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Another GOP ‘Bombshell’ About Joe Biden Turns Out To Be A Dud
(www.huffpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Yeah, but nothing about the Lewinsky scandal was actually illegal. It's not illegal to cheat on your wife. They only found out about Lewinsky because they were looking for evidence related to the Whitewater scandal. The only thing criminal Bill Clinton provably did was lie under oath about getting a hummer in the oval office. That's a pretty minor lie, tbh, and they never connected him to any illegal activity related to Whitewater. They tried to make a huge scandal out of a clandestine blowjob, and the only people who cared were religious purists who never would have voted Democrat anyway. Instead, Republicans made fools of themselves on a national stage, and it cost them elections.
I'm not really disagreeing with you here, except to say the Republicans didn't really "get it right" with Lewinsky. They did seethe and writhe and dig their heels hard into religious fascism. But I thought it worth highlighting that the Lewinsky scandal was not as scandalous as they wanted us to believe, nor was it even the thing they were trying to pass off as scandalous in the first place. It was an excuse to open an investigation in the hopes it might reveal something that would stick. That's the same thing they're doing now. They know there's no connection here. They know there's no evidence. But it appeals to their waning voting base and gives them an excuse to find something that makes Biden look as bad as Trump.
You’re overlooking some things here. Just a few years prior, Clarence Thomas had just undergone an intensive and public trial for sexual harassment of Anita HIll. Meanwhile, a sea change of public opinion against sexual harassment in the workplace was underway in practically every corner of the country. At that time, if you were a federal employee, you could get in serious trouble for abusing your position of power like that. But of course, the President isn’t a federal employee.
This was not just a minor lie and a clandestine blowjob. It was someone in a position of power taking advantage of a subordinate, in the workplace, and doing irrevocable harm to that subordinate’s reputation in the process.
Finally, just because something isn’t a criminal offense doesn’t make it acceptable. Nor does the fact that the Republicans seized on this for political gain make it less wrong.
Here's how hard the Republicans were digging for dirt on Clinton:
When they started the Whitewater investigation, Monica Lewinsky did not yet work at the White House. It was literally an ongoing investigation looking for a crime.
I do think the Lewinsky thing paid it's dividend in 2016 because it made it harder to respect Hillary who was still with Bill after the most famous case of being cheated on. There were a lot of factors that went into that election going the way it did, but with it so close in the end, each factor ended up being important.
If she'd divorced him, they would have used that against her instead.
Yeah, it set up a lose/lose situation that I'm not sure Hillary could have found an angle out of that wouldn't turn some people against her. It didn't get Bill removed but it did help block Hillary when the Democrats bet on her.