I feel terrible that Al Franken had to resign. He was a good senator, one of the best, but it was all that other behavior that had to be clearly and unambiguously censured in the strongest terms. Any doubts I might have had were dispelled by Bill Clinton, of all people.
The interaction happened during an interview Clinton did, alongside Patterson, with the Today show’s Craig Melvin. Melvin kicked things off by asking Clinton about how his relationship with Lewinsky — consensual but nonetheless a clear abuse of professional and sexual power — had sullied recent reassessments of his presidency.
Clinton reared back, flustered. “We have a right to change the rules but we don’t have a right to change the facts,” he said, suggesting that Melvin didn’t know the facts of the Lewinsky case. Clinton claimed to “like the #MeToo movement; it’s way overdue.” But when Melvin pressed him on whether it had prompted him to rethink his own past behavior, like so many millions of other men and women around the world — including Lewinsky in a March Vanity Fair essay — he sputtered that of course he hadn’t, because he’d “felt terrible then.”
He spends a lot of time insisting that there are “facts” that the interviewer is glossing over, implying that they exonerate him. I think the only fact that matters is that he took advantage of a star-struck young intern in his office, a fact that he has admitted was true.There’s no getting around that. But he “felt terrible”. Gosh. About what? That he exploited this woman, or that he got caught?
“Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House 16 million dollars in debt,” Clinton said, as if having paid a literal debt was the extent of the work to be done in the midst of a cultural and social reckoning. Then, as if he’d forgotten the rules of time and space and the evolution of progressive movements, Clinton kicked into full self-defense mode: “This was litigated 20 years ago … Two-thirds of the American people sided with me; I had a sexual-harassment policy when I was governor in the ’80s; I had two women chiefs of staff when I was the governor; women were overrepresented in the attorneys general office in the ’70s.”
I will happily admit that Clinton was a better man for women’s rights than the Republican hypocrites who used his personal misdeeds to make him pay that price and to hound him relentlessly in office; shouldn’t Newt Gingrich be paying an even more savage price for his behavior? I agree that American political culture is a morass of double-standards, and that a Democrat faces higher standards for personal probity than Republicans. But what I want to see is recognition that he was wrong, an acknowledgement that he screwed up badly, rather than whining about how he was sorry and he paid the price.
I was getting exasperated with Clinton’s obstinacy about admitting a huge mistake, but then James Patterson, his ally, leapt in and delivered the coup de grâce.
Toward the end, James Patterson jumped in, perhaps hoping to assist his floundering co-author: “This thing was 20 years ago. Come on. Let’s talk about JFK. Let’s talk about LBJ. Stop already.” Clinton took the opportunity to angrily query Melvin: “You think President Kennedy should have resigned? Do you think President Johnson should have resigned?”
Hmm. Well. When you put it that way…YES. You’re saying that there has been 60 years of deplorable behavior in the Oval Office while the American public mostly turns a blind eye, and the political parties actively shelter sexual predators? I hadn’t thought of it that way. But maybe if we’d told the American president in the 1960s that he doesn’t get to use the power of his office to go on pussy patrol, there would have been an example set that guys, you have to keep it in your pants. You have a job to do.
This isn’t an unrealistic demand for purity and perfection. This is not something that is particularly hard to do: recognize that you have a professional relationship with your colleagues, not a romantic one, and there are lines you don’t get to cross. Most of us men can handle that just fine — it’s no hardship — in our working and personal life, it’s just a few that are oblivious to the barriers. It doesn’t help that the most prestigious and high paying jobs seem to be accompanied by the perk that you get to throw away all personal responsibility and ignore the autonomy and humanity of your underlings.
Traister deserves the last word:
Considering all this, it is truly only a powerful white man who could have lived the past 20 years — through the defeat of his wife and the social revolution it helped to galvanize — and think that none of this effort or upheaval applied to him, especially given that so much of it applies to him directly. So as he goes on to sell more copies of his book I’d advise Bill Clinton to stop bitching about how this is Kennedy-era ancient history. This is the muck that many of us have been swimming in for decades, and much of it is of your making. Come on in; the water is sickeningly warm.
