The Donald Trump campaign has found a new target for the election — the presidency of Bill Clinton.
If the strategy works, he’ll sour voters on Hillary Clinton without resorting to policy details and direct attacks.
The goal “is to make the young voters be educated of the happenings of the past, particularly Bill Clinton’s presidency. He said that the new voters might not be knowledgeable of the husband of Hillary Clinton’s womanizing issues and he is eyeing it to be ‘an education process,’” according to the Parent Herald.
To that end, Trump is drudging up old allegations against Bill Clinton. Trump has referenced sexual assault allegations and a baseless conspiracy theory on the death of a White House staffer in the 1990s.
For the sexual assault allegations, Trump has a point.
“It’s a substantive matter worthy of coverage,” Dylan Matthews wrote for Vox.
While unconnected with the 2016 election, it’s made some campaign stops difficult for Hillary. She’s dealt with questions about the allegations and hecklers.
“There really are multiple accusations of sexual assault against Bill Clinton, accusations that have too often been conflated with his much better-established and much less morally concerning history of adultery,” Matthews noted.
Hillary, for her part, has refuted the accusations as baseless. She’s promoted Bill during the campaign as “the first dude” and a crucial advisor on economic policy.
“There have been times in the past — and may well be in the future — when it was unclear whether Bill Clinton was more an asset or a liability to his wife’s aspirations,” Karen Tumulty wrote for The Washington Post.
Trump is betting that he’ll be a liability — and will run a campaign to make it so. Hillary is betting that his lingering popularity will make him an asset. Much of that is rooted in the myth of Bill as an economic wizard, but voters will have the responsibility of deciding which interpretation they’ll support.
