Clinton’s friends say they have seen her deal with Bill Clinton’s conduct before, bristling at threats and countering them with steely determination. Her reaction, said longtime Arkansas friend Jim Blair, is to face accusers and respond thusly: “These people are not going to run over us.”

Her detractors, though, say that Clinton has unfairly lashed out over the years at the women involved in her husband’s indiscretions. Her responses­ have forced her to walk a fine line during the campaign on sexual assault issues, even as she builds strong political support among female voters…

Hillary Clinton opened up to Blair’s wife, Diane, a few weeks later, according to a diary kept by the now-deceased friend. “She thinks she was not smart enough, not sensitive enough, not free enough of her own concerns and struggles,” Diane Blair wrote. “It was a lapse, but she says to his credit he tried to break it off, tried to pull away, tried to manage someone who was clearly a ‘narcissistic loony toon;’ but it was beyond control.”

Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair in 2014 that she found Hillary Clinton’s “impulse to blame the Woman — not only me, but herself — troubling.” She declined an interview request.

Accuser Juanita Broaddrick, whose claim of a 1978 sexual assault has been denied by the Clintons, thinks Hillary Clinton was too passive. “I always felt if she’d been a stronger person . . . she could have done something about his behavior,” she said.