Well, John Kennedy had a number of extra-marital assignations. However, as far as I know the women were fully adult and not his subordinates. It seems to me that what he did with Marilyn Monroe was pretty much between him and his wife. Newt Gingrich is another matter because he was extremely callous, particularly to the wife with cancer who he abandoned. But there are different categories of sin here, and we need to be able to make distinctions.
I agree. It’s just that too often the distinction being debated is between slap-on-the-wrist or nothing-happening-here-folks.
Well yes. That’s my point. Do you really think John Kennedy should have resigned because he was unfaithful to his wife (who obviously knew about it, as did a whole lot of other people including the White House press corps)? Gingrich was also a huge hypocrite, so there’s more of a case to be made on that basis. But I don’t recall Kennedy ever claiming to be a champion of chastity.
President Bill Clinton,
You did a good run during your administration repairing the economy, and many other aspects. Your flaws you may as well own given the distance of time. Why not step forward and say flat out, “yes, I fucked up. It was MY fault. Stop shaming my family for my mistakes which they are not at all complicit. .…there is another family in there that is much more unified in person forming ateocites, you know *nod*”
Sincerely,
Random bleeding hart libter.
———-
I know. Pffft its what I do at first attempt at distancing myself from that scandal were I the perpetuator *sigh*
?
Re @4
Typo correction:
There is another family in there that is more unified in performing atrocities. You know *nod*
I’m struggling to imagine what facts Clinton thinks will improve opinions about his actions here. The public information is that he had sex with a subordinate, which even though consensual showed a willingness to exploit an extreme power differential. Given what we know, this is the best-case scenario for Clinton. Any remotely plausible new facts could only make things worse for him.
Re 4
I misspelled “perpetrator” as perpetuator. Oops
At the time, I was outraged that the Republican family-values-hypocrites were making a big deal of Clinton’s sex life when they themselves were just as bad in their sexual shenanigans — Gingrich, Livingston, Mark Foley. And I was glad when they failed in their quest to remove Clinton from office.
Having now had 20 years to think about it, I was wrong. Yes, the GOP are hypocrites on the issue, but that doesn’t mean that Bill Clinton wasn’t a serial sexual predator. And changing the subject to Republican hypocrisy undermines the fact that a lot of women were hurt pretty badly by him. This is not innocent fun we’re talking about; this is serious sexual predation with a number of women over an extended period of time, with Monica Lewinsky merely the best known case.
And even if one only looks at the pure politics of it, if Clinton had been removed from office in 1998, a sitting President Gore almost certainly would have defeated George W. Bush in 2000. There would have been no Bush administration, no Iraq war, and no economic meltdown in 2008. There probably would not have been a Hillary Clinton candidacy, which in turn probably means there would have been no Trump administration. By every metric, allowing Bill Clinton to finish his term was a disastrous choice.
Why, couldn’t Hillary have cast the magic spell that forced the Let-It-Bern-ers and other just-for-show-gressives to sit at home sucking their thumbs because their candidate got less primary votes, from the sidelines?
Azkyrth, No. 9, there are a number of Democrats who didn’t run because Hillary Clinton appeared to already have sewn up the nomination early, and there were other Democrats who actually did run but dropped out early for the same reason. It is of course impossible to know who the Democratic nominee would have been without Hillary Clinton in the race, though I doubt it would have been Bernie Sanders. I think the more likely scenario is that the Dems would have nominated a respectable centrist.
