The Republicans failed to offer a simple message: We'd rather have Clinton as a lame-duck president than have to run against an incumbent Al Gore in 2000. But it doesn't matter that leaving Clinton in office would be better for us politically than removing him. If it turns out he committed acts worthy of removal from office, we will be duty-bound to remove him even though we'd rather not.
How could the Democrats have responded to that?
That argument, true as it is, was well over the head of the American public and the media who filtered the news to them.
The Democrats had a much more simple message that resounded. It's all about sex.
It wasn't, of course, but politics isn't about winning the argument intellectually. It's about winning the argument emotionally.