapping The Debate
Could Thursday's match-up shake up the race?
President Biden and former President Trump have bypassed the longstanding debate commission and scheduled their first contest for well ahead of the summer party conventions. Will this bold move matter?
Reporting for the NYT (“For Biden and Trump, a Debate Rematch With Even Greater Risks and Rewards“), Lisa Lerer, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman set the stage:
The debate between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump this week will be the highest-stakes moment of their rematch, plunging two presidents into an extraordinarily early confrontation before a divided and angry nation.
For Mr. Biden, the debate in Atlanta offers an opportunity to remind voters of the chaos of his predecessor’s leadership, his criminal convictions and to warn of an even darker future should he win a second term. For Mr. Trump, it’s a chance to make his case that America has grown more expensive, weaker and more dangerous under his successor.
But the face-off on Thursday also poses significant risks for the two men — both of them the oldest candidates ever to compete in a presidential race — who have been locked in a contentious rivalry defined by mutual hatred for more than four years. That animosity heightens the evening’s unpredictability. A notable misstep — a physical stumble, a mental lapse or a barrage of too-personal insults — could reverberate for months, because of the unusually long period until they meet again for the second debate in September.
[…]
This presidential debate will be the earliest in the nation’s history and notably different from those familiar to many Americans. Hosted by CNN rather than a nonpartisan commission, it will be simulcast on more than five networks, without a live audience and without opening statements. Each candidate will have two minutes to answer questions, followed by one-minute rebuttals and responses to the rebuttals, and their microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak.
[…]
Almost no one — including some of Mr. Biden’s top strategists — expects the debate to immediately upend a race between two extremely well-defined candidates. Biden aides view the debate as the starting bell for the general election, an event that will provide a high-profile opportunity to define the terrain of the contest. They sought successfully to move the debate months earlier to help prod the public to pay closer attention.
[…]
Both candidates are, in their own ways, incumbents. Yet, the debate reverses their standing from 2020. Four years ago, it was Mr. Trump who was forced to defend his record in the midst of a raging pandemic. Now, it is Mr. Biden who will face attacks over his stewardship of an economy that, while strong by some measures, has been defined for many voters by high prices and a tight housing market.
The Editors of The Atlantic weigh in with “A Test of Coherency at This Year’s Debate.”
On the debate stage, the candidates each face a test to prove that they have what it takes to be in office. For Trump, the debate will be one of his first public forays before a national audience since leaving the White House—and concern about his cognitive well-being will be center stage. Until now, people have largely tuned out the former president, Jonathan Karl argued on Washington Week With The Atlantic. And despite his omnipresence as a political figure, this is not “the same Donald Trump of the Trump presidency,” Karl said. “His ideas have gotten fuzzy.”
Meanwhile, Biden will almost certainly face attacks about his frailty as concern about his physical health and mental presence has become central to arguments against his candidacy. Both candidates face a certain kind of danger in taking the stage, but whereas Biden needs to prove he’s not senile, “the expectations for Trump are higher,” Anne Applebaum said. “It will be harder for Trump to appear coherent, to sound coherent.”
“One of the things that’s at stake in this election is: Do we vote on policy, do we vote on what’s really happening in the economy, or do we vote on bombast and identity politics and, essentially, lies that suit whatever biases you have?” Applebaum asked. “The debate might show that.”
Ken Thomas and Alex Leary (“Biden vs. Trump: Will the First 2024 Debate Jolt the Race?“) weigh in for WSJ:
Thursday’s showdown in Atlanta, the first of two debates scheduled for this year, provides the campaign rivals their biggest platform to establish the stakes of the race. It marks the earliest encounter ever by two presumptive presidential nominees since the beginning of televised debates in 1960 and will offer the many voters who haven’t fully tuned in to the campaign a chance to see the two side by side.
“That’s the power of this moment. The political world will stop, sit still and focus its attention on this debate for one night,” said Kevin Madden, an adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
[…]
Ahead of the debate, Biden has repeatedly attacked Trump’s character while Trump has time and again assailed the president’s cognitive abilities, telling audiences Biden can’t find his way off a stage. Each faces the challenge of winning over a small but crucial group of voters who aren’t happy with either choice.
