A promising career ends #2

Rachel Maddow vented her fury Thursday at Democrats who forced Anthony Weiner to resign. She highlighted the unequal way he is being treated compared to those noted Republican "sinners," David Vitter and John Ensign, who kept their senate jobs despite actually breaking laws in their sex scandals. Vitter turned up on prostitutes' lists, while Ensign was involved in big payments to keep the husband of his mistress quiet, and maybe used campaign funds to do it.

And then there's John Edwards, who is not in office, so the Dems can't make him resign; but he certainly cheapened the Dem brand by having the now-known notorious affair/love child while running for the nomination for president. Lucky for us all, he didn't get it -- but he put the party and the nation at great risk. If he had been nominated, and this had been revealed two weeks before the election, we would be talking about President McCain and Vice President Palin.

So -- Weiner's offense seems in some ways really miniscule in comparison. But the political fall out was devastating. Maybe because of the viciousness with which Repubs would exploit it, as compared to what Dems did with Vitter and Ensign. Maybe it was partly the timing and how it undermined a critical moment when Dems had just seized control of the message of the day and were beginning to take advantage of Repub's heartless budget cutting and plan to privatize Medicare. And maybe it's that Weiner's details were so out there (explicit emails and pictures) and made everyone cringe, as opposed to just reading about another generic "affair" of another politician.

Rachel is right. Weiner's ouster was incommensurate with the non-crime; but it was not an over-reaction to the political fall-out, I'm afraid.

Rachel disagrees. She says Dems have damaged themselves probably for generations by this action and by refusing to hold Republicans accountable for the double standard. She concluded, as report by Huffington Post:

"Anthony Weiner, who was not accused of corruption, who does not appear to have done anything illegal, who does not even appear to have had sex with any of the women with any of the people with whom he had scandalous talk and picture-taking, for him a line was drawn," Maddow concluded, her voice bristling with anger. She then turned her focus on the media, saying that the story was actually "the media covering the media ending a man's career."

Maddow ended by addressing Democrats. She issued a dire warning.

"Congratulations, Democrats," she said. "In an era of unhinged, ideological, big money conservative media that is wholly and admittedly divorced from the precepts of journalism, in hounding Anthony Weiner into resigning ... you have just fed and unleashed this beast onto yourselves, probably for a generation."

Yes, she's right. And it's probably another example of Republicans' aggression met by Democrats' accommodation and backing down rather than boldly confronting. On the other hand, Dems had a choice: this, on top of John Edwards' indictment, would have given Repubs ammunition to exploit their claim of lax moral atmosphere condoned by Dems. It's a dilemma.

Ralph

June 18, 2011 12:06 PM