These were the Articles of Impeachment adopted against Clinton:
These could be two of the articles against Trump—but this time with evidence of danger to the nation.
Facts about Clinton’s impeachment from:
Two events coincided to make the case against Clinton.
- Paula Jones’ lawsuit for sexual harassment allowed Clinton to be questioned about other sexual encounters, and
- Linda Tripp secretly tape recorded conversations with Lewinsky.
Tripp (urged by people like Ann Coulter) told Tripp’s lawyers about the affair, and gave them the tapes in which Lewinsky talked about her affair with Clinton.
Clinton, not knowing there were recordings, denied the affair under oath.
Clinton took several steps to prevent people from learning about his affair.
He tried to get Lewisnky to return his gifts so the prosecutors wouldn’t get them.
He asked his secretary leading questions like “She and I were never alone, right?” (he “coached” her testimony).
He also tried to get Lewinsky a job (this was viewed as a way to keep her silent.)
Approved of a prosecutor hired to investigate him, and he cooperated fully
When investigators looked into the Clintons’ business deals, he turned over all financial records.
The Paula Jones case was dismissed on summary judgment— meaning it had no merit. This made it impossible to argue that Clinton’s lies materially affected an important, ongoing case.
In Prof. Bowman’s words:
Clinton’s defense was that this was about sex. He didn’t want to be embarrassed by his affair in front of the world and his family.
Republicans argued that Clinton was a danger to democracy because he was undermining rule of law itself. These quotation from this Guardian article:
The same people who argued for Clinton’s impeachment now argue that Trump has the right to fire Comey, refuse to cooperate, defend himself by threatening witnesses on Twitter, hide his finances, etc. etc.
Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe this. Something more is going on.
Bowman tried to understand how Clinton—who governed as a political moderate—“became the “bete noire” of Republican politics and the object of near-fanatical dislike:
Bowman found the roots of the “near-fanatical dislike” of Clinton in the “battles that had roiled the country” decades earlier.
The current backlash, in fact, began with Brown v. Board of Education, and the women’s and civil rights movements, which led to the 1960s protest.
We’re still riding that backlash. Gingrich channeled this right wing anger in the 1990s when he urged Republicans not to compromise. Gingrich led the charge against Clinton. During their impeachments, Nixon and Clinton both accepted Congress’s authority.
Trump does not:
A small impassioned group of Republicans wanted Nixon to keep fighting. They were angry when Nixon gave up and resigned.
That fringe elements is now in control of the GOP.
To understand the fanaticism on the right, I turn to Hofstadter.
Hofstadter calls it the “paranoid style.”
Hofstadter surveyed history from the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.
They believe unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.
They “feel dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind.”
They’re “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion” so they adopt extreme measures.
The America they think they’re losing was white male dominated. White men had almost unlimited personal liberty.
Regulatory agencies and rulings like Brown v. Board of Education curtailed white male “liberty.”
They resent it and are trying to take us backwards.
The “again” in MAGA signifies reactionary politics. These stats from this (fabulous) lecture by Harvard Prof. Levitsky’s.
That’s why it’s not a normal fight.
That’s why reason and logic don’t work, and why they’re not moved by evidence of their own blatant hypocrisy.
Some of Trump’s supporters are duped. Others are knowingly on board. Others are cowed by fear.
It’s hard to tell the difference. And the result is the same.
The abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony, MLK Jr., and all the progressive heroes have been fighting the same forces since the start of the nation—that small impassioned minority on the far right end of the spectrum.
What can save democracy is what has always moved us forward: there are way more of us.
Plus our institutions are holding out against the onslaught. (Institutions include courts and agencies—look at all the people who marched into Congress to testify against Trump’s orders.)
If enough people have courage and are willing to put in the work we can get through this, just like we ended slavery, Jim Crow, and women as chattel.
The fight is always hard. It also never ends.
We push forward; the reactionaries push back.
Yup. In the 19th century, the liberal spoke out against the treatment of Native people, but remember, only white men could vote.
People in a panic right now made a mistake in their thinking that explains in one of his lectures. I get it, because I made the same mistake.
To begin with, remember that this whole “equality for all” thing is fairly new. From about 1910 until 1960, the two parties could harmonize and compromise—because they weren’t that different. Both were led by white men.
But now the Democratic Party stands for inclusiveness and includes minority communities—a direct threat to the paranoid right.
The mistake in thinking goes like this: US history is an arc bending toward greater justice as more people come to be included in “we the people.”
The assumption is that that expansion will naturally continue. We’re on a conveyor belt leading us to a more diverse future.
The flawed thinking is this: Without having to do any work at all, the conveyor belt will continue moving us forward toward more inclusiveness and more democracy.
When the reactionaries do their thing (as they’ve always done) and try to loop us backwards, progressives panic.
It’s like inheriting something and thinking we don’t have to work to keep it. We inherited it, so we’re entitled to it. We inherited an ever expanding democracy, so its ours.
Nope. We have to keep working for it.
Every day, every year, every generation.
We’ve [almost] always had a conservative / reactionary judiciary. In the 1960s, federal judges were being confirmed who openly supported segregation (the citation is somewhere on my blog)
We’ve actually only had two liberal Supreme Courts, the Marshall Court (1801-1835) and the Earl Warren Court, which gave us Brown v. Board of Education, the case that led to the current backlash.
A few terms with a Democratic White House and Senate will turn this around.
