The next Clinton-Trump brawl is scheduled for Wednesday October 19th, and Wednesday is a date that I usually go see friends, so I will most likely have to watch coverage after the fact. But I want to discuss certain things that have come up since, namely in regard to “Pussygate.” As you remember, towards the end of the first debate, Hillary Clinton brought up Trump’s abuse of Miss Universe contestant Alicia Machado, the subject of which brought Trump nearly to rage even before Clinton specified Machado’s name. This caused Trump to respond that he was going to say something very bad about Clinton and her husband, but decided to stop himself. But never let Donald Trump be accused of class and restraint.
As you also know, on October 7, audio footage was released from 2005 of Trump and Access Hollywood reporter Billy Bush having an on-mic conversation about Trump’s technique with women which included the lines “you just kiss…when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything…grab them by the pussy…” While Trump was unusually defensive and willing to apologize over his 2005 quotes, he also insisted that “this is nothing more than a distraction” and “Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims.” Just the Sunday afternoon before the October 9 debate, Trump rounded up Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Kathy Shelton, the first three of whom had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or outright rape, and the latter being the plaintiff in a rape trial where Hillary Clinton was the defense lawyer who successfully plea-bargained her client’s case. Not only did these four women appear at a press conference where Trump openly accused Bill Clinton of assault, he had them appear as guests at the town hall debate that night. Since then he has told audiences that he is the victim of a great smear campaign and “character assassination”, and that the allegations against him since the Oct. 7 tape are “made up”.
Well, as many have pointed out, it isn’t Bill Clinton who’s running for president this time. Also, bad behavior on someone else’s part cannot be used to excuse bad behavior on your part. (Trump and conservatives may be unaware of this ethical principle, so it ought to be stressed at some point.) In any case, there’s also a factor of relevance. I mean, have you seen Bill Clinton lately? He’s deathly pale, near anorexic, he’s had heart problems, and cancer scares… let’s face it, his best raping days are behind him. Whereas Donald Trump is big, extroverted, and ruddy. Well, whatever that color is supposed to be. He looks like he could keep raping two, maybe three more years.
Another defense along similar lines is where Trumpers on social media show the picture of Miley Cyrus twerking her ass in front of Robin Thicke in that one awards show, or Beyonce in her stage outfit, and they’ll say something like “these are the liberals who say that Donald Trump is degrading women.” Well- for one thing, Miley Cyrus isn’t running for president either, and if she was, I would even vote for that tongue-wagging twerker before Trump. But however hypocritical or misplaced conservative criticisms of their opponents are, they aren’t totally lacking in point.
The actions of a politician or government official are potentially more corrosive to the public culture than the actions of an entertainer, partially for the obvious reason that entertainers do not have legal power over us. And because we recognize that the issue is different, we expect politicians to follow a different standard. We expect different behavior from George Clinton than from Bill Clinton.
But whether you think Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation should have gone into the matter of Bill Clinton’s affair in the Oval Office, or whether such a thing is a “private matter”, consider that at the time the Clinton Administration was defending a policy under which gay military members could be forcibly discharged over their private affairs, partially on grounds of being a security risk. When you see the president flat-out lie about an affair on camera and ultimately get away with it, it does create an impression that as far he’s concerned, laws and standards only apply to others. And when you see Hillary Clinton get absolved by the FBI for security breaches that WOULD have gotten anyone else at least reprimanded, you see the same issue at play.
Of course, it wasn’t even as simple as Bill Clinton getting impeached over perjury and then found not guilty by the Senate. During the House investigation leading to impeachment, Republican head of the Judiciary Committee Henry Hyde was revealed to have had an affair in office as a state legislator almost 30 years prior. Pornographer and Democratic partisan Larry Flynt used Hustler Magazine to expose Bob Livingston (R.-Louisiana) who was expected to be the next House Speaker, but had to step down in favor of Dennis Hastert.
Contrary to Michelle Obama, the Democrat standard is not “When they go low, we go high.” It’s “when they go low, we go lower.” To be sure, it’s not the Democrats’ fault if they have that much more opposition research to work with.
