Maybe I'm just too young to remember, but I've always been baffled by how the Clintons cause conservatives to literally start frothing at the mouth, even more so than Obama. The chud hate for Obama is understandable because he masqueraded as a progressive reformist. But, its more confusing with the Clintons because they are both right wingers.
Bill Clinton destroyed the last vestiges of the New Deal movement within the Democratic party and made it a fully neoliberal party, slashed welfare spending with Republican support, deregulated banks, and signed the crime bill which led to the mass incarceration of black people.
Hilary Clinton is a right wing warmongerer who made racist dog whistles during the 2008 campaign. Hell, she didn't even come out in favor of same sex marriage until like 2013.
The right wing playbook is to never cede space. If the dems step to the right, take two steps to the right and call them commies. It's super effective and every major media outlet plays along.
THis is pretty much America's foreign policy, now that I think about it.
Given that conservatives have run America's foreign policy since FDR died, that does kind of makes sense.
- Disastrous economic policy for industrial workers.
- Fake, polling driven culture war stances.
- Rich powerful coastal elite and clearly favored by other cultural elite.
- Probably fucks children.
Basically the same reasons the far left hates them, except framed in their own narratives and perspectives.
Give the man his due his mom was a single mom and worked as a nurse his whole life. His family history is fucked as hell. Shit, last time I looked her up her damn CRNA license was still active. This at least partially why he has always pushed expanding nursing into doctoring.
Plus it takes balls to loan out your state's biggest private airfield to the CIA to smuggle cocaine into the U.S.
I mean he is a pedophile mass murderer rapist so some of their criticism does ring true regardless of how they got there
Agree with a lot of the analysis here. Also wanted to add that the Clinton years were coincided with Newt Gingrich's term as the Speaker of the House. Fuck the two party system, but that ghoul had a radical effect on "the norms" by ramping up partisanship. See below for quotes from smarter people:
"According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States."
"University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason identified Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors” about Democrats as an example of a breach in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice."
"Boston College political scientist David Hopkins notes that Gingrich's view 'directly contradicted the conventional wisdom of politics... that parties in a two-party system achieve increasing electoral success as they move closer to the ideological center... Gingrich and his allies believed that an organized effort to intensify the ideological contrast between the congressional parties would allow the Republicans to make electoral inroads in the South. They worked energetically to tie individual Democratic incumbents to the party's more liberal national leadership while simultaneously raising highly charged cultural issues in Congress, such as proposed constitutional amendments to allow prayer in public schools and to ban the burning of the American flag, on which conservative positions were widely popular – especially among southern voters.' "
TL;DR it was a conscious political choice by the GOP
I think this is it. He was "cool" (to median voters who aren't outraged by imperialism or scandal) and he threatened to bring a new decades-long Democratic consensus (never mind this one was far to the right of the New Deal coalition).
He also beat H.W. Bush, so I'm sure plenty of, uh, entrenched interests were displeased with him, no matter how hard he bombed Iraq.
It kind of makes sense why the Republicans hated FDR and Obama for more or less the same reasons. Truman was the same way too for a bit. I don't think LBJ got as much hate for some reason.
LBJ had personal connections to much of the same Republican establishment, and was pretty good friends with a lot of hard right Republicans. He also played dirty politics with the best of them, and was personally extremely corrupt (seriously, his election to the Senate only happened because a judge "happened to find" some 100 votes in a ballotbox, which he then "lost" when the official recount was supposed to happen).
It was the perfect time. Reagan just let radio go full right wing. Limbaugh was a huge star, fox news hit in 1996. Clinton dragged the Democrats right and the right wing lost its mind. They're the original boogeymen. That's why Hillary was doomed from the get.
honestly I think the chuds hate them because Hillary was clearly parleying being the first lady into a longer and more impactful career in politics, and Bill was playing into that. Voting for "Clinton" was kind of seen as getting them both back in the day, in a way that isn't true of the more recent Hillary runs where Bill has been decidedly on the sidelines.
Though part of it is also definitely the fact that they were the first Dem couple to be featured extensively on 24 hour news. The amount of completely made up shit that got flung at them was unprecedented at the time, and permanently imprinted on a lot of chud brains.
I think a lot of it was the shock joke era of the 80s colliding with NAFTA and the Regan Revolution.
Clinton was the first Democrat to really capture the totality of the black vote, which means Republicans lost any incentive not to go hog on the racism. Talk Radio was taking off as a means of distributing propaganda, so the "thought leaders" were the kind of oafs that lived to hear themselves talk.
And finally, you had the Clintons themselves. Lying, traitorous, bigoted, greedy, horny, neoliberal climbers. They did so much shit you could justifiably hate. Super predators School Uniforms. Operation Desert Fox. Graham-Leech-Biley. There was so much to go crazy over. They were like a family full of lightning rods.
they are pretty nakedly corrupt but like Trump wriggle out of every jam (facilitated by "their team" not giving a fuck) so it's the cumulative effect of decades of someone on "the other team" "getting away with it" and no real consideration for the fact that their ideology benefits conservative interests
mostly it's culture war bullshit and narcissism of small differences, but also bill clinton was incredibly popular during his presidency. he was obama before obama. clinton and the democratic third-way strategy successfully ate the right's lunch. with the end of the cold war and the dawn of the end of history, the GOP found itself in an identity crisis. the cosmic ideological struggle against the forces of evil had been won, so a new enemy needed to be relocated within. the actual nefarious details of the clinton's lives happened to align with the undercurrent of evangelical conspiracy-theorism that the previous era's bircherites evolved into. also a lot of the hate towards hillary was catalyzed by misogyny over a professional woman in a position of power. that was a thing people used to get real mad about, moreso than today. it's just a coincidence that she genuinely is a baby eating satan worshiper.
It's largely because he delayed their destiny. They were destined to have unlimited power forever and he interrupted that. Plus his wife was a FEMINIST!!!!!