Millions more will be tuning in expecting fireworks, and Biden and Trump are poised to deliver. Both share a common objective as they prepare for the debate: how to get under the other’s skin.
WaPo’s Dan Balz (“Let’s see if a debate can change the trajectory of voter sentiment“):
Though there have been some predictable attempts to lower expectations, the two candidates and their allies have spent time and money portraying each other in the most negative light possible: Trump as an unhinged felon on the one hand; Biden as a frail and not mentally sharp incumbent on the other.
By the end of their 90-minute encounter, whoever has done the more effective job of countering those depictions could be judged the winner. The debate is being called Biden’s best opportunity to change the trajectory of the campaign, but both candidates have much to gain or lose by their performance.
After a lengthy discussion of the polls, which were flat for months but have ticked slightly in Biden’s direction since Trump’s conviction on multiple felony charges, Balz notes,
Stories about polls abound, as news organizations attempt to analyze different parts of the electorate. The Post recently published a major survey of what are called the “Deciders”: voters in the battleground states who are not firmly committed or whose voting history leaves open the question of whether they will vote for president in November.
That poll showed that many of these Deciders are more naturally part of Biden’s coalition but are considering a vote for one of the non-major-party candidates. These voters are less enthusiastic about the choice between Biden and Trump, are less likely to think their vote really matters and are paying less attention than those who are firmly committed.
Meanwhile, there’s this (“Trump Suggests Biden May Use Supplements to Get ‘Jacked Up’ for Debate“):
In his last scheduled rally before he takes the stage for a presidential debate, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday mocked President Biden over his preparations, suggesting his opponent might be using medical supplements.
“Right now, crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Philadelphia, pantomiming quotation marks with his hands. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass.”
[…]
“I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right?” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Biden. Moments later, Mr. Trump, who has previously demanded Mr. Biden take a drug test before their debate, seemed to accuse Mr. Biden of using illegal drugs.
“I’m sure he’ll be prepared,” Mr. Trump said. He paused, then, referring to an incident in which a bag of cocaine was found in the guest lobby of the West Wing last year, added with a smirk: “Whatever happened to all that cocaine that was missing a month ago from the White House?” (The Secret Service closed its investigation into that episode after security video failed to provide any leads and no fingerprints were found on the bag.)
Though Mr. Trump built anticipation for the debate with his insistence for months that he would be willing to challenge Mr. Biden “anytime, anywhere, any place,” on Saturday, the former president criticized debate rules his campaign had agreed to, including the network hosting the event and the lack of a live audience.
“It’s like death,” Mr. Trump said. “This could be the most boring — or it could be the most exciting. Who knows?”
To the extent the matchup is seen as a test of cognitive ability, I’d bet on Trump’s incoherent ranting working against him. But one never knows.
Pretty much everything about this race is unprecedented. It’s the first matchup of two men who have been President of the United States in the modern era. No two candidates have ever been better known, with both having been household names for decades. They are, as has been constantly noted, far and away the two oldest major party nominees to face off. And this is all happening in the most bifurcated information environment in our history.*
That Trump is also the first former President and first major party presidential nominee to be a convicted felon is, of course, noteworthy and will doubtless be noted many times in the debate. I just doubt that many people who are undecided between the two men will have their minds changed based on that. That Trump is a shady businessman and a womanizer have long been baked into his public persona.Still, something has changed the dynamic of the race, if ever so slightly. The polling aggregates have moved a percentage point or so in Biden’s favor since the New York verdict.
Regardless, the expectations for both men are laughably low. If Biden can get through the night without falling down and drooling all over himself, he’ll defy expectations. Ditto if Trump can manage to avoid nonsensical rambling. If I had to bet, Biden is more likely to succeed.
*While hyper-partisan newspapers were the norm from the colonial era well into the 19th Century, they were localized.
Really?!
He is a rapist, not a womanizer.
It is surprising (and disappointing) that even you can’t bring yourself to fully acknowledge what Trump is. By not describing him accurately, you are contributing to him being normalized.
Brief note that several pundits are predicting Trump withdraws before Thursday using refusal of drug screening as an excuse. Would be weirdly Trumpian move.
@drj: I’m referring to the New York trial and the degree to which it changed public perceptions of him. He was not charged with, much less convicted of, rape in that case. The Jean Carroll civil trial was essentially a finding of rape but under a much lower preponderance of evidence standard.
