Remember Whitewater?

[Tommy Carcetti]

Well, maybe we political nerds do.

Most ordinary Americans probably don't. Even those who were around in the 90s.

Whitewater was the byzantine, nebulous "scandal" alleged against the Clintons that lead to the appointment of a Special Prosecutor--first Robert Fiske, but subsequently the late and infamous Ken Starr.

Ask anyone what Whitewater was actually about and it's doubtful they'd tell you.

There was something about a land deal in Arkansas, a defunct savings-and-loan, bank records, billing records, and--wait, your eyes are glazing over already, right?

It all was terminally dull, confusing, and most importantly of all, didn't seem to actually implicate the Clintons in anything. The hope was that it would lead to something scintillating and shocking that would outrage Americans and turn them against President Clinton. Or at least mire them in rumor and innuendo of wrongdoing.

But nobody cared. Nobody had any sort of reason to care, because there was nothing to care about. It was the biggest non-story of non-stories.

Once Starr had commandeered the Special Prosecutor ship, he realized the Americans' complete sense of apathy towards the Whitewater story. And thus he somehow was able to parlay it from a vague, confusing two-decades old financial matter into allegations of more recent inappropriate personal behavior by President Clinton--namely the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil suit. How he managed that turn of events, I'm still not 100% sure. But nonetheless, it eventually lead to the discovery of a consensual relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton subsequently denied under oath, and in turn which Republicans ultimately used for purposes of impeachment.

That scandal Americans do remember.

Of course, the economy was absolutely roaring under President Clinton, and most Americans didn't feel the need to make an impeachment issue over what was at most a personal failing by the President.

Still, the Republicans got the impeachment of President Clinton that they had always wanted, as laughable and unpopular as it was. And despite President Clinton's obvious acquittal in the Senate, the scandal did still leave an embarrassing mark on his personal legacy.

But it wasn't over Whitewater.

It's not exactly clear what Republicans want to impeach President Biden over. They've drudged up various bank statements and made references to his son and his financial dealings. There's references to supposed shell companies and beneficiaries and money transfers and--your eyes are glazing over again, right?

This all is just Whitewater 2.0--a confusing twisted-up financial story that most likely won't reveal any actual wrongdoing by the President, and won't actually grab the attention of Americans by storm because it is neither straight-forward and simple (as was the case in Donald Trump's two impeachments) nor salacious and sexy (as it was with President Clinton's impeachment).

The bad news for Republicans in this case, however, is that there's unlikely to be a Lewinsky story at the end of the proverbial rainbow that they can massage into it in order to spice it up.

And so this, like Whitewater, will eventually disappear into the ether, never to be remembered and never to be understood.

[FSogol]

1. K & R n/t

[elleng]

2. biggest non-story of non-stories, post- nixon!

[NoMoreRepugs]

3. Secret foreign informants who can't be found will be the cornerstone of the farce until they find

JoeB had a late payment on his gas bill or something 15 yesrs ago.

[doc03]

4. It was fishing expedition just like their impeachment of Biden, it will go on

for the next year and if Biden is re-elected it will continue until he leaves office. If they can find an unpaid parking
ticket they will vote for impeachment.

[Claustrum]

7. It is also used to normalize the impeachment of TFG.

People who aren't following any of this closely will go with their "both sides do it" and "both sides are bad" stance without understanding that the impeachments against TFG were serious and with tons of merits and evidence, while this one against Biden and the one against Clinton were all theater and BS.

[WestMichRad]

26. This!!

This is exactly the purpose of the upcoming theatrical game of charades. Doesn’t matter to the repukes that it’s all BS. Its purpose is to “establish” a false equivalency between TFG and Biden.

I do so very much wish that it blows up in their faces.

[alfredo]

12. They tried to impeach Biden the day after he was sworn in.

[wnylib]

15. It's their MO. Create investigations on phony scsbdaks in order to

create negative impressions of Dem office holders and candidates.

[tetedur]

5. Another non-scandal scandal "her emails"

What exactly was the super duper problem with what happened with Hillary Clinton's emails? She used a secure personal server like her predecessor? She deleted personal stuff yada yada yada.

Russia hacked the DNC. What did we discover in the release to the public? Surprise, surprise the Democrats supported the Democrat not the Independent.

But oh my God, her emails were the most scandalous thing since sliced bread.

[Claustrum]

8. Yeah. But ask average Americans

and they will tell you Hillary Clinton "email scandal" is bad, even though they can't tell you exactly why it's bad. It's all PR from the republicans and a complicit MSM who will eat up any "scandals" the right offers them.

[Cosmocat]

14. True story

nm

[themaguffin]

6. Whitewater was my first thought. They want the headlines and the open ended investigation so

that it's always looming and distracting AND hope to find something, not matter how ridiculous or irrelevant...

[madinmaryland]

9. They did get Hunter's Dick pics.

That would have made Ken Starr excited!

[Lonestarblue]

18. And Brett Kavanaugh. He was supposedly the one who added as much salacious material as

possible to the final report. I guess he would know about salacious stuff.

Whitewater was a huge right-wing attempt to damage the Clintons, and especially Hillary. Clinton was already president so there wasn’t a lot they could do to him, but they did a number on her—over and over. And the media helped. She was obviously smart and ambitious. The right-wing white male battalion couldn’t stand that.

[rubbersole]

21. Drooling 🤤.

[2naSalit]

10. I remember it well...

I was studying polisci, in grad school, we followed it pretty closely in a couple classes.

[Hope22]

11. Yes.....n/t

[Cosmocat]

13. Fortunately Joe Biden has more impulse control over his zipper than Bill did

But, the current clown shit show that is the republican party, anything goes.

