What if Al Gore became President?

A thought experiment of ours from the other day: what if the Dems forced Clinton out in 1998 and Al Gore became president?

As stated before we think he and Newt make a couple of deals and Gore gets elected in his own right.

It's an interesting scenario but one that we think is important becuase Bill Clinton's impeachment really changed American politics. 

Impeachment marked the beginning of Dem/lib/left hatred for the GOP and the right. Which seems so strange becuase the left won.

Other bloggers have noticed, were thinking of Dan McLaughlin and Jim Treacher, that the only person angrier than a leftist whose lost is a leftist whose won.

So Bill Clinton survives and Dems are angry at the right. They win congress in 2006 and they're angry. Dems elect Obama, pass Obamacare and lefties are angrier still. Now Dems hate Trump. What happens if they beat him in 2020, do we all die?

What if: President Gore 1998?

Here's a thought. What if when Bill got busted for Monica, the Democrat Party leadership had done the right thing, gone to the White House, and told the President he had to resign?

President Al Gore is weak and unsure where he stands with the party, the GOP and the nation.

Newt Gingrich senses an opportunity, goes to Gore and offers a deal on spending and entitlement reform.  Gore gets something he wants, an environmental bill, say. In another bill Newt and Gore 'reinvent governemnt'. Remember that slogan?

Gore looks like a leader the man who healed the nation and brought meaningful reform. He has two major accomplishments going into 2000.

Does anyone really think W could have knocked off Gore in this scenario?

Me neither.

We're speculating here becuase everything wrong with American politics today has its roots in 1998, impeachment and the Clintons.

To be continued.

ADL Part One: Aretha's Funeral Conundrum

Hotair tells us that Bill Clinton shared the stage with Louis Farrakhan. Hey there's Al Sharpton and Jesse 'Heimitown' Jackson too.*

To confirm our prejudices we went to the Anti-defamation League's website (they fight anti-Semitism and hate, don't you know) to see if they had anything to say about Bill Clinton (recall that he tried to give Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat) hanging out with a trio of notorious Jew haters.

The ADL did not disappoint. As of 7:56 on 8/31/18 the ADL's website remains silent on Slick Willie hanging out with Calypso Louis. The ADL does have strong statements about border family separation, the Israeli nation-state law, and the 'intersection of misogyny and white supremacy.**

I called the ADL's PR guy and sent an email. Understandably (or not, who the hell knows?) they seem busy on a Friday night. We'll update if they reply.

For the record we here at William Stroock have no issue with Slick Willie ogling Arianne Grand's fine, fine booty.

*See the Twana Brawly Hoax, the Crown Heights Pogrom, and the Freddie's Fashion-mart Massacre. 
**When someone uses the word 'intersectionality', walk away. Just walk away. 

Wither Bill Clinton

'I think the norms of what you can do to someone against their will have changed...' said ex-president Bill Clinton.

Via Breitbart, the era of Clinton is coming to a sad end.

John Nolte relates the good news:

Fifty-three percent of voters now see former President Bill Clinton as a “sexual predator,” according to a Rasmussen poll.

Rasmussen asked 1,000 likely voters, “Which comes closer to your views – that former President Clinton was a sexual predator or that he was the victim of his political opponents?”

Only 24 percent believe Clinton is a victim, while 24 percent remain undecided.

Oddly enough, by a small margin, women are more inclined to give Clinton a break. A full 55 percent of men see the former president as a sexual predator, compared to 50 percent of women.

We always knew this would happen and we took heart. Twenty years ago Clinton and the Dems reveled in Slick Willie's 60% plus approval ratings. Even today, when challenged on his serial sexual assault Bill Clinton still falls back on his high approval ratings.

It was a chimera.

Name one Clinton accomplishment. One. Clinton's was a presidency built on nothing but bromides and popular micro-policies. The country was fat, dumb and happy, enjoying a brief respite from history that ended three years after Clinton was acquitted.

William Jefferson Clinton is a pervert and sexual predator. He looks like a dying vampire.

Great presidents make hard decisions and tough choices. Clinton never did either, and the hardest he ever worked was when his own butt** was on the line.