But I also think that a Democrat without her baggage would have eaten Donald Trump’s lunch. Hell, Hillary did have her baggage and she came close, and it took the combined efforts of the media, Russia, Wikileaks and Jim Comey to stop her. And I also think a lot of her baggage and the attacks on her were unfair, but that’s politics. Nevertheless, the point remains that had she not been in the race, Donald Trump would almost certainly not be president.
well all my only experience is the U.S. but what that experience is is one that is fucked up about sex and power.
this animal that is shaped & modified more by culture (learned behavior) than instinctive behavior than any other animal seems to be attracted to many behaviors that are rather self-destructive to the societies we form. so many influences have lead us to this predicament are we going to figure out a more healthy more positively functioning response to ourselves? Our biology for all intents and purposes always sexually active or receptive over much of their entire lives starting early in puberty, that we are a highly social creature so much so that we have figured out a way to live in huge concentrations that now we have to make new names for like megalopolis and what is the world wide web in this? we have obsessed over competition for dominance so much that we had to create money to measure it and named it the free market. now tangle it up with sex is bad thanks to our christian religious history for the added internal conflict.
what do we get?
#MeToo! and Make America Great Again
uncle frogy
If a different average joe had an affair is it “taking advantage of” or “exploiting”? When it happens in a workplace is it “taking advantage of” or “exploiting”? The answer is no. It CAN be, but it is not necessarily. Who gets to determine this? Who is taking advantage of who with a wealthy older person and a young person using them as a sugar daddy or a sugar momma? Work places have HR departments to “disclose” relationships to because its not wrong, or illegal, but it CAN be and what everyone is responding to is an appearance of it being wrong, or I should say, believing the worse case scenario. Point to a random person in a relationship with someone else, if that person feels they are “taking advantage of” or “exploiting” their partner does it make it true? Most gold diggers (gender neutral) know/feel like they are taking advantage of the person, they justify it by saying the other person doesn’t care because they are getting what they want out of the relationship, and for most of them this is true. So ARE they “taking advantage of” or “exploiting” them? With post hoc rationalization it makes it nearly impossible to say what is true and right and wrong in these cases which is why certain professions make ethical laws about it such as with doctors or teachers, not because it IS wrong, but because there is no way for anyone outside to know that it is. Clinton has done a lot of sexual harassment and that behavior deserves to be recognized as wrong an be held accountable for it. Just don’t automatically lump what happened between him and Monica as anything other then an affair because you don’t know.
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thirdmill301@8–
I agree that Clinton should have been held to account for his actions, but I can’t bring myself to wish he had been removed from office in the circumstances of the time.
1. The impeachment process was a highly politicised Republican-driven inquisition with Ken Starr displaying openly partisan behaviour that regularly violated the ethical obligations of his position.
2. Clinton was never in serious trouble over the abusive relationships with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. Yes, he had to pay Jones $850K to settle her lawsuit, but neither of these relationships in and of themselves posed an impeachment threat. What got Clinton into trouble was trying to cover up his behaviour to the point of pressuring people to submit false affidavits.
3. We know that politically speaking this controversy was not a vote-changer. Newt Gingrich had promised the Republicans an extra 30 or so seats in the House as a result of the impeachment proceedings. Instead the Democrats gained five seats and Gingrich ended up resigning because his failed prediction.
4. You can’t know what would have happened if Clinton had been removed from office beyond the obvious that Gore would have taken over for the remainder of Clinton’s term. I certainly don’t see why a successful conviction of Clinton would have helped Gore’s campaign over a mere impeachment.
I certainly agree with you in the sense that if there had been a professional and ethical investigation leading to an open and honest impeachment hearing for his abuses (and not just for his legal shonks), then I’m completely on board with his removal.
It’s just a few men? Do we have hard numbers on the percentage of men who are oblivious?
@10
Any other Democrat would have gotten his ass kicked by Trump. If they werent even good enough to compete against Clinton’s image and branding, what makes anyone think they could stand against Trump? Trump was inevitable. He is the culmination of the last two decades of right wing media. All their work paid off. The only difference Is with another Democrat the Right would need to spend less resources to get him to lose.
logical cat@10–
It’s always hard to be certain about how a different Dem would have gone. A more blue-collar-friendly nominee might have done a lot better in the rustbelt states. But we’ll never have certainty. Also, even accounting for the right-wing media, I think the Republican corruption of the voting process mattered more.
