By Ruth Marcus

Donald Trump is crude and vulgar. He’s every “-ist” in the book: racist, sexist, narcissist, for starters. His dis about Hillary Clinton getting “schlonged” in the 2008 campaign and the accompanying tirade about her “disgusting” bathroom break were weird and juvenile. But he has a point about Clinton playing the “woman’s card,” and about the male behavior that’s more concerning: her husband’s.

Was there a sexist undertone to Trump’s “schlonged” comment? I guess, since we know which Democratic candidate does and doesn’t have one. Still, as sexism goes, this feels awfully mild.

"I think he has to answer for what he says, and I assume that others will make the larger point about his language,” Clinton told the Des Moines Register. “It’s not the first time he’s demonstrated a penchant for sexism.”

True, but Clinton’s attempt at outsourced outrage has the air of a basketball player flopping on the floor for the benefit of the ref. Nothing would make the Clinton campaign happier than some good old-fashioned male chauvinist piggery directed her way — all the better to rile up female voters who seem surprisingly nonchalant about the prospect of electing the first female president.

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Into this gender minefield lumbers Trump, characteristically unbound and deploying a weapon that none of Clinton’s Democratic opponents, past or present, has dared to mention. He played the Bill Card.

“Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate! ” Trump tweeted on Saturday.

He followed up the next day on “Fox and Friends Weekend,” accusing Clinton of playing the “woman’s card” and declaring her husband “fair game because his presidency was really considered to be very troubled, to put it mildly, because of all the things that she’s talking to me about.” Trump, typically delighted with himself, pointed out, “I turned her exact words against her.”

And again, Monday morning. “If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong!”

Well, Bill Clinton has a penchant for something. He had a successful presidency — with an ugly blot. “Sexism” isn’t the precise word for his predatory behavior toward women or his inexcusable relationship with a 22-year-old intern. Yet in the larger scheme of things, Bill Clinton’s conduct toward women is far worse than any of the offensive things that Trump has said.

Trump has smeared women because of their looks. Clinton has preyed on them, and in a workplace setting where he was by far the superior. That is uncomfortable for Clinton supporters but it is unavoidably true.
Which leads to the next question: What is the relevance of Bill Clinton’s conduct for Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Ordinarily, I would argue that the sins of the husband should not be visited on the wife. What Bill Clinton did counts against him, not her, and I would include in that her decision to stick with him. What happens inside a marriage is the couple’s business, and no one else’s, even when both halves crave the presidency.

But Hillary Clinton has made two moves that lead me, gulp, to agree with Trump on the “fair game” front. She is (smartly) using her husband as a campaign surrogate, and simultaneously (correctly) calling Trump sexist.

These moves open a dangerous door. It should surprise no one that Trump has barged right through it.

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