The ultimate lesson here, if you’re a Democratic partisan, is that the Republicans are living in a glass house built next to a rock quarry. But Democrats need to keep in mind that all those Millennial voters (who for some reason they can’t understand, don’t trust Hillary Clinton) were not paying attention to this scandal factory right from the beginning. And if Bill Clinton is not as relevant to this election as Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton is a good deal more relevant than Ken Starr, Dennis Hastert or any other of the conservative meanies from the Whitewater period who either got in their own sex scandals or had to retire from public life while Clinton continued to become more important.
So if Democrats don’t understand that after all this time, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is undermined by the same defensive tactics that she used to defend her husband long ago, then they can’t understand why voters loathe both her in particular and this political system in general.
Nor is the Right unique in demonizing their enemies, nor even pioneers in that regard. I can remember “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” In certain “progressive” circles anybody to the right of Che Guevara is a Fascist. And it’s not like right-wingers aren’t taking notes. Charlie Skyes is a NeverTrump conservative talk show host in the Midwest who’s been making the rounds on MSNBC and other places giving his takes on where the conservative movement is now. Recently he decided that the culture had gotten to the point that he decided to retire his show after this year. But he gave an interview to Vox magazine about that, and I found this exchange very interesting:
Charlie Sykes
Absolutely. And you have these websites out there, like Breitbart.com, which is like reading third-world propaganda. These guys like Breitbart are smart enough to know that they’re full of shit. But if you inhabit that world, you can’t push back without being seen as a sellout.
Now I will say this one thing on the flip side. Some of these people have flocked to sites like Breitbart and they’ve retreated into these dark corners because the left has too easily tossed words like “racist” and “xenophobe” and “sexist” around.
So what’s happened is that when a guy like me or anyone or you says, hey, you know, Donald Trump is a racist and a xenophobe and a sexist. The conservative media world, the consumers, they tell me we’ve been called that for 20 or 30 years. They’ve become conditioned to blow it off as crying wolf.
Sean Illing
I think that’s a fair point.
Charlie Sykes
I’m old enough to remember that being called a racist was the worst thing, the most devastating thing you could call someone — and now it’s lost all currency. I mean, people don’t even blink at it anymore. John McCain’s a racist, Mitt Romney’s a racist, Paul Ryan’s a racist.
But when Donald Trump comes, who is the real thing, we call him that and say we didn’t really mean it about those other guys. This is who we were warning you about. It’s blown off by a lot of the conservative base.
So when you see that one side plays by certain rules and expects you to play at a disadvantage, you resent it. If you’re expected to act in good faith but they get to call you Klansmen and Nazis, you decide to fuck good faith. Fuck negotiation or even acknowledging the other side’s humanity. If they really think you’re a caricature- or know better but act like they don’t- you think there’s no point in trying to disabuse them with proofs. But then if you hold that attitude long enough, you either don’t notice or don’t care that some of your new friends on the alternative-to-being-right are REAL Klansmen and neo-Nazis.
There is a phrase I use that I am going to keep going back to, as appropriate. It is possible for two different things to be true at the same time.
A LONG time ago – a long enough time ago that it depresses me to think about how old I am – some of us judged the Lewinsky scandal and simultaneously decided that the President being an adulterous horndog was not the end of the world AND that it was still not a good thing for the country. It certainly was not a good thing that the President felt the need to commit perjury and get impeached over it. In any case, if an impeachment takes place in the Senate and they end up acquitting the defendant, then legally that’s it. Both the people and the government have spoken. The question then is, why would one bring up the matter again when it only brings up the point that you have more skeletons in the closet than Liberace’s Halloween Party, and in the broader picture, means that if we wash that one issue, forces us to consider your lack of record and competence in contrast to both Bill and Hillary’s political successes.
None of this justifies “conservatives” doubling down on immorality by supporting Trump, who magnifies all the Clintons’ vices while having none of their abilities, but if Democrats still can’t understand why some of us shake our heads at their invocation of morality, then Republicans aren’t the only ones with no sense of irony.