Eric Swalwell sounds like a creep, but what took him out of national politics is a jungle primary and bad polling, not morals and ethics.
The seven-term California congressman, now a former congressman as of Monday, announced over the weekend he was suspending his gubernatorial campaign to become the next Golden State governor. That’s because women – lots of them – are telling their personal stories of sexual harassment, and much worse, going back years.
The sick truth is his reputation was known and whispered about for years, as far back as 13 years when he was a city council member. His downfall came only when he wasn't useful to his political party anymore, which in plain English means political power matters more to the Democratic Party than teen girls and young women.
That's not to say the Republican Party is a party of virtue, either. A clear example is "serial child molester" Dennis Hastert. With a trail of ruined lives behind him, the former Speaker of the House made a belated trip to a prison cell in 2016, at age 74, after being second in line to the presidency. But nobody on Capitol Hill had any idea, right? Right?
To better understand what happened to Swalwell, a March 10 story at the L.A. Times helps fill in the back story. It says the California Democratic Party, nervous over the June 2 primary, planned to spend “hundreds of thousands” of dollars to poll California voters on their favored candidate in coming weeks.
That primary, like California, is kinda nuts. It's officially called a "top-two primary," because the top two candidates move to a runoff regardless of party label. It really deserves its nickname, "jungle primary," considering 61 candidates - 24 of them Democrats - qualified to be on the ballot for governor.
The purpose of the poll, the Democratic Party openly said, was to convince the trailing, little-known candidates to drop out of the race and off the final ballot. Doing so would give the top Democrats, eight in all, a better chance at defeating the top two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Mike Bianco.
What did the expensive polling show? In a follow-up story to the polling, published March 27, The Desert Sun newspaper reported the polling showed Hilton leading at 16% trailed by Bianco at 14%.
Where were the leading, big-name Democrats? They’re far back there – Swalwell, Katie Porter, and Tom Steyer – who were polling at 10% each.
With that shocking polling in their hands, imagine the conversation at the Democrat headquarters. They saw a bleak future in which two Republican candidates could win the primary with a Democrat – in California! – trailing behind both GOP candidates in third place.
“We can’t let the Nazis win!” the real Nazis probably told each other, so the political knives came out to thin the Democratic herd.
One knifing suspect is Katie Porter. She is the former congresswoman who doesn't like it when staffers get in her shot, but apparently she likes Batwoman a lot.
The same woman who cursed at her staff, and who dumped scalding potatoes on her ex-husband, is expected to increase her chances in the June primary with Swalwell out.
Another possible suspect is gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan, the San Jose mayor. Jennifer Van Laar, a California-based investigative reporter at RedState, has connected the Swalwell allegations to him.
But let’s stop right there. Swalwell dropping out is not the real story.
The real story, which goes back generations, is that Swalwell’s abused girls and Hastert's abused boys pull back the curtain on Washington, D.C. It is a city of unimaginable power and uncontainable egos, dirty backroom deals and backstabbing double-crosses. The word "blackmail" also comes to mind.
When you see all those lawmakers running to a camera to say they’re surprised and disappointed in Swalwell, remember their taxpayer-funded program has paid out $18 million to quietly settle 250-plus sexual harassment settlements over 20 years.
That program is evidence Washington operates on money and power, but you and I are the dupes who say, "I'm sure my congressman is the one guy up there who's the good one."
Swalwell is another lesson about how it really works, but we never seem to learn the lesson.
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