And even that’s debatable:
It’s rather weird for a judge to argue that, despite a jury’s finding of fact according to his own instructions on what the law says, we should defer to “modern parlance.”
Regardless, yes, I think Trump is a rapist. Probably on a serial basis. But, again, I’m referring there to the degree to which a particular criminal case changed the public’s perception and arguing that the underlying behavior is already baked into public perception of him.
@drj:
Gary Heart must be spinning in his grave.
And that’s hard, because he’s still alive.
I hope the Biden team and the Secret Service have a plan for when Trump leaves his podium and moves towards Biden.
Oh, and Trump definitely is planning to interrupt Biden. His mic might be off but Biden will be able to hear him. Maggie Haberman’s source telling her different is just pre-spin, probably to get Biden’s guard down.
I think that Trump will actually be difficult to debate now. He is basically one long Gish gallup. I have been involved in high school debate for years. As a judge I can take off points if someone is clearly lying. Wont be true in this debate.
Steve
@MarkedMan: Exactly this. I wonder about the physical arrangement and production of the debate. If a candidate interrupts or otherwise creates disturbances while the other candidate is speaking, will they be asked to stop? How far apart will the podiums be? Will both candidates be shown on screen at all times, so that the public can see interruptions take place? Will the microphones pick up any sound from the other podium?
The candidates are not unknown quantities. Trump is Trump, and that is not going to change. I am extremely unlikely to change my opinion of the candidates based on the upcoming performances. The media spin machine will be out in full telling us that candidate A lost because he scratched his nose or candidate B should be elected because he did/did not give a smart-ass answer to some question. You and I know these dudes; the debate is just a form of entertainment.
The important question in my mind is whether Sha’Carri Richardson’s brilliant Olympic qualifier performance will translate into a victory over the excellent Jamaicans in Paris.
@James Joyner:
The jury did rule Trump committed the act as described. I was a witness after the fact in a rape case many years ago. The officer explained that penetration with a fingertip was rape under Texas law. It was not rape under NY law at the time of the Carroll incident. NY law was recently changed, partly as a result of the publicity around this case, and it is now rape. The judge was not deferring to modern parlance, he was deferring to current law.
There is a clip circulating of Biden, taking and answering a question from a foreign correspondent during his trip to France. The question asked was very nuanced and Biden answered it well. At the end of the clip, the commentator says, and I’m paraphrasing, “Donald Trump wouldn’t have understood the question, and couldn’t have answered it.”
I believe that this debate will show Trump wholly unqualified to be the president. He is unable to put together a cogent paragraph about almost anything, much less a detailed policy paragraph.
Inflation: Bad. Worst ever. No one has ever seen anything like it.
Migrants: All crimnals. No one was ever seen anything like it.
Crime: Out of control. No one has ever seen anything like it.
Abortion: Everyone is happy it’s back to the states. I ended Roe. Everyone can’t believe I solved it.
Taxes: I’ll cut everyone’s taxes. Everyone.
Yet another example of the media trying to shoehorn Trumpism into normal, traditional political behavior.
A candidate lowering expectations prior to a debate is perfectly normal and happens in practically every election cycle. A classic example of how this is done was John Kerry in 2004, in the weeks leading up to the first debate, going on various programs calling Bush a tough debater who had never lost a debate. When Kerry then went on to do well at the first debate, with Bush coming off like a deer caught in headlights, it led to boost in Kerry’s poll numbers. (Yes, Kerry went on to lose the election, but only very narrowly–his poll numbers never returned to pre-debate levels, where he’d been trailing Bush by a much wider margin than he ended up losing by.)
Trump isn’t taking that approach. He’s pathologically incapable of praising his opponents, even insincerely. He always acts like everyone who goes against him is weak, pathetic, laughable garbage all the time. That’s why Trump and his backers are claiming Joe will be jacked up to make him appear more coherent and competent (can I have some of those drugs?) and Trump has even been suggesting he’ll intentionally lose the debate (“I meant to do that”). All of this is certainly a form of expectation-lowering for the Trump team, but one that avoids giving Biden any credit for legitimately performing well–which, like a lot of other rhetoric in Trumpworld, is ludicrous to anyone who bothers to examine it, but it’s all they’ve got. It’s yet another example of how his laughably needy, megalomaniacal personality clashes horribly with traditional political tactics.
