Why Liberal Democrats Ignored Sexual Harassment for So Many Years

The quick answer is that liberalism is no longer an ideology, focused on ideas. It is a sociology, bent on acquiring political power and social dominance.

George McGovern was the last Democratic presidential nominee who ran an issues campaign. That was 45 years ago. Since then Democratic politicians and their liberal supporters in the mainstream media have moved steadily away from issues and toward the politics of identity. Can you think of a single issue highlighted in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign? I bet you can’t.

For the most part, all the issues we have been discussing since the days of Ronald Reagan have come from the right – flat tax, school choice, privatization, private Social Security accounts, etc. Liberal Democrats have done little more than oppose.

The only political message Democrats have had for blacks is: vote for us because you’re black. The only message for women is: vote for us because you’re a woman. Similarly, for Hispanics, immigrants, gays, etc.

Victimization means telling people their problems, their setbacks, their disappointments are caused by someone else. They’ve been oppressed. Unfairly. They should be angry about it. Very angry. And … do what? … Go vote.

Identity politics is not about changing laws. It’s about getting people to the polls. It’s not about changing institutions. It’s about acquiring political power.

If you aren’t listening very carefully, you might mistakenly think that Democrats have agendas. For example, you would expect a party that is pro-women to have a women’s agenda. A party that is pro-black to have an agenda for blacks. A party that is for the little guy to have a little guy’s agenda. In fact, the Democrats don’t have any of these.

Some time ago, Wall Street Journal editorialist Kimberly Strassel and I wrote a book entitled, Leaving Women Behind. The entire book was about ways women get shafted by federal policies. For example, tax law, labor law, employee benefits law, the Social Security system, the disability system, etc., are all based on an outmoded view of how women live. It’s as though the entire federal bureaucracy decided years ago that the typical woman would be a stay-at-home mom, married to a full-time worker husband. If your household fits that image, federal policies probably work pretty well for you. But if you are a modern family living under outdated laws, you’re probably losing out.

Our book was chock full of ways to bring federal policies into the 21^st century and make them consistent with the changing role of women in the modern age. Question: how many of these policy changes were endorsed by the Hillary Clinton campaign? Answer: not a one. (For what it’s worth, our suggestions to Mitt Romney were ignored as well.)

You might think that sexual harassment would be a rather straightforward issue for the party that claims to be the party of women. In the 1990s, liberal activist groups used the issue to almost derail the appointment of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and to force the resignation of Senator Bob Packwood. But the allegations against Thomas and Packwood seem almost trivial by today’s standards.

Later when Bill Clinton was accused of these far more serious transgressions, women’s groups associated with the Democratic Party defended him. Republicans called them “hypocrites.” But that misses the point.

We now know that sexual harassment has been rampant for years in all the places where liberals congregated – on Capitol Hill, in the state legislatures, in Hollywood, in the mainstream media, at liberal opinion magazines, etc. If they cared about this behavior they could have said something. But they didn’t. I hope it is now clear to all that sexual harassment to the Democratic establishment was always about elections and achieving political goals. It was never about anything else.

There is also no Democratic black agenda. And there never has been. At least for the last 50 years.

San Francisco is probably the most liberal city in California. And it’s the richest. If they care about minority children there, they certainly have the means to do something about it. Yet, black and Hispanic children do worse in San Francisco schools than anywhere else in the entire state.

It’s almost a rule of modern political science: wherever you find minority children attending bad schools, Democrats are probably in charge. Ditto for the worst housing. And the worst environmental dangers.

For many years, the only people who seemed to care about helping black children escape bad schools were conservative Republicans. Wealthy Republican donors set up private school choice programs all over the country. In recent years, many wealthy Democrats have joined to help them. But there are almost no establishment Democrats who are willing to stand up to the teachers’ unions.

The final V is vengeance. If people have been oppressed, don’t you think they should have the opportunity to complain? And given their oppression, don’t you think they should be allowed to step over boundaries the rest of us must respect? Liberals certainly think that way.

Jesse Jackson called Jews “Hymies” and called New York City “Hymietown.” Al Sharpton created a lucrative business out of Mau-Mauing unsuspecting whites – for $10,000 he could arrange a civil rights protest almost anywhere. Black Lives Matter marchers chanted “Pigs in a blanket…” Rich black football players took a knee, to protest living in a racist country. Protestors can tear down statues for almost any reason. Members of the media and even Hillary Clinton herself can make up fake news stories about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

And they all get away with it. In fact, to object to any of this is in the liberal mind “political incorrectness.”

Well … at least it was until someone was willing to call them out. And because he did it, Donald Trump became president.

More on that in another column.