@#16, logicalcat:
Almost any other Democrat would have beaten Trump hands down. Have you forgotten what actually happened? Clinton led by a huge margin for months, and then a bunch of stuff happened to remind people of her baggage and she was suddenly floundering.
The only Democrats who would have done worse are the outright Blue Dogs like Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who has been working with Republicans against Elizabeth Warren’s attempts to put a few limits on the rich), Tim Kaine (voted — as he said he would — to deregulate the financial industry even more as soon as it was on the table) and Joe Manchin (in the pocket of the pharmaceuticals industry; remember how his daughter was at the center of the EpiPen scandal?). And — predictably — every one of these people endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
The truth is that people like you, who like “centrist” Democrats, are a ridiculously small percentage of the voting population at large. There were enough of you in the primaries to hand control of the party over to Hillary Clinton, but you don’t even make up the whole of the party, and there are none of you whatsoever outside of it. If people like you insist on continuing to push for “centrists” (which inevitably means “right-of-center, corporate-friendly, 1%-friendly, war-loving hacks like the Clinton faction”) then the Democratic Party may as well give up now and turn everything over to the Republicans.
The 2016 election (and subsequent local elections such as the one Roy Moore was running in) should have made it clear that Republicans will never vote for a Democrat no matter what the circumstances are — in terms of history and policy, Hillary Clinton was more of a Republican, despite her party affiliation, than Trump, and better-spoken and more respectable to boot, and yet the Republicans not only refused to vote for her but turned out in force for Trump. The best you can hope for is that the Republicans will stay home because they hate their own candidates as much as they hate the Democratic challenger, as in the case of Roy Moore; trying to get them to vote for you is pointless.
The Democrats, themselves, are a shrinking percentage of registered voters, and that process accelerated when Clinton got the nomination (and again when she lost). The Democrats can no longer propel a candidate to office without voters from outside the party.
Independents, though, are largely not registered as Democrats because they can’t stand the “centrist” wing of the Democrats. Clintonian-style politics are what is killing the party’s chances. People like you, who shrieked that “Sanders isn’t even a Democrat!”, are going to lose more and more elections in the future, because not being a Democrat is actually a selling point to a majority of the public, and you are apparently unable to admit this. Back in the 1990s/2000s, when Al Franken was writing books about politics, he was already pointing out that on many issues (such as universal healthcare) the public polled overwhelmingly in favor of the leftist position, but as soon as the Democratic Party was mentioned in conjunction with those positions, the numbers dropped into a low minority. Identity with the party as represented by the Clintons is a stain against which candidates have to fight.
For that matter, every Democratic candidate who has actually won an election since 1975 has done so in their first term by running on a platform of “I’m an outsider who isn’t part of the DC machinery”; the Democratic Party’s technocratic “more effective of two evils” approach as represented by the Clintons is massively unpopular. Hillary Clinton was as close as possible to being the public face of that approach, which is — when all is said and done — the reason why the election was close enough for her to lose. Whether you think it was because of Clinton’s proven record of incompetence and insincerity, or because of “Russian hacking” (i.e. a bunch of lame memes posted on Facebook, apparently), or because of voter suppression (which the Democrats knew about before Obama’s election but apparently didn’t feel was worth stopping in 2009 when they held both houses of Congress and the Presidency), the fact that Clinton was vastly unpopular is ultimately why her loss could not be contested.
