Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.) admitted on Tuesday that she was "offended" by the way that women were treated by Democrats in the 1990's after they accused then-President Bill Clinton of sexual assault.
MSNBC host Chuck Todd noted that Speier wasn't elected to Congress until 2008, but asked her whether the Democratic response in the 1990's looked bad for shaming the accusers of Clinton.
"It's bad. I remember being a young mother of a 6-year-old at the time and having to explain to him what blowjob was and I was offended by it, so the victim-blaming absolutely was a thing of the past," Speier said.
"One of the survivors I spoke to said, 'You know, going through the process of filing a complaint was almost worse than the harassment,' so this system has to be changed here," she added.
Several prominent liberals and journalists have been recently reevaluating the merits of the sexual allegations against the former Democratic president, according to a Washington Free Beacon report.
New York Times journalist Michelle Goldberg argued in an op-ed on Monday that she believes Juanita Broaddrick's claim of being raped by Bill Clinton in an Arkansas hotel room and said that it sounded very similar to the allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
The Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan also called for a "reckoning" of Clinton.
"Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990," she wrote. "They were on the wrong side of history."
"It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks," she noted.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes also called for a reexamination of Clinton last Friday on Twitter by pointing out the similarities between Broaddrick's allegations and Weinstein's behavior.
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
Read this account, in light of all we've been hearing and reading this last month, and ask yourself if it's credible. https://t.co/8jymWjFpiF
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 10, 2017
Does this sound familiar? pic.twitter.com/eCby6bxsGS
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 10, 2017
In addition to Broaddrick, Clinton was also accused of sexually harassing Paula Jones and groping Kathleen Wiley. Clinton settled out of court with Jones by paying her $850,000.