The New York Times has just released an article that finally condemns former President Bill Clinton for rape.

Back in 1999, Juanita Broaddrick came forward to say that in 1978, when he was Arkansas Attorney General, Clinton raped her.

Since then, leftists have regularly dismissed Broaddrick and other women who have accused Clinton of sexual abuse.

On Friday, however, MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted that liberals at “overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him.”

As gross and cynical and hypocrtical as the right's "what about Bill Clinton" stuff is, it's also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him. — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 10, 2017

TRENDING: Federal Government Sues Kroger for Allegedly Firing 2 Workers Who Refused To Wear LGBT-Linked Symbol

Hayes claims it’s “gross and cynical and hypocritical” when a Republican invokes Clinton in response to Republicans being accused of rape or abuse. Nevertheless, he’s right to say that it’s time for a “real reckoning” concerning Clinton’s character.

Well, apparently the New York Times has finally decided that it will believe serious, reasonable accusations of rape, even when the rapist is Bill Clinton.

Times columnist Michelle Goldberg says she believes Broaddrick and “Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society”:

Yet despite the right’s evident bad faith, I agree with Hayes. In this #MeToo moment, when we’re reassessing decades of male misbehavior and turning open secrets into exposes, we should look clearly at the credible evidence that Juanita Broaddrick told the truth when she accused Clinton of raping her. But revisiting the Clinton scandals in light of today’s politics is complicated as well as painful. Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldn’t have. At the same time, looking back at the smear campaign against the Clintons shows we can’t treat the feminist injunction to “believe women” as absolute.

The Right’s “bad faith” came from reports by conservatives on Clinton’s sex abuse scandals. Goldberg seems to feel guilty that conservative news outlets took the right stance from the start, while Democrats wrung their hands, made excuses, and looked the other way.

Goldberg seems to think that when the liberal media attacks rapists, it’s because they care. But when conservatives do it, they’re just being gross, cynical, and hypocritical, as Hayes asserted.

What Goldberg and Hayes probably understand but failed to exemplify is that coverage of sex abuse isn’t a competition to see who does it right first, or who gets bragging rights for being “the good guys.”

It’s about the truth.

Goldberg goes on to question whether all the women who came forward against Clinton ought to be believed. But she settles with a shocking final conclusion that was long overdue: Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick.

Of the Clinton accusers, the one who haunts me is Broaddrick. The story she tells about Clinton recalls those we’ve heard about Weinstein. She claimed they had plans to meet in a hotel coffee shop, but at the last minute he asked to come up to her hotel room instead, where he raped her. Five witnesses said she confided in them about the assault right after it happened. It’s true that she denied the rape in an affidavit to Paula Jones’s lawyers, before changing her story when talking to federal investigators. But her explanation, that she didn’t want to go public but couldn’t lie to the F.B.I., makes sense. Put simply, I believe her […] It’s fair to conclude that because of Broaddrick’s allegations, Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society […] But we should remember that it’s not simply partisan tribalism that led liberals to doubt her. Discerning what might be true in a blizzard of lies isn’t easy, and the people who spread those lies don’t get to claim the moral high ground. We should err on the side of believing women, but sometimes, that belief will be used against us.

Yes, discerning what deserves the belief of a self-respecting partisan news outlet such as the New York Times is difficult. And in the end, it too had the distinct honor of finally being able to “claim the moral high ground.”

In other words, leftists can admit, now that the pressure’s on, that Bill Clinton is not above the law. They must, actually, condemn him. Otherwise, Democrats would publicly become the “gross, cynical, and hypocritical” villains they so love to call Republicans.

Has Bill Clinton really lost his place in decent society?

Democrats more cowardly than Goldberg or Hayes could still rely on the healing powers of cognitive dissidence, Orwellian double-think, to reconcile their love of Clinton with condemnation for sexual abuse.

But they don’t need to, and even the New York Times has come to grips with the fact that, yes, an iconic liberal president can rape.