Lewinski's dress remains in Democratic race's taboo closet

[Maddy McCall]

WASHINGTON - It is the name few U.S. Democrats have dared utter during the party's long and increasingly nasty presidential race: Monica Lewinsky.

In the 15 months since Hillary Clinton launched her White House campaign, the former first lady has rarely been asked in public about the infamous intern and the sex scandal that almost ended her husband's presidency.

But as Barack Obama struggles to explain his decades-long ties to a controversial black pastor, there's new debate about whether it's still taboo to talk about the skeletons in Bill Clinton's closet, or to inquire about Hillary's decision to stand by her man during the darkest period of the couple's marriage.

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The political perils of playing the "Monica card" in the Democratic race were even more apparent last week when a prominent Obama supporter in Iowa, former state party chairman Gordon Fischer, wrote a blog item about Bill Clinton and Lewinsky's semen-stained dress.

Denouncing the former president for a perceived slight against Obama, Fischer wrote that Bill Clinton's criticisms were "a stain on his legacy (that were) much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's dress."

When Clinton's campaign seized on Fischer's remark as evidence Obama was playing gutter politics, Fischer quickly apologized and said it was "stupid" to mention Lewinsky.

That an Obama supporter would so carelessly invoke the memory of the Lewinsky scandal shocked many Democrats, because such attacks have long been the near-exclusive domain of conservative Republicans.

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Throughout the Democratic race, the only person willing to talk - even vaguely - about the Lewinsky affairs has been Hillary Clinton herself.

She told TV talk show host Tyra Banks in January that she stayed with her husband because it "was right for my family" and she "never doubted Bill's love for me, ever."

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