Ranting On..."Both Sides Do It"

Justice Roy Moore (R-AL)

I'm going to be sneaking on the blog today because I'm a little afraid to write the next few pages of my book for NaNoWriMo (I'll be back on it tonight).  Any way, I want to talk about two issues that I've seen quite a bit of in the news in the past few days in regard to Roy Moore and the concept of both-siderism.

The first one I want to talk about is the concept pushed by Jonathan Chait Tuesday about whether or not Democrats would be trying to have their cake and eat it too with the Roy Moore situation.  Chait posited that if the Democrats were in a similar situation, it might be less black-and-white than what they're framing it up as, name-checking Bill Clinton specifically, and pointing out the obvious: Alabama could be the "white whale" third seat that Democrats need to be able to plausibly make a run at the majority in the Senate next year.  After all, if the Democrats hold all of their seats (a tall order, but not an impossible one as all of these people have won, theoretically in harder environments depending on how 2018 shakes out), and Arizona & Nevada are both very winnable (the former even having likely Democratic nominee Kyrsten Sinema up on both of her challengers while the latter has an incumbent with sky high disapproval ratings), all they need is one seat.  Jones would provide that seat, and as he's not up until 2020, they wouldn't have to worry about holding the seat in 2018.  Chuck Schumer could theoretically sink the back-half of Trump's first term if Doug Jones wins.  Democrats don't want to say it out loud, but it's true, and Chait knows it (as does, it should be noted, Mitch McConnell).

The problem with Chait's logic falls apart once you admit it would be tempting to consider supporting Moore regardless of his crimes, at least for an instant.  If come next December we were about to take the majority, a huge check against Trump, away from the Republicans and suddenly a blue-state senator with a Republican governor was involved in a seismic scandal, it might be tempting to just look the other way, hoping that it just gets brushed under the covers.  After all, this has been done before.  David Vitter comes to mind, for example, as does Bob Menendez.  And of course Clinton, though by political standards that was almost twenty years ago.

But Democrats have evolved quite a bit from Bill Clinton, and it's very doubtful that Clinton in 2017 would have survived internal pressure from his party in the way that Moore is able to do today.  Democrats, for example, were fine backing Joseph Cao against Bill Jefferson in 2008 even if it meant them losing a seat because of Jefferson's ethical standards.  This is perhaps the clearest analogy that works against Chait's argument-Democrats were more than fine to throw Jefferson to the wolves, or to push Anthony Weiner out even to risk a special election (which the D's lost, by the way).  The Democratic Party of today isn't the Democratic Party of 1998, and to say otherwise is ridiculous.  Someone as reprehensible as Roy Moore (who even before this had a history of racism, homophobia, and bigotry that would have put him in a class by himself in the Senate), never could have made it through a Democratic Primary to begin with, but certainly would have been abandoned after these allegations.

It's the reason that Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey won't ever work again (or will never work in the same realm they once did), while Bill O'Reilly still has bestselling novels.  It's why Anthony Weiner's in jail while Donald Trump is in the White House.  I'm tired of this both-siderism.  The Democrats prove, repeatedly, that they are holding their candidates to a higher standard, particularly when it comes to crimes that marginalize victims or groups of people.  Yesterday Rep. Jackie Speier said that there were two members of the House who have been subject of review or whom she knew to be sexually harassing staffers, one of each party.  After Trump, Vitter, Scott DesJarlais, or Moore, it's easy to see that Republican being fine if they were to be publicly outed, particularly if they attacked the system and the victims coming forward as "fake news."  That House Democrat, on the other hand, would almost certainly lose their primary and probably be forced to resign.

I'm not saying that the Democrats hold the entire high-ground here.  Most Democrats are probably praying for Bob Menendez to be found Not Guilty or at least to have a hung jury long enough for Phil Murphy to come in and hold the seat for the party, rather than have Chris Christie bestow a parting gift to Donald Trump.  But Menendez's crimes aren't nearly as morally reprehensible as Moore's (they aren't violent crimes like those attributed to Moore), and quite frankly, it's hard to imagine him winning the primary in 2018 even in his current shape.  I suspect that once there's an actual verdict, Democrats will start stepping forward or Schumer will force him to retire regardless of what comes out of the jury deliberations.  I could be proven wrong (I hope I'm not), but it's proof that the Democrats take accusations of this kind seriously not just in word, but in action.  So Mr. Chait-you might think it's provocative to say "both sides would do this," but the evidence clearly says otherwise.