ANALYSIS/OPINION:

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The general election isn’t even officially underway yet, and already the leading front-runners of both major parties are in lockstep agreement on one major point: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree that disgraced former President Bill Clinton will play a huge role in the upcoming campaign.

For entertainment purposes, this is great news. For college students dependent on trigger warnings and “safe spaces,” this is going to be a long, long campaign.

“My husband, who I’m going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy — ‘cause you know he knows how to do it,” Mrs. Clinton told voters in Kentucky last week.

“And rape,” offered Mr. Trump, adding to the list of accomplishments attributed to the former president.

“Amazing that Crooked Hillary can do a hit ad on me concerning women when her husband was the WORST abuser of [women] in U.S. political history,” Trump wrote later.

Now it is entirely understandable why Mrs. Clinton needs to “Bring Back Bill,” as the bumper sticker says. She completely disqualified herself as a responsible steward of the economy when she publicly vowed during a nationally televised debate to destroy companies and jobs.

“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business!” she crowed.

And everybody remembers the 1990s, during her husband’s presidency, as the relative good old days, when Mr. Clinton was groping and molesting young women in the White House and Mrs. Clinton was scheming to destroy any of them who complained about it. Oh, and meanwhile, Osama bin Laden was undisturbed, plotting the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

But the economy was great! Or, at least, better than it is now.

I guess this means Democrats will not be using Fleetwood Mac’s “don’t stop” thinking about tomorrow” as the soundtrack for this summer’s convention in Philadelphia.

Maybe they will use “Yesterday” by the Beatles instead.

Or maybe it will be the theme song from “Cops.” “Bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do?” That will go great with all the footage of masked cops throwing canisters of tear gas and spraying fire hoses at all the disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters.

As for the groping and the molesting, the Clintons are dismissing it as old news and unimportant anyway. And they are praying that, with the help of the media, it will all backfire against Mr. Trump — just another in an endless line of failed predictions about the real estate mogul.

“I am going to let him run his campaign however he chooses,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I have nothing to say about him and how he is running his campaign.”

The pervy ex-president, meanwhile, was in sunny Puerto Rico, where he was allegedly “campaigning” for his wife. But, you know, with a randy guy like that, in Puerto Rico, without his wife, you just never know.

Anyway, cameras caught up with him, and a female reporter asked if he wished to address Mr. Trump’s blistering broadside.

The flash is gone from Mr. Clinton’s eyes these days. He was entering a room and looked at the woman asking the question, but at first tried pretending he did not hear her. Cameras rolling.

He was grinning like a deviant possum, with his mouth agape. He was searching for anyone else he might engage in the room who perhaps would not ask him about being a rapist.

No one.

So, after a long, painful pause, he declined and said he thought “people are smart enough to figure this out without my help.”

Which is a curious thing to say in this age of “man-splaining,” micro-aggressions, “gender neutrality” and bathroom liberation. Something tells me the young and wildly enthusiastic supporters of Bernie Sanders are probably not “smart enough” to figure it all out without Bubba’s help.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.

Sign up for Charles Hurt's Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.