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Yep, your last paragraph absolutely nails it. This is the true horror of tribalism. Some people have completely abandoned principle and decency and moral consistency in favour of political tribalism. Or in other cases, identitarian tribalism.
Though, yes, plenty of Democrats cared about Monica Lewinsky (nytimes.com/1998/08/19/…). It's har…
Yep, your last paragraph absolutely nails it. This is the true horror of tribalism. Some people have completely abandoned principle and decency and moral consistency in favour of political tribalism. Or in other cases, identitarian tribalism.
Though, yes, plenty of Democrats cared about Monica Lewinsky (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/19/us/testing-president-reaction-scathing-sad-democrats-react-clinton-speech.html). It's hard to overstate how much more polarised things are today than in the past. The extremes of political tribalism are far greater today than they used to be.
The reactions expressed in the link were all about how it might affect the Democratic party politically. Some mention of morality. His lie, as if the overwhelming majority of men and women would not lie about infidelity.
The thing that was missing was concern that a young woman was a victim of his abuse of the asymmetry of power. Did she, as an intern have political hopes. Was there implicit or explicit promise of favor in that realm? That didn't seem to be much of an issue, but politics sure was.