They care about the "plight" of "unempowered" women and are concerned about sexual harassment (a real thing, so I won't put it into scare-quotes - but the right thing to do in every case would have been to scream "Harassment!" and walk away, which very few seem to have done, probably because they didn't want to jeopardize their business / career interests, which is an abominable attitude) only insofar as they can weaponize it against conservatives and insofar as they can use it to advance their "Social Justice" agenda - both of which are rather difficult because a) most of the miscreants seem to be liberals, and b) it does not comport well with their established narrative that:

1) Women are "strong" and perfectly capable of fending for themselves without any help from any of you intrusive "White Knights" ("Chivalry is dead, and Feminism drove the stake into its heart.")

2) Women are just as "sexed-up" as men, i.e., just as "horny," and ought to be as promiscuous as possible in order to tear down the Patriarchy, which is based on the repression of female sexuality (this is a corollary to "It's only sex" and "Being a housewife and mother is demeaning.")

3) There are probably more, but I can't think of them right now. Anyone?

What really gets my dander up is this meme that "Men have to start calling each other to accountability for this." Here's what one fellow (viz. Rus Funk) wrote:

[We need an environment that] Supports and encourage (shall I say, require) men’s empathy for women’s feelings and experiences. As human beings, we have a limitless ability to feel empathy for others. The environment of sexism, racism and homophobia systematically disinhibits men from expressing their empathy for women – especially women who are “others” in additional ways (by race or ethnicity, by sexual orientation, etc.). As, men, we need to create social environments in which men’s default response to women or men’s allegations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of gender based violence is to believe – and “believe out loud”!

To which I would retort: If my wife or daughter were to report harassment to me, I would deal with it - but I am not required to take sides in or get involved in any way in anyone else's fights. Nor can anyone demand of me the default response that I "believe." I shall continue to maintain my own standards (forensic-grade evidence) for use in determining what I "believe."

Regards,

Giving Clinton a Pass Enabled 20 Years of Sexual Harassment
Townhall.com ^ | Dec 04, 2017 | Lawrence Meyers / FR Posted by Oshkalaboomboom

When Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey went public with their sexual assault and harassment allegations against Bill Clinton, #metoo was not a thing. “The victim must be believed” had not yet entered the lexicon.

Instead, these three courageous women have endured decades of attacks by Democrats, the media, and the Clintons. Only now, as the Clintons fall down the rabbit hole of irrelevancy, do their stories suddenly matter. What Democrats don’t want to admit is that by protecting a serial sexual reprobate in the 1990s, they enabled 20 years of sexual harassment on countless innocent women by predatory men of every political stripe.

When the Lewinsky scandal surfaced in 1998, Democrats circled the wagons. The chorus was heard from sea to shining sex addiction rehab clinic: “it’s just sex!” With those three words, Democrats aided in the destructions of the moral fabric of the presidency, and provided cover for sexual harassment in every corner of American society until the Harvey Weinstein allegations.

Think about how different America might have been, if instead, citizens of every stripe demanded Clinton’s resignation. If people insisted that their president be held to a higher moral standard. If people didn’t say, “JFK did it,” but instead said, “This is unacceptable.” I know, I know – I’m talking to the same people who lionized Ted Kennedy after he drove Mary Jo Kopechne into a tidal channel and let her drown.

I’m just asking, “what if?”

Perhaps then, Paula Jones and Juanita Broadrrick and Kathleen Willey would have been believed. Perhaps they would have been championed for their bravery. Perhaps America would have demanded more from men in power. Perhaps women would not have been scared into silence for the next 20 years. Perhaps perpetrators would think twice about the ramifications of their actions. Perhaps that would have forestalled the repulsive and unacceptable stories that are only now coming to light.

Nope.

Instead, those three little words sent a message to every creep lurking behind every desk with a “lock door” button within reach: it is open season on women.

This is part-and-parcel of how the Left operates. They are completely incapable of seeing unintended consequences of every word they speak, and every policy they endorse. The Left does not merely engage in knee-jerk responses. That’s being too kind. A response comes from the higher functions of the brain. The Left merely reacts with undeveloped herd mentality to every stimulus.

The result is sadly apparent. By rushing to the defense of Clinton’s indefensible behavior, Democrats locked in their support for the Clintons no matter what. The fact that Clinton got away with what he had done up until the Lewinsky scandal, and that Democrats gave him a pass, only served to embolden him. By refusing to condemn her husband’s behavior, and instead choosing to cravenly seek power, Hillary Clinton sold out every woman in America.

Yet deep inside every human, even Democrats, lurks a conscience that must be dealt with. The well-adjusted let Jiminy Cricket lead them to do the right thing. The mental illness of Leftism, however, crushes the little green fellow and instead internalizes the unforgivable. They become the most vociferous defenders of women’s rights. It is particularly odd given that the War on Women originated with Democratic opposition to the 19th Amendment.

“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported” was tweeted by none other than Hillary Clinton. If it weren’t so profoundly enraging to sexual assault victims, one might think it was some kind of meta-prank.

Just to reiterate: this is not to say that sexual harassment is a partisan issue. It isn’t. It’s a cultural one. It just happened to be a culture fostered by the Left, which should hang its collective head in shame for enabling 20 years of terror.

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