Who are our rising female stars that we can promote for president in 2020?

[karynnj]

86. I honestly do not know how this works out

A trap is a trap because there is no good easy answer. I suspect that she spoke from both hind sight of the cost to the party long term - including 2016 - and in context of the fact that this issue is more out in the open than it ever has been.

A year ago, the best answer might have been that the vote in the Senate was totally party line - suggesting that though no one was happy with what Clinton did, it was completely political. Every Democratic Senator who spoke on the record gave a speech that in a very broad sense could have been outline I) The Senator's personal reasons why Clinton's actions were bad and II) why this did not reach the level of high crimes and misdemeanors - a phrase with no real definition other than what sitting Congresspeople think it should be at the time. The Republicans has similar part I sections followed by a statement that he needed to be removed. One could add that, in fact, his punishment is pretty severe. I do not mean the agreed upon temporary loss of his law license, but that when he is discussed in the future the fact that he was impeached will always be mentioned prominently.

Then -- I suspect, any good reporter would have returned to his original question and asked, had you been in the Senate or House, how would you have voted?

Now remember that Gillibrand has made this an issue. She fought for making it easier for women in the military to make harassment complaints. In her book, she wrote of the pervasiveness of this problem and mentioned that even as a Congresswomen and Senator, she had peers who stepped over the line. She is someone who was calling not just for a change in laws, but a change in norms and behavior. Given this, her answer -- preceded by a pause -- and including the truth that values on this are changing, gave her opinion on what Clinton should have done - resign.

In fact, imagine if instead of saying, what unfortunately may be his most remembered words, "I did not ...", he spoke of having not lived up the values that he had and that he had told Al Gore and the cabinet that he was resigning. That was January 1998. Instead of spending nearly a year from January 1998 through February 1999 where the country and the administration were distracted by this, we had moved on with President Gore. By November 2000, President Gore would have had almost 3 years in office. I have no idea who his VP would have been because he/she would have been chosen as someone who could help bring the country together and for whom confirmation would be easy.

Two things are for sure in that scenario. One is that the debate we are having now might have happened then and, as Democrats, we would have more credibility speaking against hostile workplaces for women. The second is that a man, known as often drunk until he was 40, could not have run on bringing honor and decency back to the White House. Of course, when you change something as big as this - we have no idea who would have run on the Republican side.