I think people really underestimate just how much a lucid Joe Biden moves the needle. Even Trump is smart enough to be scared of it (although the drug test thing is hilarious). I think it really affected things last time around. Same narrative, Biden is a feeble old man that doesn’t know where he is, then he shows up at the debate like a normal president and the rights biggest criticism vanishes.
@Console:
Biden should reverse the drug test challenge on Felon trump and agree to take one if the felon does as well. If one of them seems like they’re on drugs, it is the felon.
@drj:
I get your point on downplaying the rape charge against Trump, but regarding normalization of Trump, that horse is so far out of the barn it has cleared the horizon. Pointing out how horribly abnormal and vile Trump is doesn’t seem to be working. How do you reason with a cult? What is the counter to one of our major political parties being so shameless, mendacious, and craven that has thrown completely in with a felonious fraud and insurrectionist?
The debates, and the conventions for that matter, will be utter wastes of time and money this election cycle. It’ll be spectacle for the horse race media and the punditry that will have next to zero impact on the final vote.
Those of us who fear the rise of authoritarianism in the US would be well served to ignore it all and focus our energy on GOTV.
@Scott F.: We’re not likely to change the minds of hard core Trumpers. The key is the “double haters” who think they’re both equally bad.
“That Trump is a shady businessman and a womanizer have long been baked into his public persona.”
That Biden is a crooked politician and took showers with his daughter (eeww) is also baked into his public persona. So now what?
“If Biden can get through the night without falling down and drooling all over himself, he’ll defy expectations. Ditto if Trump can manage to avoid nonsensical rambling. ”
So if these things are true, what’s the point of the debate? And what a comment on the American voter.
I’d lay my bet on who is able to lay out a sensible future for America. Biden will do his “free beer for everyone” routine he’s been using all his career. Trump needs to be disciplined. A not at all assured thing.
What a world…….
@Scott F.:
But that is not really what we (collectively) have been doing.
Look at James’s comment: “I won’t say that Trump is a rapist because he may only have used his fingers instead of his penis.” I mean, come on.
Compared to what Trump has done (fraud, rape, kids in cages, stealing classified documents, insurrection), we have been treating the orange shitgibbon with kid gloves. Because we must never be biased, oh no.
Not coincidentally, that’s the entire shtick of the NYT Pitchbot. And his shtick works, because it reflects what is actually happening.
Barring an extremely poor performance by Biden, this debate will change nothing.
There are about 4 months to go and what Trump says and does controls about 2/3rds of the daily newscycle. To me it appears that in the past few weeks the Mainstream Media (((slash))) opinionista have shifted to a kind of resignation that Trump may very well win in November and this is what he will probably do. Many are lining up to normalize Trump.
Well 4+ months to go, that’s a long time.
@Jack:
Hey I know you have said you have a background in economics and business before. Can you unpack why you think Trump’s promise to use expanded tariffs to cut income taxes is a good idea?
It seems to me (and other groups like Cato) Biden’s decision to keep many Trump tariffs in place led in part to the inflation problems. How would expanding tariffs not lead continue or expand inflation?
This is technically true, but substantively misleading.
Trump has no experience of being President of all the people, of being the person responsible for foreign policy and associated classified documents, of negotiating with the legislative branch of government, of being the person where the buck stops. He remains a cartoon mafia-executive figure who knows only how to shout “You’re fired.”
Biden, on the other hand, has been in government since he was 29 and understands the presidency very well, along with the other parts of the government he has to work with and the American people.
This obviously doesn’t matter to a great many people, and it may or may not have a bearing on the election. The sentence just hit me funny when my brain rejected the idea of Donald Trump as President in the same way Joe Biden is.
@James Joyner:
The “double haters” are beyond reach as well at this point. Anyone who thinks they’re both equally bad, knowing what is known right now, brings to mind this quote from humorist David Sedaris:
Biden could have a “Chicken Marsala” level debate performance and not change the mind of any Trumper, “double hater,” or GOP enabler.
