It's worth examining the Clinton hangover to understand why the Stormy Daniels stuff isn't catching fire with the public. It's not just pushback against partisan hypocrisy or "whataboutism."
Left-media folks who decry the coarse nature of today's politics have never accepted that the Clinton scandals were among of the major events that made politics uglier and more partisan. The Clinton wars were the transformative event for an entire generation.
The Clinton wars opened a lot of Republican eyes to the extent of media bias. It also taught them Democrats were far more determined, vicious, and effective partisans than Republicans. Seeds of "we should fight like they do" planted back then are blossoming today.
Observers at the time worried about the irreparable damage Clinton and his defenders were inflicting on American public morality - turning the crusade against sexual harassment into a comical partisan sham, normalizing adultery and deception.
Those observers were savaged as out-of-touch prudes from a bygone era. The Left leaped at the opportunity to bludgeon the last remnants of "Ozzie and Harriet" morality into submission. But the critics were entirely correct about the lasting moral damage from Clinton.
The moral damage wasn't merely inflicted on the Left and its constituencies. People on the Right changed too. They felt like they had lost an ugly battle in the culture wars. Marriage and fidelity were decisively out of style in pop culture.
Remember, in the 90s we were explicitly told that Americans hung up on marriage and adultery were cavemen, and we should be more like the suave Europeans, who were cool with powerful men having young mistresses.
That message was received. There is no way to look at the decline of enthusiasm for marriage over the past few decades and doubt that the Clintons contributed to it. They didn't start it, but they made it worse through the cultural argument they pushed to save Bill.
More pertinent to today's politics, the Clinton wars also got some Republicans thinking that they shouldn't let the other side destroy their leaders with moral criticism that simply did not apply to Democrats post-Clinton.
They got the idea that they would not allow themselves to be bludgeoned with principles the Democrats mocked and derided. They would not throw away crucial political contests because their candidate did things Bill Clinton was given a limitless free pass for.
This strain of thought is derided by the Left as hypocrisy, but many Republicans came to think of it as pragmatism. They would not cede further control over their lives to Dems who fought by no-holds-barred rules in order to uphold moral principles the Dems had trashed.
One other enduring message from the Clinton years is: "It's the economy, stupid." That message was heard loud and clear. The people who sent it are strangely confused about why Trump's approval ratings don't sink because of Stormy.
We were told loud and clear in the 90s, over and over again, that it was silly for voters to fuss over Clinton's sex scandals when the economy was humming along nicely. It would be folly to derail prosperity with a huge political crisis over sex.
Clintonworld blasted that message in our faces with megaphones. We heard it every single day. We were told Republicans were sabotaging prosperity by pursuing impeachment over sex. We were told they were obsessed perverts for doing so.
"It's the economy, stupid" wasn't just a campaign slogan. In the late Clinton years it became his impeachment defense, a message pushed so hard that it sank into the popular consciousness. It's not just a memory from the 90s. It's part of our base political program code now.
So yes, it's a little hard for the media to spin all that on a dime and tell Republicans, or Americans in general, that they should throw away Trump's economy and foreign policy progress and flagellate themselves over the Stormy thing. /end
