“A huge portion of the electorate that’s going to be her target don’t remember the Clinton administration at all,” Tim Miller, who’s heading an anti-Hillary PAC called America Rising, told TPM recently. “A lot of the negative stuff about the Clinton era has congealed into like a joke or a historical blip, but people don’t remember the details.”
“While that’s not going to be central to our nominee’s campaign against Hillary, what was happening in 1994,” he continued, “I do think it’s important for that to be part of the discussion about her, so that the folks who are getting information about 2016 don’t have a clouded vision, a nostalgic vision of the Clinton era.”
They have a lot of ground to make up. For starters, young people vote for Democrats in droves. They might identify more as independent, but they reliably vote for Democrats. That’s a fundamental element of the American electorate for the foreseeable future, which Miller acknowledged.
But even more troubling for Republicans, the Clintons themselves are more popular with young Americans than older voters. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed the Clinton family with a 77 percent favorability rating among those ages 18 to 39. That dropped off to 62 percent for those from 40 to 64 and down to 55 percent among those older than 65.
Before Candy Crush became a thing (I HAVE A PROBLEM) maybe we had time to worry about this crap. Like, before On Demand and Netflix and a whole Internet devoted to amusing us with quizzes about what Star Wars character we’d be if we weren’t already a My Little Pony and a breakfast food, we had time to freak out over if the president was being blown.
I don’t mean kids are too concerned about their iPods to worry about real issues. I mean kids are too concerned about their iPods to worry about STUPID BULLSHIT. Is it getting me a job or feeding me a burrito? Okay, then whatever, man, get back to me when I need to be here for this meeting because if I have to do nothing I’d rather look at pictures of cats wearing fedoras. I actually applaud the blasé-ness of the Modern Young Things to sexual peccadillos and if the president wore the appropriate tie today or has too much Nelly on his phone or whatever.
Most of what the 24-hour networks and the “name” pundits tell us to pay attention to is utter crap, and that was massively the case during the Clinton years. You know why young people tune this out? Because they’re smart. Their parents nuked the entire U.S. economy, they’re bazillions of dollars in debt to predatory loan companies, and potential employers can’t believe they don’t want to be treated like slaves. Put up against that, what exactly about getting some head in the Oval is supposed to turn them off?
Besides, these are abstinence-educated kids, it’s not like they don’t know how oral works.
A.
And oddly, as they seem to so strongly want to tie Hillary to Bill, the FAUX News / Limbaugh / etc echo chamber fighting so strongly against a Hilary Clinton candidacy are the very ones who benefited so strongly from the roaring economy of the Bill presidency.
Want to run govt like a business and have prosperity for business, put a Clinton in the White House.
As an abstinence-educated middle schooler the first time this all went down, I actually had no idea whatsoever how oral worked. I was under the impression it was a racy name for French kissing.
I… didn’t get out much.
I thought French kissing was “oral” too until about the 6th grade! Sucking was something the Red Sox did and a blow job was something like blowing a chance in a game, like booting a ground ball.
Seeing the conservatives jumping out of the woodwork that Lewinsky has gone public, even admitting that the power discrepancy made the ethics extremly murky (although she says that it was fully consentual), and strongly suspecting that a lot of the reminders of B. Clinton have to do with preventing H. Clinton from running in 2016,
I don’t get it. H. Clinton had cause for divorce yet worked through it and stayed married. Shouldn’t this be a “plus mark” for her from the sanctity-of-marriage crowd? Even Newtie (as in cheat on your wife and divorce her while she is in the hospital) is jumping out of the woodwork on this.