Changing minds is not part of the equation this election year, as changing minds involves facts and reasoning with a portion of the electorate that has divorced themselves from reality and integrity. (See poor Jack above…)
The target for GOTV is the unengaged voters and the utterly uninformed voters who haven’t paid any attention so far and likely won’t until closer to November. These voters aren’t tuning in a debate in June (!) and they’re not going to watch the conventions except in passing. In a normal election cycle, these events would matter. But, the abnormality of the 2024 contest is “baked in” as you would say. Treating the debates and other election year ceremony as relevant may be comfortable, but it is lazy and unhelpful (to borrow Steven’s framing from his horse race post).
@Scott F.:
“Double hater” is defined as someone who expresses an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Biden. It is not defined as someone who thinks the two are equally bad.
I think the best possible outcome is that Trump has some of meltdown on live tv, either petulantly or because of whatever sort of dementia thing he’s got cooking.
I think the expectation on Biden is huge. He’s expected to be lucid, coherent and energetic. If he’s not, he’s boned. That’s not low expectations.
Trump on the other hand is only expected to not shit his pants. That’s it. Personally, I would love it if he just sun downed and went on some incoherent racist rant and Biden just let him go. I don’t think Trump would get Physical, he’s too much of a coward. I mean how would the Radical Centrists and small cadre of Black apologists handle it if he just started shouting about the N-words.
@James Joyner:
It’s not weird at all. It’s fairly commonly taught in law school (when rape is taught at all) that the legal definition of rape is vastly different that what we would call rape. There are numerous appellate cases that very very strictly construe what rape is and let rapists off because of it.
Also, respectfully, your comments come off as someone who doesn’t experience unwanted, non-consensual groping on constant basis.
In these debates the challenger has always had an advantage over the incumbent because the challenger has less, or even no, term record to defend. This one is unique in both men having a record as POTUS and exceptional in the opportunity for the Biden to use the events of 1/6 as a weapon, such as those 3 hours of watching the Capitol being over-run. I suspect “imaging” may rendered marginal.
The moderators not bringing up 1/6 would be shocking to me. It’s as juicy a question as questions get, and avoiding it would seem as impossible as the issue being defendable by Trump is.
@Slugger:
She is electric!
@Console:
Half a percentage point at best?
Before Biden’s State of the Union, the Ezra Klein crowd assured us Biden needed to drop out while MAGA promised us Biden’s a doddering dementia patient.
Biden’s energetic and forceful State of the Union disproved than, and he got a couple of good news cycles out of it. Then, the press was right back to its regularly-scheduled programming: “Just innocently asking questions about Biden’s age and fitness, but we dare not call 78-year old morbidly obese convicted felon Trump a rapist because he raped that old bag with his baby fingers, not his shriveled orange micropenis.”
A lucid Biden might move the needle for a few days — before the But Her Emails idiots go back to being idiotic again. Rinse, wash, repeat.
@mattbernius:
No need to reply here, I am going to build this into a post.
@Beth:
If the moderator is evil, they could ask a simple question that would ensure this — a question so deceptively simple that it’s really an unfair trap — “who won the 2020 election?”
I don’t see how they can not ask this shockingly unfair question, when it has been such a mainstay issue on the right. And I don’t think most of America has paid attention to former President Trump’s insane ramblings, so it will be a wake up call.
@Jack:
Only for a tiny sliver of the MAGA Right.
And anything that sliver promotes is assumed to be a lie by most people, because those people lie about so much.
It’s the Bill Clinton problem. No one believes he raped those 43 women and run a massive drug smuggling ring. And those accusations mask any crimes he did commit.
@Gustopher:
On the one hand I agree with the “rape” accusation. On the other hand what should those of us do who suspect he has less-than-fully-consentual-sex with a number of women including Monica Lewinski?
The chooks in the media have been clucking about the so-called “debate” for weeks. It’s the most common news story in today’s Memeorandum. Their excitement is palpable. Are they looking forward to the opportunity to hear the candidates discussing their policies in detail? As if.
Bob Bauer plays Trump in helping Biden prepare for “debates”. In a Politico interview reported a few days ago, he said pretty much what I mocked the media for earlier in the week, in response to a question about the format robbing the event of spontaneity:
Ain’t that the truth. And next December, we’ll read a report that finds the “debates”, which dominated the political media for weeks, were just like similar events in the past: their impact on voting intentions was negligible.
@Gustopher:
I think that’s an absolutely valid question. It’s kind of a gotcha, but it’s valid. Trump would absolutely melt down.
