Democrats have once again been forced to confront their least favorite dilemma: Either live by their own standards or admit they never took them seriously.
Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine appears likely to abandon his campaign after leaders of the party have withdrawn their support and called for him to step aside for a new candidate. Multiple women have accused him of sexual misconduct, including rape, though Platner has denied criminal wrongdoing.
Sarah Longwell — a woman who pretended to be a Republican right up until Republicans started doing some things their voters demanded — thought she made a searing point this week, observing that while Democrat leaders just dumped their nominee in Maine over such allegations, Republicans continue defending President Trump from similar accusations. “Graham Platner was accused of rape and every Democrat tossed him overboard,” she wrote on social media. “Donald Trump was accused of rape multiple times and sexual assault and harassment many more times. … Republicans nominated him a second time.” (Trump was nominated for president three times, but who’s counting?)
Longwell is suggesting that Democrats are morally superior, to an electoral fault, because the party doesn’t abide by alleged rapists. How honorable. But like most things out of her mouth with regard to politics, it’s bull.
Democrats keep trying to claim the moral high ground on this issue, and they keep failing because Trump and his supporters have long since rejected the play as a scam. It is.
Democrats had hoped that the #MeToo movement was their magic spell to bring down anyone at their convenience. “Believe all women” was the incantation. But starting with Trump and then Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the public rejected it as a pseudoscience. More importantly, as anti-American. An allegation isn’t a conviction, as much as McCarthy-like Democrats might want it to be (so long as they get to be the accusers). Americans have the right to defend themselves and are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
But that’s the standard Democrats created. Why wouldn’t they be expected to live by it? That their political opponents don’t shouldn’t be a reason for them to abandon it, assuming they were ever sincere in supporting it.
It’s an inconvenient position they’ve placed themselves in. That’s too bad, but no one else is required to adopt it.