Predictably, though, since the Clinton faction managed to kick out anybody who was not like-minded from the internal organization last year, we’re seeing a wave of uninspiring and terrible candidates, who the party hopes will be swept into office by disgust over Trump. Despite the “special place in hell for women who don’t support other women” claim, Hillary Clinton and her buddies even endorsed corporate-friendly Andrew Cuomo over the much more progressive Cynthia Nixon, who is not only a woman but would have been the first LGBT gubernatorial candidate in New York. Or there’s Bob Menendez, who actually was indicted for bribery under Obama but because the standards for proving that kind of corruption are ludicrously high was not convicted, who is being protected by the party from primary challenges. The most common phrase I heard in 2016 was “I’m holding my nose and voting for Clinton”; in 2018 the Democrats are apparently hoping people will hold their noses to vote for any Democrat, and it’s thanks to people like you who thought that Hillary Clinton was a good idea. Thanks a whole fucking lot.
To be fair, there was no way to know that in 1998.
The trick is that there’s no way even for the participants to really know whether it is. Is an intern at liberty to say no to the POTUS? Sure, if she’s willing to find out precisely how vindictive he is or is not.
*steal*
No, it’s also breaking into voter databases and removing a few hundred people in carefully chosen Democratic-leaning districts in carefully chosen states. In other words, it is thoroughly criminal
.
Quite so. The amazingly deeply ingrained idea that it can’t happen here, coupled with the lack of ability to imagine that it’s even possible to vote in ink on paper and count the ballots in the polling station, is the biggest single problem the US is facing.
What do you have against Kamala Harris (now that she’s finally renounced taking corporate donations)?
How many women have come forward and accused Billy of sexual misconduct or assault now? In the face of Reich wing bad faith partisan attacks my position on ole Billy boy is none too popular with centrists who support him, but I believe Juanita Broaddrick’s story. He’s a fucking scumbag. Pinching asses, cupping breasts and sleeping with the help are probably the least of his sins.
@ 8 thirdmill301
Second guessing history is useless at best. But you remember that very differently than I do.
Gore and Lieberman were more hawkish than Bush. (About as hawkish as Cheney was) They were both pushing for boots on the ground in Iraq. Or at the very least to greatly expand the bombing of Clinton administration.
I’ve heard the trope that if Gore were president the Iraq war wouldn’t have happened. Utter tripe in my opinion.
But what’s the point of arguing that, I figured I couldn’t let that pass without comment. This thread is about little Willy C dipping his dinky do where it’s not supposed to go.
Clinton was on Colbert the next day and was asked about the Today interview and did better. He said in watching the interview that he was angry at himself. Here it is.
https://www.cbs.com/shows/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert/video/jFI5e10DhPY44tunh80HWCd4fZEt0qf_/president-bill-clinton-reconsiders-his-metoo-comments/
@ The Vicar
I remember the election all too well. I also remember that the GOP had a full scale plan to discredit Sanders had he won. They would have done the same regardless who won. Hell they would have had to do less, as they were unpopular to begin with. At least with Clinton the opposition had to fight against a strong brand and popularity. She was, and still remains, the only chance we had to have a Democrat in office-Trump or not.
Oh and no, I don’t push for “centrist” democrats. I was a Sanders supporter during the primary, and never even said the phrase “Sanders is not even a real democrat” but thanks for putting words in my mouth it really reminded me how dishonest you were during the election.
I push for progressives and am an independent. The problem is that my own people, the progressives/independents, are infected with bullshit. They complain all day about establishment Dems and do nothing to fix their own parties un-likability and lack of political strategies while projecting all of this onto Democrats. You push bullshit “lesser evil” narratives that do nothing to actually move the conversation forward. Comparing Clinton as the lesser of two evils against Trump is like saying that the flu is the lesser of the two illness when compared to aids. Nobody likes getting the flu, I get it, but its a bullshit tautology that means nothing at best and at worst obfuscate the greater issues at hand. The DNC had the most progressive platform in its history, and instead of holding them accountable to it by voting (like the tea party did with the RNC) a lot of you abstained and threw a hissy fit. A hissy fit that acted on as another wing of propaganda against Clinton becoming useful idiots to the alt-right. Now the Dems are ignoring you because they couldn’t count on your votes when it mattered. The failures of progressive movement is embarrassing and instead of owning it you throw Clinton under the bus every chance you get to deflect blame. Because its easier to blame, than to change. The facts are Sanders was the most popular independent to get to the primary that I could think of, and he failed by 3 million votes. Clinton lost the election…by 40,000 votes. She won the popular vote by more than 3 million. The GOP had a comprehensive plan in discrediting Bernie Sanders which would have been easy since he was a no name before the primary and has never ran a heated campaign in his life. The one worthy opponent he has ever had, was wearing kid gloves because she didn’t want to piss of his base. He lost to the (supposedly) most unpopular politician running.