**Wrong body part.

Presidents Day: Worst Decisions Ever

We'll be talking about presidents all week long as part of our Presidents Day Spectacular. Today we'll be going over four of the worst decisions in presidential history.*, **

John Adams: The Alien and Sedition Acts. Made it a crime to criticize the government. Easily one of our worst presidents. Of course, the act led to the imprisonment of several journalists, something we normally support. Part of the general moral panic about French Revolutionary influence. Hey, this rings a bill, doesn't it?

Andrew Jackson: The Specie Circular. Andrew Jackson waged unrelenting war against American Indians and the Second Bank of the United States. As part of the latter, he sought to bleed the Bank dry by issuing the Specie Circular which mandated that the Feds would only take gold and silver as payment for land purchases. This caused a drain on the bank's specie holdings and its collapse, which led to a run on the banks and the Panic of 1837.

Franklin Roosevelt: Yalta. As is well known, here Roosevelt agreed with Stalin that Europe should be divided into an American and Soviet sphere. By doing so Roosevelt consigned Eastern Europe to Soviet domination for the next forty years

Bill Clinton: Easy Credit. In 1999 Bill Clinton in conjunction with HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo relaxed Fannie May and Freddie Mack lending rules leading to millions of underqualified recipients getting cheap ARM mortgages. There followed the housing bubble, the Financial Crisis of 2008 and finally the Great Recession.

*Herbert Hoover was actually very interventionist during the Depression. 
**And don't talk to us about W and Iraq. You think removing Saddam was a bad thing?

Tuesday Tally

Incomplete 1990's  Edition.

With the 20th anniversary of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal we've felt a bit nostalgic for that time. We're not the only ones. The esteemed M. Steyn recently wrote about the Dawning of the Age of Incompletion. This certainly defines the 90's.

A strange decade indeed, sandwiched between the Cold War and 9/11. The Ironic Decade, the Boring Decade. The decade about nothing? -'da-da-da....' 

First off let's define our terms. For example, the events and trends that define the 19th Century don't really begin till the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and don't really end till the First World War in 1914. We take a similar view of the 90's. We feel the decade begins with Bill Clinton's nomination (note-not his election)in 1992 and ends with 9/11.*

With that in mind here's a list of the most 90's events of the 90's.

Bill Clinton's Impeachment: a year of partisan battle that ended in a senate 50-50 vote .Talk about dull. Talk about incomplete. The 90's unfinished blowjob.

Y2K: Was it all a hoax? Five years of everyone worrying about computers imploding with the calendar changeover and then nothing happened.

The Seinfeld Finale: The decade's most important show ended with a trial in which all the people wronged by Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer testify against them. It was sour grapes and blaa.

The Summer of the Shark: The summer of 2001; shark attacks, Gary Condit, the fetal stem cells debate....it was a different planet. The Twin Towers weren't the only thing that collapsed.

*We were tempted to go with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but no. 1989-1992 was still the era of Reagan/Bush.

The Clintoning

Well we never thought we'd see this happen.

Led by Millennial know-it-all Matt Yglesias at Vox, the left is finally noticing that Bill Clinton is a sexual predator. Yglesias even admits Clinton should have resigned after Drudge busted him.

Well duh.

There are many reasons for this change of heart.

Vox editor Ezra Klein used to run a private email list called Journolist, where journalists coordinated their messaging, and we strongly suspect he's leading a similar effort. For example, After Trump's RNC speech last year numerous journalists and pundits started referring to his 'dark vision'.

The left knows that it's in big trouble with Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood, Al Franken, etc. This is really nothing new. We joke here about Kennedy, Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, Weiner, and now Franken. These are Democrats acting like Democrats as the indefatigable Robert Stacey McCain says.

How can Dems criticize Roy Moore when, well, see above.

These were the people who just a few months ago were mocking Vice President Pence for never being along with a woman other than his wife. Sound policy. One of our editors was a woman our age and when we'd meet up to work people would look at us funny.

Our official stance on Roy Moore is Bill Clinton. That's actually what we said when a relative asked us what we thought of Roy Moore. After watching Bill Clinton wag his dick at everything in a skirt the last 20 years, we just don't care.

There's also a civil war between the Clinton and Obama factions and sexual assault allegations are a great way to take out the Clintons. The young hip Millennial types, like the young, hip Millennials at Vox, prefer Barry to Hillary!

All too convenient. Oh now you think Clinton should resign. As the great Don Surber just wrote, sorry Dems, you don't get your virginity back.

Maybe Pence had a point