Opinion: Luckily for the Clintons, a little-noted anniversary

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If Hillary Clinton falls short in her Democratic presidential bid, what’s become known as ‘Clinton fatigue’ will be seen as one of the main reasons.

Time magazine’s Mark Halperin summed it up nicely Monday night on Barbara Walters’ weekly Sirius radio show:

‘The biggest problem that she faces, I think, with voters … [is that] they don’t want another four years of the Clinton soap opera ... ‘

Passing virtually unnoticed today (except by The Ticket) was the ninth anniversary of an iconic occurrence in the saga of Bill Clinton’s White House tenure -- the formal end of the impeachment case against him. Yes, it was on this day in 1999 that a vote ...

in the Senate fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to oust him from office.

It had been crystal-clear before the first arguments were aired in the Senate trial that the votes were lacking to convict him on the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice that the House had approved. The entire proceeding had a going-through-the-motions quality to it, utterly lacking in drama -- which helps explain why its anti-climax is so little-remembered.

Still, the trial is a symbol of the soap opera Halperin refers to -- memories that work against Hillary Clinton’s current aspirations.

Perhaps note will be taken of the trial’s end next year, on its 10th anniversary. But probably not; it will be vying for attention with the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

-- Don Frederick