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The 1998 Clinton impeachment crisis

From the beginning of the Clinton impeachment crisis, the World Socialist Web Site and its predecessor, the International Workers Bulletin, drew attention to the underlying class issues and the implications of the right-wing effort to cripple or remove the Clinton administration for the democratic rights of the working class.

Pointing out the repeated use of sex scandals to shift official politics in America in a reactionary direction, the WSWS explained that the central issue was not President Bill Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, or his lying about it, but the conflict within the American ruling elite and what it revealed about the crisis and decay of American democracy.

In a statement published on December 21, 1998 under the headline, “Is America drifting toward civil war?” the WSWS Editorial Board wrote, “The crisis in Washington arises from an interaction of complex political, social and economic processes. Bourgeois democracy is breaking down beneath the weight of accumulated and increasingly insoluble contradictions. The economic and technological processes associated with the globalization of the world economy have undercut the social conditions and class relationships upon which the political stability of America has long depended.”

The impeachment of Clinton by the US Senate took place in early 1999 and ended in his acquittal, but the right-wing conspiracy continued.

The social and political background to the Clinton impeachment
The Starr Investigation: Spearhead of a right-wing coup
The impeachment trial and its aftermath
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