Hillary Enthusiast Tomasky: Why She Can’t Shake Bill’s Affairs

Writing at the Daily Beast, Hillary Clinton enthusiast Michael Tomasky admits that the Democratic frontrunner’s campaign will be impacted by women accusing her husband Bill of sexual misconduct.

In a piece titled, “Why Hillary Can’t Shake Bill’s Affairs,” Tomasky explains “it’s the ’90s again—but with a difference.”

He opines:

Hillary does have a potential Achilles Heel here, which she opened the door to herself with one word she uttered back in September, and she may yet have a little explaining to do here to nail down a voting bloc that she’s going to need in a big way come November.

Tomasky is referring to a recent campaign ad in which Hillary insisted all women must be supported if they accuse men of sexual assault. “You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you,” Clinton said in the video, which she addressed to “every survivor of sexual assault.”

Tomasky posits, “Clinton might have to dance away from that ‘believed’ at some point, and it’s going to be a delicate dance.”

With regard to Bill Clinton’s sexual past, Tomasky believes, “Monica Lewinsky won’t matter. Gennifer Flowers won’t matter.”

These were consensual relationships. Whatever else people might think of Bill’s judgment, most folks quite rightly consider these affairs to be his (and the women’s) private business.”

For Tomasky, the crux of Hillary’s potential problems centers on accusations of harassment and assault from Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and Juanita Broaddrick.

He refers to an interview with Jones conducted by this reporter over the weekend in which she charged that, instead of believing her, Hillary Clinton waged a campaign to discredit Jones and the other women.

“As a matter of fact, she would go out and she would try to discredit these women, including me,” Jones stated on Sunday. “And called us the ‘bimbo eruption.’ You know, these ‘bimbos.’ Okay. For what her husband did to us. But she didn’t believe us. None of us women. And now she’s going to say what she did about Donald Trump?

“And how dare her. You know what? She don’t care nothing about women. Because if she did she would believe what I had to say. She would believe what the other women had to say. ”

Tomasky writes:

The other potential complication for Clinton may center around the question of what she did, if anything, to discredit Jones and the others. Jones said this in her interview, too. It’s been a given for years on the anti-Clinton right that Hillary Macbeth orchestrated vicious campaigns to discredit these women. The mainstream press has never really picked this up; to conservatives, that’s because of liberal media bias, to the rest of us, it’s because there’s been no hard evidence of this, and because there exists a long, long, long list of things they’ve accused Hillary of doing that she pretty obviously never did.

Drawing from a Slate article last week by Michelle Goldberg, Tomasky warns “the politics around sexual harassment and assault have changed a lot since the 1990s, in ways that are for the better in general but sure don’t strengthen Hillary’s hand if/when she has to discuss these cases directly.”

In addition, she’ll need to bear in mind when she does talk about all this that for most women voters, this story isn’t about the old ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’ of which most will have at best a fleeting memory. It’s about the reality of sexual predation in their lives.”

Tomasky is the author of the 2001 pro-Hillary book “Hillary’s Turn: Inside Her Improbable, Victorious Senate Campaign.” His columns have long been supportive of Clinton.

Tomasky was also a member of the controversial progressive JournoList, a private email list serve made up of several hundred liberal journalists. JournoList was active during President Obama’s 2008 campaign. The reporters on the list discussed ways of minimizing negative publicity regarding Obama’s radical associations, including the candidate’s ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and fiery pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr.

The crisis for Obama reached a fevered pitch during an ABC News debate when moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked Obama why it took nearly a decade to distance himself from Wright’s anti-American and racist remarks.

The Daily Caller went through the JournoList emails and found that immediately after the debate, Tomasky, then a writer for the Guardian, attempted to rally fellow reporters into trying to “kill ABC and this idiocy.”

Tomasky wrote: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”

 Listen to Aaron Klein’s interview with Paula Jones below.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”  Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.