[twodogsbarking]

16. Is that when Hillary started wearing pant suits ? Rep meltdown.

[robbob]

17. Other points to remember about Whitewater:

The original prosecutor determined there was nothing there, in fact the Clintons lost money on this failed land deal, and he exonerated them. So the reThugs just replaced him with Ken Starr and continued the non stop investigation.

Also, in between Whitewater and Monica there were many detours as Ken searched for something, anything, to pin on the Clintons. I can’t remember everything they looked at, but I think “haircut-gate” and Vince Foster were two of the stops along the way.

In the end, they had to settle for lying about a consensual sexual relationship, a blowjob. What a farce. And they’ve only gone downhill since then…

[Snackshack]

19. Yes

I remember and I thought Dems would learn then what they were dealing with in the gop but they didn’t.
I am amazed Dems are surprised the gop is going to go ahead with an impeachment. What did they think the gop would do when they got the house back.

[Bayard]

20. They will try to impeach Biden twice

Just to match trump's record, and give the MAGAts something else to blather about. Politics are a nasty business. The main thing I remember about Whitewater back then is that I tuned it out.

Do these people ever, like....do their real jobs?

[rubbersole]

22. No, no they don't.

Unless getting on faux news is considered a job.

[inthewind21]

23. I'll tell you

Whitewater was a bad real estate investment made by the Clintons along with Jim and Susan McDougal (who were charged and arrested for WAY MORE than White Water) to purchase land and build vacation homes along the banks of the White River known for it's amazing white water rafting in Flippin, Arkansas. If you've ever been to or ON the White River, it's not exactly the kind of place one would think to build a vacation home on it's banks. It tends to flood frequently and it IS a river wild. It is still none the less a spectacular display of nature in all it's glory. 2021 population of Flippin, AR is 1,347 My mothers family hails from N. Arkansas so I spent many a summer on the White River while staying summers with my grandma as a kid. I even went so far as to take a bunch of Mason jars to the river and fill them with river water so I could take them back home to Texas and give a few friends some "true blue straight from the source" white water! Those jars were a hit!

[Warpy]

24. Republicans are just plain backwards.

For one thing, they have no clue no matter how many time they are told that our just system responds to a crime by finding the person most likely to have committed it, that person PRESUMED INNOCENT until the evidence has been heard ad s/he is convicted in a court.

Republicans always start with someone they want to think is GUILTY and then they spend millions and millions of dollars trying to find some sort of crime they can pin on him/her, even down to unpaid parking tickets. Sio

The Clintons got taken for a lot of money, just like everybody else who invested in Whitewater. The only crime was the fraud committed by the guys who cooked the deal up and the marketers who oversold it. Somehow, all the people they are convinced is guilty of something is a Democrat who has been elected despite Republican cheating.

Until Republicans manage to get the idea about this and how elections work and other very basic high school civics class material, they should be labeled an insurgent organization and disqualified from elected or appointed office. Once they can pass a test and demonstrate knowledge of basic procedures that allow our government to function, they can be allowed back in, one at a time.

Get it, guys? First you identify a crime. Then you look for whodunit, not the other way around.

Morons.

[niyad]

25. If you have not read, "The Destructionists: the 25 year crack-up of the

Last edited Tue Sep 12, 2023, 06:50 PM - Edit history (1)

republican party",, by dana milbank, please do. It explains a great deal about pervert starr, and his henchman beer bong brett.

[Jarqui]

27. This is a more extreme effort than Benghazi or the emails

A bunch of folks will conclude that since Biden was attempted to be impeached that he did something wrong.

It is all about damaging him politically. Nothing more.

And they're damaging a strength of Biden: how he has never been on the take financially.

Year after year, near the bottom of net worth in Congress.
His tax returns were audited every year from 2009-2016 (the only years he was in public office while Hunter did his thing with Burisma)

His last 24 years of tax returns have been disclosed online.

After 42 years in Federal public office, he couldn't afford the cancer treatments for his dying son.

So they're smearing one of the few thoroughly honest men in Congress who didn't cash in and sell himself out.

It is a disgrace.

When you wonder why more good men like Biden don't opt for public service, this is why.

[unblock]

28. The problem is that the media grants republicans a freeroll on any random accusation

Republicans by now have zero credibility. Generally. But in particular, when it comes to "scandals". They very obviously accuse political opponents of either completely made-up crap or make mountains out of molehills, with zero perspective that they themselves are invariably guilty of far worse.

But the media repeatedly insists on treating these "scandals" as legitimate, concerning inquiries, when it's plain as day they are lies, fantasies, and, when congressional investigations and special prosecutors are involved, abuses of power for blatantly political ends.

For republicans, it's a freeroll -- they smear the image of their opponents (heads they win) or it just gets dropped (tails they don't lose)

A responsible media would refuse to give airtime to discredited sources, but they keep going back endlessly to these liars.

A responsible media would follow up with many stories about the Republican lie factory and their routine abuses of congressional investigative power

A responsible media would have constantly reminded people that Hillary was the most thoroughly investigated *and exonerated* person in history and that all the wrongdoing was done by republicans.

But that's not the media we have.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

29. It's about the news, not the facts. See traitortrump's "perfect phone call" to Zelensky.

traitortrump's extortion attempt was to get Zelensky to announce that he was looking into Biden corruption, not to manufacture any. It was all about getting something in the news that could be milked over and over and over.

Facts can be examined and dealt with very quickly. Accusations and innuendo can be stretched out for years.

[mucifer]

30. They want dems and independents to stay home/not vote

Because all politicians are equally corrupt