Democrats would prefer to be united in loyal opposition to the new president, jousting with congressional Republicans on a broad range of issues. They would prefer to see the former President out on the hustings, nurturing a positive legacy and pumping millions of new donor dollars into party coffers.
Instead, they find themselves faced with yet another scandal. And this time they can't simply shrug it off as a private sexual matter, as they did in 1998.
Many Democrats who excused Clinton or kept silent then as he deceived top aides and allowed them to repeat those lies in public are not about to cut him more slack. Many seem almost anxious to distance themselves from his last presidential act, crafted without consulting federal prosecutors, to pardon a fugitive described by his own biographer as "the most wanted white-collar criminal in America."
"It's hard to defend what appears to be indefensible," strategist David Axelrod, who is close to the labor movement, said. "The pardon was a bad call, and this is a bad story for us. When we were planning strategy earlier in the winter, this is not the kind of thing we would have wanted to be dealing with in mid-February. We would have liked to have seen him leave the presidency basking in the warmth of his successes. So I'm sad to see his good works obscured by this."
Tom Pazzi, another party strategist, grumbled: "[Clinton] seems determined to find new ways to spend his money on legal fees. It's amazing. I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this pardon seems so ill considered."
