Obama may have a very difficult decision to make re: Hillary

[karynnj]

64. I agree that this is not Watergate and closer to the impeachment, but I differ on how to describe it

Impeaching the President, when they KNEW the Senate would not vote to remove, was political. However, it was based on things that did happen and were wrong. I read most of the Democratic statements before their final vote on that. As this was a high profile vote, each spent considerable time with their staff with their staffs writing their Senate speeches. The purpose was to embarrass Clinton and the Democrats, to make the charges far more public and details than they already were and to force Democrats to be on record voting not to remove Clinton.

The Democratic senators' speeches - fascinating in the points brought up and their choice of how to condemn the underlying things done by Clinton - lying under oath or having an inappropriate relationship - are worth reading.

Most followed this basic format:

First speaking of how seriously they took this vote
Second speaking in negative terms of what Clinton did - in some cases saying they agreed he obstructed justice , lied under oath etc - in others expressing dismay with his behavior.
Third arguing why this did not meet the criteria of high crimes and misdemeanors.

This backfired politically on the Republicans and it was seen as a witch hunt, but it did allow a man the media knew as a mean drunk until he was 40 years old to run with a slogan of bringing honor and decency back to WH -- and no one in the media that I remember ever made run of how weird it was when he was running against Al Gore, an Eagle scout married to his high school sweetheart.