You harp on and on about how unpopular establishment democrats have gotten while turning a blind eye to how unpopular you all have become. People are sick of your bullshit, and it shows in the votes. You harp on about how unpopular these centrist dems are and yet they are the ones winning the primaries. They got the votes, the points. Progressives don’t. Evidence matters, and evidently progressives are un-electable to a large part of the country. That could change, but guess what? It involves actually doing something other than complaining about how democrats are not as left as thou art.
So no, Vicar. Its not because of people like me. Its because of people like you. Progressives had the power to change the party, but you needed to vote. You didn’t. And because we (progressives) cant see this, our movement was bullshit(politically speaking). When an off brand of independents preaching a far different brand of politics than the establishment and wanted to enact change; what was that group of independents? The Tea party. This happened because they voted. They voted establishment when those politicians changed their views to reflect the voters, and those that didn’t got primaried out. They engaged, and by doing so pushed the RNC further to the right where they wanted. We had that opportunity, and squandered it. Our not backing the democrats during last general election pushed the country more towards the right, dnc along with it. Because establishment politicians are going to go where the votes are, and that’s clearly not anyone like you.
Last post by me as this is all off-topic to the thread. I just had to say something because I am an annoyed independent who hates how dishonest and full of shit a lot of us have gotten.
@19
Is there any evidence that breaking into voter databases happened?
I think people either overthink (or in the case of Vicar, under-think) the role of the Russians during the election. Facebook memes can influence the outcome of an election. Propaganda works. Something a lot of people are forgetting is that propaganda has worked in the past, and there’s no reason why it should not work now in this day and age.
To be clear I am not saying you yourself is unaware of how effective propaganda is. I’m just talking general here.
#21 hotspurphd
“Better” is a relative term. Billy also said this recently.
Source https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/politics/bill-clinton-al-franken-sexual-harassment/index.html
What that sentiment about the “times they are a changing” says to me about Clinton’s subjective experience is, here is a guy who feels like that at one time fruit was there for the plucking and he could pluck it when he wanted whether someone wanted to be plucked or not, but now thinks that’s somehow changed.
The mindset says it all really. When asked about Franken Billy said
So keep in mind that Franken never denied any allegations, he did a lot of hemming and hawing though. But Clinton automatically goes into that defense mode for Franken. Okay, I’m sure there were a few billion women on the planet Franken didn’t harass, but they’re not the issue, the issue was the woman he did. And when given a platform to comment about that Clinton has nothing to say about how wrong that was from the woman’s perspective. He automatically starts to circle the wagons for Franken. And I think Franken would be embarrassed that Clinton defended him in that way. Or at least he should be.
So when you say Clinton “did better”, this is just my subjective view on this, I think he hasn’t learned anything useful. Sure his chicanery adjusted the way all good politicians do. But the mindset is still firmly there. Clinton thinks “things have changed” but what exactly does he thinks has changed. I think he’s an entitled prick, that his thoughts about what one can do to somebody against their will haven’t changed much at all. The only thing that has changed is that, because of movements like Metoo, there might be repercussions when he does it. There is a big difference there. I think the underlying thought processes that I’ve quoted from him here point to the fact that he’s still an old horndog, but he’s got a new trick.
I wonder how much of the change in Clinton can be attributed to
age and how much it is to changing public attitudes?
One thing that has not changed though is his automatic defense posture which given his history and his public exposure just does not work as he intends.
uncle frogy