apparently killing tens of thousands of people so you can enrich a handful of your friends just doesn't have the same oomph as sexual assault. All those dead kids sort of vanish into the ether. Maybe it's because the sexual assault happened here and not overseas. I've noticed things are much more real to Americans when they happen here. Not sure when that started--the TV footage of VietNam shocked people to the core. It must be part of the wonderful downhill slide of the last 45 years.

But what's going on now in the media is not a legitimate discussion about sexual assault. It's a cheap diversion to distract attention from the election, and the issues at hand.

There have always been some.

Michelle Obama being "shocked to her core" about Trump's sexual escapades, yet OK with Bill Clinton's, is just one part of the "Donald as sacrificial lamb" strategy of the Clinton campaign. When was the MSM ever as shocked about male misogyny as when Trump came on the scene? Rape of millions of Tutsi women in Rwanda when Bill Clinton refused to send help, the Tailhook scandal in the Navy, the never-ending rapes of women in the military by officers and fellow soldiers? Nope! It took The Donald, the only opponent Hill could beat, to bring out the faux hidden rage against male misbehavior.

I remember how shocked I felt when I learned that wives could be sold by their husbands early in our beloved America. Like a man selling his property, his livestock or his horses. Or like slavery.

for her Senate campaign.

In 1994, he had already said in a public interview that he thought getting rough with women made them treat men sweeter.

Hill & Bill had no problem with that for about 20 years. None of these famous people did.
It only became an issue when she needed a bump in the polls.

sleaze balls regularly, and thinking that they are the norm. We may encounter hundreds or thousands before we encounter one sleaze ball. But if you are surrounded by people, some of them will be the sleazy people.

"The recording is thought of as unassailable truth to be presented to people who refused to believe. To hear it dismissed as old news not relevant to the campaign is painful."

I completely agree with this. Many of the comments I'm reading here in support of the OP appear to me to lack nuance. More than one thing is going on here with this "Trump is a sexual predator" meme at the same time. Clinton operatives with varying degrees of cynicism and opportunism want this story to continue and gain momentum. Some are certainly lacking in the self-awareness to realize that they are pandering with the psychic pain of people who have been sexually abused to varying degrees for the political and thus financial benefit of Clinton's campaign, but many will have convinced themselves that it's worth it, while others don't care because they simply are that vile and cynical.

Women who are coming forward to relate their stories of Trump doing these things to them personally may not all have pure motives, but that is not for me to judge. Any who accept money for their story will have lost at least some credibility with me, but otherwise the numbers adding up may generally help the cause of survivors of sexual abuse separate from whatever effect they have on electoral politics, so I can only be happy about the part that is to me a good thing. The political part is of less interest to me, although I admit that this will all have a mixed bag of results that will be difficult for many to separate in the manner that I'm doing.

Anybody who implies or states that being grabbed in a sexually-attributed bodily area isn't sexual assault is to me completely wrong. There are degrees of sexual assault, but they are all damaging to some degree with the degree dependent on the individual. Different individuals react in different ways to having this happen to them, but just because you have an anecdotal example that a person that experienced a similar thing wasn't much troubled by it carries no more weight than any other anecdotal example.

The law is far from perfect in language as well as in enforcement most certainly, but I think it's right that different levels of assault are observed and carry different types of sentences. What differentiates many of the things Trump has done from a guy on a date trying to get to second base, being rebuffed, and then stopping himself from further attempts, is that Trump was often in some position of authority over his targets. In my opinion that makes what he did worse.

Here and there in this comment thread, speaking as a person with an advanced degree in literature and language who is used to parsing language for subtleties, I am seeing indications that some are longing for the good old days before the idea that verbal communication of consent is needed during sexual encounters started gaining some acceptance. It isn't remotely universal yet by any means and is encountering significant push-back, but I'm in favor of it. To me the idea of mystery in romantic encounters has more wrong with it than right. If women are empowered to own their sexualities then they won't need to be seduced. If "good" girls and women only have sex when they are seduced or worn down by repeated groping after they have pushed that hand away a couple of times, then they are far more likely to feel guilt and shame afterwards. If they instead actively choose to participate and decide what they want and don't want, then maybe that silent battle of wills that I remember from my dating days can die off and go away. This applies to women pressuring their male sexual partners as well because our culture definitely puts a different kind of pressure on males to never pass up any sexual "opportunity" they have, which is also wrong. How would it be a bad thing if all sexual partners have the peace of mind of knowing that they have experienced a mutually-consensual sexual experience?

Sexual encounters where either or both partners isn't comfortable enough to talk to the other person about how they're feeling aren't healthy. We have a long, long way to go to get there, but in my opinion it's a goal we should be striving for. To provide context and disclosure, my views are shaped by personal experience of multiple examples of sexual harassment and abuse including so-called "date" rape. This doesn't make me any kind of expert, but I do tend to support ideas that will help advance sexual communication and the struggle to change patriarchal views of power and sexuality that reinforce coercive and abusive sexual behavior up to and including the most egregious examples of rape and sexual slavery.

Yes, things were worse in the past, but the standards of the Golden Rule have been around for a long time and do not excuse wrong behavior in the past. Trump hasn't seen the light and changed his ways anyway, so to me that's a moot point. I can be educated about how much worse things used to be without choosing to dwell on it. It's the reason I had to stop watching Mad Men. I could appreciate the skill level and artistic merit of the show, but it depressed the shit out of me to see the casual sexism and racism that was the "norm" (a contextually-slippery word), so I chose not to watch. Others weren't similarly affected and could compartmentalize and protect themselves emotionally from those depictions. I couldn't and decided I didn't want to even try.

Finally, at this point choosing the lesser of two evils between these two candidates is also something I refuse to participate in any longer. I find both of them repellent and have no intention of voting for either of them. On this point I think I agree with the OP, but I find the language choices and tenor of the argument used to make the point unconvincing and borderline offensive. I can't judge the writer's intent, so I am only voicing my own reaction. In other words, I may agree somewhat with the point that I think is being attempted to be made, but as a piece of writing, I don't personally find the rhetorical strategy effective or appealing. This in no way negates the writer's freedom to express him or herself as he or she sees fit. I also realize that many of my views stated in this comment may not resonate with people who are tired of the manipulation of various identity-based issues for political gain, but again in my view nuance is my friend. I can reject this political manipulation without sacrificing my own ardent support of the goals of these movements. Cynically co-opting a good idea or cause doesn't invalidate the idea or cause, but it can inhibit progress, so I despise those who do it.

Edited to correct spelling.