Anthony Weiner — quitter

6.16.2011 Leave a comment

Anthony Weiner (D-NY) resigned from his Congressional seat today because of his sexual scandal and, to be sure, because of the politicking that the scandal triggered. It is worth pointing out that Weiner committed not one crime in this matter. But that did not matter. He was forced from Congress by leading Congressional Democrats and by a Democratic President for reasons of political expediency.

I believe a better path for Weiner the professional politician would have had the Congressman resign his seat while stating that he intended to run for his vacated seat in the special election that would follow his resignation. In the absence of any criminal act by Weiner, it is only his constituents with whom the Congressman needed to consult about his political future.

Update

Greg Sargent takes issue with the pack journalism which Twitter enables which helped to bring down Anthony Weiner:

So Anthony Weiner is resigning, after discussions with his wife persuaded him he could no longer serve. He was facing the prospect of an ethics investigation, and House leaders were set to strip him of a key committee slot, both of which would have compounded his humiliation.

Weiner can be described, I think, as Twitter’s first major political casualty, in several ways. For one thing, no other equally high profile elected official has had to resign because of a scandal set in motion by a single Tweet. For another, it was the lack of experience with Twitter-sparked scandals that led him to botch his initial response to the unfolding story. He claimed the underwear bulge picture had been Tweeted from his account by his hacker. He was navigating the largely uncharted technological waters of Twitter-based scandals, and as a result, he badly screwed up. In the future, politicans [sic] who get in trouble over a wayward Tweet wiill [sic] look back on Weiner’s travails as a guide on what not to do. Weiner, alas, had no such playbook at his disposal, and he compounded his problems at the outset.

Weiner was Twitter’s first major political casualty in a darker way, too. This eposide [sic] demonstrated in a unique way that Twitter can encourage pack political journalism at its worst. I’m not defending Weiner. He lied to his colleagues, and what he did was unspeakably foolish, given that his outspoken liberalism guaranteed that he’d be a tempting target for the right. I’m agnostic on whether he should have resigned; other public officials who have committed far worse acts, sexual and otherwise, haven’t faced a fraction of the pressure he faced to step down. But ultimately, all you can say about his departure is that Democrats have now lost a very effective spokesman for the liberal cause….

Related articles

Filed under News Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

What’s wrong with this thought?

2.28.2011 Leave a comment

E.J. Dionne, while discussing the Wisconsin conflict, asserted that:

It’s said that this fight is all about partisanship — and it’s true that Walker’s proposal is tougher on the most Democratic-leaning public-employee unions than on the ones more sympathetic to Republicans.

But this goes beyond partisanship. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which swept away decades of restrictions on corporate spending to influence elections, has already tilted the political playing field toward the country’s most formidable business interests. Eviscerating the power of the unions would make Republicans and Democrats alike more dependent than ever on rich and powerful interests and undercut the countervailing strength of working people who, as those Kohler workers know, already have enough problems.

Even critics of public-employee unions should be able to recognize a power grab when they see one.

The key problem here, as I see it, is one of timing. Labor in the United States today hardly stands as a countervailing power to the power available to American capital and its political allies. Union membership as of 1.2011 amounts to 11.9% of the workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only 6.9% of private sector workers belong to a union while a mere 36.2% of America’s public sector workers belong to a union. Simply put, a fraction of America’s economic and political elite had already broken the union movement before Scott Walker put his name on the 2010 Wisconsin ballot. It used the Stagflation Crisis of the 1970-80s as a pretext on which to make a public assault on America’s unions. The AFL-CIO’s 1981 Solidarity March failed to intimidate the Reagan faction of the GOP or to embolden the remnants of the New Deal Coalition who cared about the fate of America’s working class. And it is because organized labor lacked the power to defeat the Reaganite onslaught of the 1980s that it ceased to provide a base from which sympathetic Democrats could contest the rightward drift of the American political elite.

The Democratic Party already depends upon and prefers the help it gets from big capital. Organized labor may have a seat at the big table, but it literally pays dearly for the meager results it gets for its money. One need only to consider the fact that both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama supported the horrible Blanche Lincoln in the 2010 Arkansas primary, and gave her this support even though a Lincoln nomination would only produce a defeat in November. Moreover, Obama’s election along with his very disappointing tenure as President supports nothing else but the conclusion that the leaders of the Democratic Party belong to the FIRE sector of the economy. In fact, one can measure Obama’s labor sympathies by the fight he made in support of the Employee Free Choice Act while President.

As for my take on Wisconsin: What we are seeing in Madison today is not organized labor fighting a state politician and his party in defense of the right of some workers to collectively bargain with the State of Wisconsin. Nor, for that matter, is the conflict a local instance of the national Democrats making a stand on behalf of its base. What we are seeing instead is a troubled part of American society defending itself against the predatory practices of a social and political system dominated by big capital, its money and its political allies. What about the legacy parties in Washington? As we know, they are already spoken for by their well-heeled friends. At least some Democratic Senators of the Wisconsin Senate had the nerve to flee to Illinois, thus saving the Party from colluding one more with the Republicans. That is far more than one could reasonably expect from the national Democrats.

Cross-posted at FireDogLake

Filed under Commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Will the government shut down in March?

2.20.2011 Leave a comment

It seems like it will, according to David Dayen:

The Senate is now off for a week. When they come back it’ll be February 28. The continuing resolution to fund the government expires on March 4. So naturally, the Senate will next take up — a patent reform bill. And in the meantime, Reid is raising the pressure on John Boehner’s statement yesterday that he would not go for a short-term continuing resolution, which means a government shutdown, essentially.

Dayen continues:

As for what will happen in the next two weeks, it’s completely unclear. Boehner has said there will be no short-term CR; he may offer something with across-the-board cuts or some one-off cuts to cherished accounts. Reid could just offer a short-term CR after he gets the bill that will get a final vote today Saturday. Senate Republicans would then have to decide whether to block it, putting them on the hook for the government shutdown. There’s a ton of brinksmanship going on.

Obviously, any shutting of the government would be extremely irresponsible. Those individuals most dependent on the Federal government would take the hardest blow. It has happened before, though, with the obvious forerunner being the 1995 budget battle between President Clinton and the Contract with America Congressional class. The nadir of that episode arrived when House Speaker Newt Gingrich complained about being assigned a seat in the rear of Air Force One, a complaint that allegedly motivated his hardline position in the budget fight. Gingrich’s outburst and his leadership in general destroyed his Congressional career and the budget battle he led contributed into Clinton’s 1996 reelection.

But the fact that a budget battle between a divided Federal government once produced a political catastrophe for the Republicans has not deterred the current House from adopting the same tactic. Nor has the harm to the “lesser people” caused by their politicking. Although they are the minority party, the Republicans always govern as though they were a strong majority party that had overwhelming popular support. They govern in this way because of their hatred of these “lesser people” and because the Democratic Party lacks the kind of principles needed to oppose the Republican Party.

Filed under News Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,