[update below]
That’s what John Judis, writing in TNR, says they are for throwing Anthony Weiner under a bus and he’s right, correctly adding that the Dems should be ashamed of themselves for their behavior in this affair. As he begins his piece
Look, if a politician admits to, or is convicted of, a serious crime, or if his or her actions run completely contrary to the beliefs that they profess to have guided their voting, then there is good reason to demand their resignation. But a sex scandal that involved no illegal activity—that is not a firing offense. A politician may resign out of embarrassment, as Representative Anthony Weiner did, but that doesn’t justify other politicians from his own party, including the president himself, calling for his resignation.
Judis draws a parallel between Weinergate and Clinton-Lewinksy: if demands at the time that Clinton resign—which came mainly from media pundits and the GOP—were unjustified—and they were—then so were those for Weiner. In the Clinton-Lewinsky affair—or, rather, the Kenneth Starr scandal, as I called it at the time—the only people who should have been run out of Washington on a rail were Starr himself, his acolytes in the media, and the congressional GOP. Okay, there is a bit of a difference, as Clinton was President of the United States and a cool guy, whereas Weiner was just a lowly congressman and a wiener, but still… This is not a glorious moment for the Democratic party.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow skewers weenie Democrats “for forcing Anthony Weiner to resign and warning them that they have damaged themselves ‘probably for a generation’ because of their actions.”
