Dems’ Clinton Crush Ain’t Over

The more the threads of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal are pulled, the more the tale unravels.

Still, Democrats continue to admire her almost without reservation. No matter how entangled in scandal she becomes, they cut her slack, as they always have. She’s destined. There seems little she and former president Bill Clinton can do to make their acolytes lose faith.

Among those who fervently back her, Hillary has always kept a devoted coterie of older, liberal, mainly white upper-class women of feminist leanings, who seem willing to back her through thick and thin. She has held onto their loyalty to this day, in addition to another group of younger feminists who revel in the nostalgia of the 1960s women’s rights era.

But under FBI investigation, with tens of thousands of emails released and more to come, it seems that Hillary’s denials, half-truths, and obfuscations are having some impact on her presidential aspirations. She was at 64.2 percent support in May; she’s at 47.8 percent today.

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Hillary’s personal popularity among this core of elite females notwithstanding, the former secretary of state’s appeal is also linked to the overwhelming and enduring popularity of her husband. In essence, Hillary is the moon to Bill Clinton’s sun: She basks in his reflected glow.

Throughout dozens of Clinton scandals, starting with Travelgate in the first days of the Clinton presidency, the Democrat power couple has weathered political trials that would have withered the career of almost any other political personage that comes to mind.

Her appeal is also linked to the overwhelming and enduring popularity of her husband. In essence, Hillary is the moon to Bill Clinton’s sun: She basks in his reflected glow.

The Clinton scandals began well before the pair landed in the White House. Whitewater was an Arkansas real estate deal involving financial misappropriations and illegal loans that sent Clinton pal and Whitewater partner Susan McDougal to jail for 18 months. The Clintons emerged mostly unscathed, even after a congressional investigation, and Bill made it a point of business to pardon McDougal before he left the White House.

There were Hillary’s missing billing records from the Rose law firm, which Hillary only “discovered” in a White House closet two years after the fact. Many people were astonished at her stock market acumen after finding out the then-Arkansas first lady, a financial neophyte, somehow managed to turn a $1,000 investment into a $100,000 profit in the trading of cattle futures.

Once the Clintons got to the White House, there was Travelgate, which is instructive since it was the first major Clinton White House scandal.

In 1993, four months after Bill Clinton was sworn into office, seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired, to be replaced by friends of the Clintons.

Hillary’s influence and interference was at the heart of it. In 1993, four months after Bill Clinton was sworn into office, seven employees of the White House Travel Office were fired, to be replaced by friends of the Clintons. The seven fired employees were eventually reinstated in other positions, but not until after FBI, Justice Department, Government Accountability Office, and other investigations and a plethora of news stories forced the move.

The final report on Travelgate was issued in 2000, seven years after the scandal. In that report, Independent Counsel Robert Ray asserted Hillary Clinton had made “factually false statements,” but there was insufficient evidence to do anything more substantive about it.

Related: Hillary Springs a Diversion

Travelgate had seemed fairly important at the time, but it was to be dwarfed by a litany of Clinton scandals throughout his two terms in office and beyond. These included the rental of the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom as an impromptu Clinton bed and breakfast.

And then, of course, there is Monica Lewinsky, a scandal that probably changed the face of the political landscape forever. We all learned the finer details of what the meaning of “is” is, and that Bill Clinton doesn’t consider oral sex to be sex. Certainly many parents were confounded by explaining to their middle schoolers, who were anywhere within hearing distance of a television set, what exactly the president was doing in the Oval Office that was getting him into so much trouble.

None of this includes Hillary’s more recent troubles, such as her Bosnia sniper story, in which she claimed to have been under fire, and the interesting financial transactions of the Clinton Foundation.

The question remains: Why aren’t Hillary’s numbers completely tanking? The answer is probably that her husband is more popular than ever. The 1990s were a golden era for Democrats, despite all the scandals the Clintons fostered. During the Lewinsky affair, impeachment in the House followed by a vote of censure from the Senate not only failed to force Clinton out of office, but he emerged even more powerful from the imbroglio.

Today, despite all of his egregious misbehavior, Clinton is the grand old man of the Democratic Party.

A parallel might be the fate of former President Richard Nixon, a Republican who, like Clinton, faced impeachment, but who had the good sense to resign in 1974 when it was apparent that even his own party wasn’t going to back him anymore. Nixon was nailed for his role in covering up Watergate.

Republicans are far less forgiving of his scandal than Democrats are of the Clintons. Nixon’s popularity plummeted on both sides of the aisle.

The “third-rate burglary,” as Watergate has been characterized throughout history, was a relatively minor crime compared to any number of Clinton scandals. But that’s where Nixon and Bill Clinton part company. Nixon was more like Hillary than Bill. He was neither personally popular nor charismatic, and he was unable to overcome the damage done by Watergate by dint of his own likeability the way Bill Clinton survived and thrived after the Lewinsky scandal.

Republicans are far less forgiving of his scandal than Democrats are of the Clintons. Nixon’s popularity plummeted on both sides of the aisle.

Related: Hillary on Emails: Deny, Deflect, Blame

Bill Clinton, according to many who know him, is a charmer. Sure, he’s a scoundrel, they concede, but even his political opponents can’t help liking him. According to polls, he’s probably more popular now than he was when he left office.

The same can’t be said for his wife, who has been acerbically described as “Nixon, but without the charm.”

A recent Quinnipiac poll stated Hillary’s reputation plainly. The polling group asked 1,563 voters for the first word when they thought of Hillary, and the word that came to mind most often was “liar.” It’s hard to see how Hillary, lacking her husband’s charisma, survives politically without Bill’s personal popularity somehow saving her from herself.

But, particularly with Bill around, Democrats will forgive her endlessly.