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Most Democrats are now demanding that Sen. Bob Menendez resign after his indictment. The various statements by Senate Democrats (and Sen. Mitt Romney) twist the language in such a way as to suggest that the question of Menendez’s guilt or innocence is secondary to whether he can be “effective”.
Sen. Menendez has said that he’s not resigning and the best argument on his side is that he already survived one federal trial on bribery and fraud charges. Despite a high-profile federal trial, Sen. Menendez easily won his primary 62% to 37% and then won the general election by 54% to 42%.
If there’s one Senate member who can credibly argue that he will survive this, it’s Menendez. (Doesn’t mean that he will this time, just that he is one of the few Senate members who can claim to have pulled it off.)
Back then, the Democrats didn’t pull out, but stuck with him. This time around they’re pulling out especially since Tammy, the wife of New Jersey’s Gov. Phil Murphy, is now toying with taking a Senate seat.
But does it matter? Sen. Menendez doesn’t have all that much to lose here except a potential primary.
The larger issue is the rush to demand that politicians resign after an indictment. Sometimes there’s a preponderance of evidence that the politician is a scumbag above and beyond the charges. But there is a reason that we have the concept of ‘guilty until proven innocent’. Indictments are not convictions.
One of the distinctive elements of cancel culture is the demand that people resign based on outrage. But resignations first, convictions second is not the American way of doing things.
The voters chose to back Sen. Bob Menendez despite his trial. They will have their chance to decide his fate again in 2024.
Thanks Daniel, nice analysis of an important (and irritating) issue (that is, guilty until proven innocent).
Been reading about that in the American press from 1860, even worse than we have now.
If evidentiary rules still applied to high powered Democrats in this two-tiered abomination we call “justice” here in America now, this article would be able to stand proudly on it’s own merits of the importance of “blind” justice. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that America any longer. Not since Trump.
“Lawfare” is the rule now, with the weaponization of every alphabet agency and every facet of Biden’s federal government against Trump and “right wing extremism” (conservatives) to degrees that none of us could even imagine a few years ago.
Ask the J6 inmates how “blind” they believe justice to be now. Ask Trump. Ask Enrique Tarrio, who got 22 years for his part in J6. Ask Theodore Deschler. Oh wait…you can’t. The completely unarmed, fully disabled vet was shot and killed in his home on August 16th by the FBI, and his only provocation was trying to crawl out of his tear gas-filled house. His family and neighbors demand answers. They won’t get any.
Blind justice has been neither since January 20th, 2021. We’re in virgin banana territory now. God help us because, other than ourselves, no one else will.
What is the real reason Biden’s DOJ and the Democrat party are throwing Menendez under the bus? Yes, he is a crook, but the Corruption of Biden is orders of magnitude worse and more corrupt.