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While I agree that it's out of the Overton Window of what I expect to appear in the pages of the Huff Post or NYT, "Bill Clinton is a rapist" is something that is commonly stated on /r/politics (in the context of the right countering claims against Trump by bringing up Bill Clinton), and I'd be astonished if any millennial or younger person I knew would disagree.
Monica Lewinsky unambiguously consented, and was over age. (I don't think that excuses Clinton's behaviour - I think supervisor-subordinate sex in the workplace is almost always wrong, and banworthy, and I separately think that thou shalt not commit adultery.) She wasn't the plaintiff and only became the centre of the scandal because she was the woman who retained evidence that could prove Clinton committed perjury. Some of the other women didn't consent.
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Yeah, ‘bill Clinton treats young women like he’s bill Cosby’ seems like common, barely even denied knowledge on the progressive left. Few will bring it up, even if trying to laundry list powerful men getting away with it, despite being a much more central example than most of those they will bring up.
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The history of "credible accusations" against Bill Clinton has been noted for a long time, as has the long history of influential democrats running interference for him and attacking his accusers, starting with his wife. Around 2020 or so, the dissonance was bad enough, and the Clintons declined enough in influence, for a few prominent Blues to tentatively begin asking the uncomfortable questions out loud. A cynical person would note that this was only after the Clinton political machine had well and truly collapsed, but still, one might plausibly argue better late than never.
And yet in 2024, he was back to headlined the DNC during a national election.
Likewise, the "credible accusation" of rape against Biden turned out not to be quite credible enough.
I've talked a few times about topics where there's not much left to say, where the entire conversation is essentially pre-scripted from the start, and there's no real room for charity any more. This seems to me to be a good example of the type.
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not asserting that popular opinion among younger people is that Bill Clinton raped some unnamed woman. I'm asserting that there's a significant portion of younger people on the left who would be straight-up confused by the question because his relationship with an intern is undisputed and that's obviously one where there couldn't have been meaningful consent according to their modern sexual mores (and this opinion is frequently expressed in /r/politics threads about Epstein). Since millennials are young enough that they couldn't have voted for Bill Clinton, they're a lot more willing to throw him under the bus than the older Democrats who actually control the DNC.
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