Just hours after Democratic then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was accused of having violently abused four different women, New York's Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to resign. Before the day was over, Schneiderman did. Everyone deserves a legal presumption of innocence, but to Democrats not everyone deserves to hold public office. There are certain automatic disqualifiers, and violence against women is one of them.
Schneiderman was a rising political star, likely on his way to his own eventual governorship or Senate seat, and maybe even more. Politically, he was dogged, principled and progressive, a politician and law enforcement official Democrats could love. He took on criminals and he took on the Trump cabal (which may be the same thing), and it seemed the future was his to make his own. And then it wasn't.
Four credible women, none of whom has an apparent political agenda, accused Schneiderman of behavior that is point blank unacceptable to Democrats, and within hours he was gone. That's how it should be. The behavior he was accused of should be point blank unacceptable to everyone, regardless of political or other ideological considerations. No one credibly accused of such behavior should be in any position of power or authority, anywhere, ever. Even if, unlike this case, there turns out to be a woman at least as capable of stepping up and doing the job at least as well.
Schneiderman has the right to pursue his legal claims to innocence, but he doesn't have the right to do so while holding public office. And the women who accused him of violent abuse do have the right not to have their suffering exacerbated by seeing the man they accused of abusing them holding public office and legal and political power. This was a rare but slowly more common example of the system working. Not because of statutes but because of public opinion and political pressure. And it is no coincidence that it happened among Democrats.
Also within hours of the public accusations against Schneiderman, Trump's gruesome designated dissembler Kellyanne Conway was publicly gloating, as were other right-wing gargoyles, demonstrating yet again their vacuous inability to accept responsibility or self-reflect. Trump has been credibly accused of abusing more than a dozen women, and even bragged about it on audio tape. Republicans voted for him anyway. For some, no doubt, it was part of why they voted for him.
Congressional Republicans support Trump. None calls him to account. None calls for the accusations against him to be fully investigated. None has taken the time to reflect on what their support of such a reprehensible little man says about them. Because it says everything about who they are and the political agenda they wholeheartedly support. It’s systemic. It defines the modern Republican Party.
- Trump's White House systematically covered up accusations of domestic violence by White House staff secretary Rob Porter. Missouri's Republican Governor Eric Greitens has been accused of sexual abuse, and was indicted for invasion of privacy, for photographing without consent a nude or partially nude person, then digitally transmitting the images. Nearly three months after the indictment was announced, he remains in office.
- When the Alabama Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat Roy Moore was credibly accused of multiple counts of sexual assault against minors, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell courageously refused to denounce him and said he'd let the Alabama voters decide.
- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan met with accused sexual harasser, Rep. Blake Farenthold, and then boldly announced that his fellow Republican would not seek re-election, rather than telling Farenthold to resign. It was four more months before the disgraced Texas Republican did step down.
- Republican National Committee Finance Chairman Steve Wynn resigned after being accused of sexual abuse, including rape. But the same national media figures that caterwauled demands that Democrats return campaign donations given by accused violent serial abuser Harvey Weinstein remain all but silent on the Republicans and all the money Wynn raised for them.
Republicans don't care about misogynistic violence any more than they care about any other form of misogyny. Their main concern seems to be that when members of Congress are caught abusing women, the taxpayers have to pay the consequences. The violence and harassment itself they seem to deem irrelevant. But that’s their pattern. That’s their ethos. They don't want the taxpayers to help pay for women's health care, they don't want women to be paid equally to men, and they apparently want working-class women to suffer, perhaps for having the temerity of being both working class and women.
Republicans don’t seem to care about the suffering of anyone other than themselves, anyway. Arizona Senate candidate and convicted felon Joe Arpaio has a long record of abusive behavior and violations of civil rights, but that didn't prevent self-styled paragon of morality Mike Pence from calling him a "champion of the rule of law." Because to Republicans, abusing people isn't a violation of law, and it isn't disqualifying for the holding of public office. Abusing people is the Republican Party's most basic ethos. Bigotry is their base issue.
Trump wants Congress to cut funding for a children's health program, and for years he and the Republicans have been trying to take health care from tens of millions of people. Trump's proposed budget slashes Medicaid spending, while the Centers for Disease Control under his administration is gutting spending on global disease prevention. Trump also wants to cut Food Stamps, because making American great again apparently means making more Americans hungry. And because educated Americans vote more Democratic and against Trump, he naturally wants to follow in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan and cut spending on education, while making it harder for people who need student loans. For his part, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's sole purpose in politics seems to be to cut Medicare and Social Security, and he's openly admits he’s been dreaming of cutting Medicaid since he was in college.
Trump's cruel policies of racism, xenophobia, and exclusion are so consistent and comprehensive one would need to a daily tally to keep up. And House and Senate Republicans support all of it. Whether it’s punishing immigrants to the point of tearing their families apart, or cynically and hypocritically claiming to wage war to protect the same people Trump banned from entering the country as refugees, or rolling back all manner of civil rights protections in a blatant attempt to hurt the same minorities who have suffered historic bigotry and discrimination, Trump and the Republicans attempt to validate their sorry existences by imposing cruel policies that structurally and institutionally Other, not just dividing this nation along demographic lines but shredding it.
This is who the Republicans are. This is what they do. Their agenda and values are not about helping people, or making the United States stronger from within. Their policies are designed to hurt people. Women and minorities first, but everyone else in due time. In the vacuum where their souls should have been, the only way elected Republicans can make themselves feel better seems to be to make others feel worse. This is not normal. This is not okay.