I think you are right to expect that monica and impeachment will come back, or at the very least the republicans will try to bring it back.

There will also be scandals brought up regardless of who the nominee is, and it includes mccain.

Personally, I don't think it will do much damage to her for three reasons:

- everybody knows everything about those scandals, there's unlikely to be anything new. Maureen Dowd won an award for reporting on monica

- both clintons know to expect this and they will try hard to stress her candidacy is not a referndum on bill clinton, but on her own merits

- hillary is a well-known quantity. it will be much harder to create doubts about her than about obama, simply because he's new to the scene

but again, i agree that this will come up, regardless.

Samantha Powers was interviewed and one of the things that she revealed is that she and Obama had long late night talks when they were both grousing over their books. Obama rooms alone in DC. I have no way of knowing whether or not any thing untoward arose: what I can say is that any divorce lawyer can tell you that this pattern is extremely unwise.

The real scandal is that Obama opposed the impeachment of George W. Bush.

there's unlikely to be anything new.

On what basis do you make that assertion? Given Bill's history, how much are you willing to bet that he's kept his pants zipped for eight years?

BREAKING NEWS!

Holy crap. The Democratic primary does have a sex scandal. This is not good for Obama or Clinton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skIlZflDs9Y&eurl

On the one hand, I like this analysis simply because it is evenhanded-- Clinton claims vetted-ness will win the day, however, as you point out, there are plenty of Clinton scandals to go around.

On the other hand, I wish we could get away from, what I am going to christen the Murderer, Once Removed analysis. It goes something like this:

1. John is murderer. He cannot be our butler.
Rebuttal: This is a lie! John is not a murderer! Where is your evidence?

2. Will the perception that John is a murderer harm him in terms of butler-ing?
Rebuttal: This is a lie! (But I'm not saying it's true, I'm just talking about the strategy). John is not a murderer! (I'm not saying he is, but many believe it, and it's a real issue that is not going away). Where is your evidence? (If you look at these polls, and the demographic breakdowns, there is plenty of evidence that this is a bad thing for John's butler-ing).

Now, you're definitely not doing this in the nefarious way that it happens in the MSM. And, like I said above, in a sense it is evenhanded. But what I am saying is, I wish we could refrain from gaming out how the tabloids are going to play, because I believe this gets in the way of better analysis.

Here's the deal: there are tabloid armies aimed at everyone in public life, and if they're too squeaky clean to have dope, whores, and dead bodies laying around, then they'll either frame them or make something up. I know that a good amount of the American people will follow the tabloids- but I wish we could be the ones to not follow the tabloids. And by not following, I know ito's trite, but by not following, we would literally be leading. Let's lead on this, and not follow, even as some of our heroes slowly slip in amongst the pack.

How would the impeachment/Monica episode be addressed if Hillary is the nominee?

Easy. Have Chelsea tell everybody: "It's none of your business!"

Good questions, and good answers. I really like littleblackpropaganda's comment above. There is a whole tabloid mentality industry, the purpose of which is to smear by titillating dishonest headlines, stretched innuendos and guilt by degrees of association assertions.

For example, this morning at the memorandum site, the headline [Los Angeles Times] says something like: Jane Fonda endorses Obama, there goes the cross-over votes!!!!
But, if one reads the article, one learns that someone yelled to Fonda as she was exiting a restaurant "who you voting for", and she yelled back, "Obama" before getting into a car. That morphed into a thoroughly misleading headline about 'endorsement' which then morphed into a 'dire consequence' ready-made-to-be-swallowed conclusion. In short, a hit piece based on dishonesty, stretched innuendo and guilt by association........and this is so relevant because this was not an article at a tabloid, but at a supposedly respected newspaper.

As Obama said so often, the real problems we face, and could handle if we stick together to do so, get swamped in distractions and divisiveness.
When we cannot trust the Los Angeles Times, we cannot trust our media, period. That problem has festered for years and grown worse, not better. It doesn't matter who our nominee will be if we cannot counter the unchecked garbage which is force fed to the public.

And we're not allowed to criticize her because she's a girl. God, Bill Clinton said that in the same paragraph when he was saying, "bring it on." Talk about cognitive dissonance.

I'm not picking on her because she's a girl. I'm 57 years old, a white female and a proud feminist, and I find the rationale(s) for Hillary's candidacy absurd. And she ain't no feminist, that's for sure.

To think that there isn't stuff to be vetted on the Clintons is absurd. And the divisiveness of the 90's is an issue. There's a compelling reason why the right wing still wants her to be the nominee. Much of the attacks was untrue, but some of it wasn't: the campaign finance issues were all true and very unsavory.

Bill gave the right wing Monica-gate and Hillary believed his lies for a year, after a lifetime of philandering by him. Talk about judgment......

No matter how you want to parse it, if he had not been so reckless, we would not have had 8 years of Bush. And that they feel entitled to the White House AGAIN is beyond my understanding.

