Democrats are Stupid

For the life of me, I cannot understand why senior House democrats such as Nancy Pelosi decided to publicly call for Rep. Anthony Weiner's resignation over the weekend. As I see it, there are two possible reasons why the democrats may have wanted to see Weiner resign at all: A. They in fact found his conduct so appalling as to require a penance, or more likely B. they were concerned that his continued presence in the house would keep the story alive and hurt the party politically. The first option is so implausible as to merit no discussion, but the second justification is actually even dumber. Quite to the contrary of their ostensible intent, Pelosi et al. calling for Weiner's resignation helped to fuel the story.

Print media like the Washington Post and Roll Call gave front page real estate to the senior democrats who wanted to publicly lambaste Rep. Weiner. Online outlets such as Politico gave it top-of-the page billing when it first broke. Democrats turning on each other is a story unto itself, even if it fits within a larger story about some particular scandal. Maybe these public admonitions wouldn't have fed the fire quite so much had they been made a week earlier, while the story was getting top billing anyways, but waiting for the story to settle down a little bit before coming out just restarts the whole frenzy.

Additionally, coming out at all opens up the democrats to the charges of hypocrisy that have played out among the the punditry, comparing this to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. That's a silly comparison, since the resignation of the President is much more disruptive to the nation than that of a congressman who doesn't even hold a leadership position, but it's also an obvious one that could have easily been avoided by keeping these calls for Weiner's resignation private. I of course don't mind seeing the democrats shoot themselves in the foot, but I would prefer to see it come through something more interesting than this amateurism.

UPDATE: The White House has been forced to weigh in, with Press Secretary Jay Carney calling the episode "a distraction" while refusing to call for Weiner's resignation. Currently, Politico notes this as the latest post from one of the blogs on its sidebar, while the New York Times doesn't seem to have anything at all on it. Had the House democrats taken this same low key approach, you can bet they would have merited the same (lack of) coverage.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor clearly smells blood in the water.