Fifty-three percent of voters now see former President Bill Clinton as a “sexual predator,” according to a Rasmussen poll.
Rasmussen asked 1,000 likely voters, “Which comes closer to your views – that former President Clinton was a sexual predator or that he was the victim of his political opponents?”
Only 24 percent believe Clinton is a victim, while 24 percent remain undecided.
Oddly enough, by a small margin, women are more inclined to give Clinton a break. A full 55 percent of men see the former president as a sexual predator, compared to 50 percent of women.
Voters were also asked if Clinton should personally apologize to Monica Lewinsky, the young White House intern with whom Clinton engaged in an affair in the Oval Office. She was only 22 years old when the affair began. He was nearing 50.
A plurality of 44 percent believes he should personally apologize, while 34 percent disagree. Only 22 percent are undecided.
In November, Rasmussen found that only 50 percent of voters still viewed Clinton favorably. (He left office in 2000 with a 65 percent approval rating.) Fifty-nine percent said they believed the women who claimed Clinton sexually assaulted them.
To anyone who remembers the late 1990s, this is a massive turnaround in public opinion.
Starting in 1995, public approval of Clinton never dipped below 50 percent. During his impeachment (for lying under oath about the Lewinsky affair), Clinton’s approval ratings hit the high sixties. From then on, his approval never dipped below the high fifties.
Clinton had been widely seen as one of the most popular presidents in modern history, especially by a public who had largely written off his personal indiscretions as nobody’s business and who believed he was, indeed, a victim of his overreaching political opponents. (Only 24 percent believe that today.)
Moreover, the favorability rating for a president tends to go up after he leaves office.
Clinton is going backwards.
The reasons for this slide are fairly obvious.
When Hillary Clinton ran for the presidency in 2016, she stupidly tried to run on the issue of sexual harassment and misconduct. The hypocrisy was startling. But she likely believed the establishment media could still protect her in the same way they zealously protected Bill throughout his presidency. Alternative media, however, made it impossible for Hillary and the compliant media to sweep the litany of allegations against Bill under the rug.
Hillary’s opponent, Donald Trump, was also happy to re-litigate Bill’s sordid pass, up to and including a credible allegation of rape.
What’s more, as everyone knows, the establishment media spent some 25 years (1992 – 2016) not only shielding Clinton from credible allegations of misconduct (and worse), but aiding and abetting the smear campaigns Bill (and Hillary) launched against any accuser who dared come forward.
But now that the establishment media see the Clintons as irrelevant, he is now expendable. And to try and legitimatize their attacks on Trump, the media understand they can no longer protect Bill, something they were zealously doing as recently as the last campaign cycle.
Basically, the media see more political upside for the political left in cutting Bill loose.
And so, now that he is on his own, now that the media are finally asking tough questions (while still pulling their punches), Clinton’s past has come into stark relief, which means voters are more inclined to see a sexual predator than a victim.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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