He's doing good works, she's a Senator. Why isn't that enough for them? Why is there all this unquenched ambition, for which America is expected to assuage Bill's guilt? I'm tired of living through the Clinton family dramas. I'm tired of defending them, when they've told me as a voter I'm delusional or a traitor or not important.

They are not entitled to a second dynasty in the presidency.

I've often wondered about why Bill Clinton would have endangered his presidency by his behavior with Monica Lewinsky. I honestly think that for some politicians, there is a private sphere and a public sphere and that they are practically independent of one another.
I was teaching in a high school here in France and was asked DAILY during the fall of 1997 what I thought about the doings of "my" president. Since Mitterand had had an ilegitimate daughter, my colleagues were living in proverbial glass houses and it was very easy to retaliate. But retorting to one colleague did not prevent two more from questioning me the following day.
who had b

It's already out there.

Bill Maher mentions it every chance he can.

The late night comedians can never tire of it.

The thing is:

It won't effect Clinton, if anything, it will galvanize support for her among MOST Americans who believe a politician's personal life is none of out business.

Remember, Bill's poll numbers went UP during the impeachment.

THAT's why Obama doesn't dare bring it up, and why I cringe everytime someone here does. Such talk does not hurt Hillary, it only helps, especially if it's coming out of blowhards like Chris Matthews.

Ever notice that Dems are obsessed with weakness? The big bad Repubs are gonna swiftboat Obama on Wright, on Rezko, on teenage drug use, on being too liberal... They're gonna pillory Hillary on Monica-gate, on her baggage, on her gender, on being too liberal...

I rarely see Repubs agonizing about what the Dem candidates are going to do to McCain. They bitch about his conservative creds and worry about losing the election, but they don't agonize endlessly about Dem attacks and campaign weaknesses.

This is not some new phenomenon created by Kerry's swiftboating. It goes back to the 80's when Reagan was burying Mondale, and Bush was running Willie Horton ads. We're stuck in a malaise of self-doubt, searching vainly for a bullet proof candidate instead of an ass-kicking one. It sometimes makes me want to grab the party by its lapels and give it a good shake. We need some spine.

Yeah, I know, the Repubs are going to try their dirty tricks. I don't take them lightly. But the answer to that is not to search vainly for a candidate without soft parts. On paper, Bill Clinton had many more vulnerabilities than John Kerry, but Bill would never have lost to G.W. It didn't matter that Bill avoided the draft while Kerry served honorably. Kerry still got hit.

And I'm not saying that we need a trench warrior. Bill didn't win because he was a trench warrior, though his political acumen was valuable. He won because people loved him. They loved his charm, his common sense, and his out-sized personality. They didn't care that he wasn't a vet like Bush I. They didn't care that Gennifer Flowers accused him of having an affair with her. They forgot about Travelgate, and they blew off Whitewater. They didn't even care that much when lied about Monica.

I don't know if either Hillary or Barack could get away with what Bill got away with, but Monica and Wright and Rezko and all the rest--they're not giant killers. They're examples of political baggage that any candidate worth his or her salt can overcome. So let's stop the obsessing over it, and focus instead on nominating someone worth electing.

Funny, I was just thinking about this...

I was at the theatre with a friend of mine - a middle-aged, lifelong enthusiastic Democrat - the other week and was surprised at the emotion behind her growing disappointment with Bill and Hillary. "He lied to us!" she said. "We defended him because we didn't like where the impeachment was coming from and we thought it overkill, but that doesn't mean we're proud of him. After we stood up for him, he owes US loyalty - and that means running a more honorable campaign than this. Bill and Hillary don't get to lower the Democratic Party just to get back in the White House!"

I bet I have heard something like this six or seven times from avid Dems who would have said they like the Clintons. They like them, but they haven't forgotten the impeachment. These are Democrats talking!

laurajordan said

I say, let 'em try to press the lewinsky/impeachment angle. It bit them in the ass in the 90s and it'll bite 'em again in 2008 with general election voters.

Are you talking about the republicans who got bit? If so, I'm wondering how you figure that? True, they didn't convict Clinton, but they won both houses of Congress for 12 years and the presidency for 8. The scandals, real or imagined, played a huge role in this state of affairs.

I'll try another reply to Laura...

My vote for Bill was a vote against the repubs rather than a vote for him, but I defended the Clintons while they were under attack and agree that the repubs went way over the top and turned a lot of people off.

Perhaps it's because I was never a die-hard Clinton fan, but when Bill poked his nose into the SC primary campaign the exhaustion I had felt from the constant gop barrage during the 90s washed over me and I realized I did not want to see them back in the WH again.

If this can happen to me, I can only assume that many independents and of course repubs will feel that way many times over and that any reminder of the bad old days will serve to reinforce those feelings.