I was rather shocked last night to learn in the middle of watching the Cubs’ victory that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — one of the most obviously ambitious leftist politicians I’ve seen in years — is resigning today at the first hint of accusations of sexual abuse.
I must disagree with anyone who wants to give Democrats credit for holding their own accountable here. The fact that Schneiderman (like Al Franken) is resigning at the first public accusation is not something to be giving people medals over. Rather, it’s the clearest possible sign of guilt. If you’re innocent, you at least try to fight to retain your position, especially a hard-fought elected position that’s part of the pipeline for governor. In the court of public opinion, the failure to fight charges is an indication that the charges are true. That’s part of the price of resigning that every politician implicitly understands.
For someone as ambitious (up to now) as Schneiderman, you have to wonder. He’s been accused of “nonconsensual physical violence” against four women. How many years did other Democrats hear women talk, but abet this guy’s behavior? How many deliberately ignored such chatter in just the last six months, before the women talked to a reporter for the New Yorker? They did the same for former San Diego Mayor and Rep. Bob Filner, and John Conyers, and Sen. Al Franken, et cetera, et cetera?
This is not to say that Republicans are better. You can always point to Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, Roy Moore, or President Trump himself.
But when you pretend to be the only party that gives a damn about or respects women, things are supposed to be very different. You’re supposed to be exemplary. And no one could accuse progressives of that.
The fact that things aren’t different at all — and might even be worse, if you judge by how many prominent careers have been recently ended on the Left end of the political spectrum — that’s a sign that you’ve been faking it all along. Which is the case with Democrats.
Progressives aren’t better about respecting women. By many indications, those associated with the political and cultural Left (longtime Democratic fundraiser Harvey Weinstein and several disgraced journalists fall into this category, in my mind) have had more embarrassing public revelations and a bigger problem with abusing women. This should really say something about their ideological claim to respect women more, even if you just assume that it’s an equal problem on both sides.
The claim that progressive politics are more respectful of women is a conceit that is being disproven before your eyes. It’s just arrogance and nothing real about their belief system. If you were on a game show and the goal was to find a man in a crowd who treats women with respect in person, you would be better off picking someone at random than you would picking someone who says he voted for Hillary Clinton.
Believe it or not, it turns out that no, the belief in abortion on demand, which arguably defines today’s Democratic Party, doesn’t make you a real respecter of women. Conservatives and conservative women especially have long made this argument. If you’re a liberal man, it just as likely makes you think women are agents of your own pleasure whose inconvenient anatomy and fertility are fixable problems.
Maybe you disagree, but then you have to find a way to argue around Eric Schneiderman and all the other cases we’ve seen in the last six months. Good luck with that.