I’ve been trying to think of a question like that, something that is valid, but also a gotcha, that could be posed to Biden. Anything I seem to think of also has a way for a normal person, like Biden, to spin it.
Like ask about Hunter, there’s a dozen ways to look decent. Ask about the Afghanistan withdrawal. Hell, ask about Israel, a tough, valid issue and there is a way for a seasoned politician to at a minimum come across as serious and caring. Almost no one will be happy with whatever answer, but he can be normal and presidential. Trump will just freak out.
@Beth: Trump’s answer will be “We all know who won the 2020 election, and another thing, … (Pointless ramble with someone that possibly insults Joe Biden, with the purpose of moving the question away)”
Debate is a checkers game. You can be forced into some moves, but most of the time you’re free to do your own thing. And it’s ok to lose the game, as long as you don’t get wiped out. One way to ensure you don’t get wiped out is to sacrifice pieces that make the opponent’s easiest move be to lose a few of their own because the path to the win is obvious.
The historical record is that debates don’t matter, they simply don’t impact the electorate that much. Even if a Dem thought a Rep won (or the other way around) they will not switch their vote, and those who would, indies, don’t care and will not be watching. Debates should be scraped all together. More to the point, debates really don’t prove anything concerning being a president. (Insert here obligatory Hitler reference). Hitler probably would have won all debates being a practitioner orator but how did that turn out.
@MarkedMan: “Oh, and Trump definitely is planning to interrupt Biden. His mic might be off but Biden will be able to hear him. Maggie Haberman’s source telling her different is just pre-spin, probably to get Biden’s guard down.”
More like Mags *claiming* that her source says….
@mattbernius: “On the other hand what should those of us do who suspect he has less-than-fully-consentual-sex with a number of women including Monica Lewinski?”
Seriously? You are in every other area such a grounded, methodical thinker, but this is just nuts. Monica Lewinsky has spent decades insisting that her relationship with Clinton was entirely consensual. And while there was an age and power gap, she was an adult woman who says she made the choice of her own accord. To say it was anything else is to deny her agency and her honesty — either she’s lying, or she’s just too stupid to understand what consent it.
I can’t speak to any of Clinton’s other encounters, but if you’re claiming that this one was suspect, I would tend to doubt you about any of them.
@Beth: I’m capable of holding conflicting thoughts in my head at the same time. Trump is likely a rapist, if not a serial rapist, by lay standards. He is not a convicted rapist, in that he hasn’t been charged with, much less convicted, of the crime of rape. A civil jury concluded by preponderance of the evidence that he committed an act that would constitute rape in multiple jurisdictions but specifically declined to conclude that he committed rape because it did not constitute rape in the jurisdiction in which he committed said act.
@James Joyner: {to} @Beth: I’m capable of holding conflicting thoughts in my head at the same time.
If someone, much larger than you, cornered you and forced his finger or some other object up your bum, would you still be conflicted? {Of course, that’s a rhetorical question.} Also, keep in mind that Trump can’t successfully sue for slander for someone calling him a rapist, because the word means what it means regardless of the peculiarities of New York law.
–
{Edited for clarity.}
@wr:
You are correct that for quite a while she called the affair fully consentual. Then in 2018, with more time and the context of MeToo, she shifted the way she talked about the issue of consent in that relationship, starting with a piece published in Vanity Fair (for whom she writes periodically):
She has continued to evolve her view on this as she processes the affair. I tried to honor those changes by stating “less-than-fully-consentual” in my comment.
@wr: @Matt Bernius: Granting that I was venomously anti-Clinton at the time, it had already been my understanding for years that “consent” is tricky business, indeed, in relationships with a wild power imbalance. What Clinton did was certainly sexual harassment. It was also certainly not rape. But it was more than “just a blowjob between consenting adults.”
@Zachriel: I would consider it sexual assault.
@James Joyner:
While I am far more “pro-Clinton” (Bill in this case) than you, you’ve captured my thoughts on this. We really don’t have great language for what to call what occurred. I think sexual harassment is probably the closest thing we have.
I don’t think it was rape (which I said higher up). I also think Bill Clinton has a really problematic record with extra-marital affairs and issues of consent (most definitely in the Lewinski case). I thought Lewinski was problematic at the time and find it more so today.