“No public man can be just a little crooked.” – Herbert Hoover
In the last seventy or so years, both the Republican and Democrat parties have had their share of corruption. Politicians from every spot on the political spectrum have created their own scandals. Democrats seem to be much more forgiving of their cheats, liars and crooks than Republicans. When they are in charge of Congress, they rarely investigate other Democrats, (or their family members), accused of crimes, lies or malfeasance. .
History of Tammany Hall in New York and the Daley political machine in Chicago, would likely draw a conclusion that corruption was part of Democrat DNA. They appear to be much more forgiving of their Party’s crooks than Republicans. Democrats rarely suffer any political damage, even when caught red handed. They keep getting elected or appointed to positions and almost never suffer criminal prosecution. Here are a few examples.
Abe Fortes – Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1965. Resigned in 1969 under the threat of impeachment for involvement with a convicted financier, Louis Wolfson. While on the Supreme Court, Justice Fortes continued in his previous role as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson. He attended White House staff meetings and discussed Supreme Court deliberations and judicial nominees with the president. If this isn’t a conflict of interest, what is? After Fortes resigned, under the threat of impeachment and the urging of other Supreme Court Justices, it was later revealed that Louis Wolfson taped a conversation with Fortes that strongly implied that Justice Fortes had discussed a presidential pardon for Wolfson with President Johnson.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. was first elected to Congress in 1945 and continued to be reelected for 11 consecutive terms. By most accounts he served honorably until the 1960s. In 1966, Powell lost a lawsuit, and was cited for contempt for refusing to pay damages. In 1967, the House refused to seat him, because of the contempt charge and financial malfeasance as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. (The Supreme Court later found that this refusal to seat Powell was unconstitutional.) Yet, Powell was reelected in 1968. The Democrat Caucus, to their credit, did strip Powell of his committee chairmanship, but he suffered no other sanctions. He retired in 1970 after losing his primary election to Charles Rangel.
Ted Kennedy was celebrated as the “Lion of the Senate” when he passed away in 2009. A more appropriate term would have been the Liar of the Senate. He was elected to the US Senate in 1962. In 1969, while he most probably was drunk, Ted drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. He had a passenger in the car with him, Mary Jo Kopechne. He left her in the car to drown. He didn’t report the crash until the next day and Mary Jo’s body was found in the submerged car. Anyone else, whose name wasn’t Kennedy, would have been arrested, charged and convicted of manslaughter. But with his name, his lies and his political advisors, Kennedy was able to plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. This was his only punishment for the cowardly act of leaving a Kennedy supporter to drown.
Kennedy continued his lying career in the Senate, when, during a debate over the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, Ted said, “The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.” This turned out to be an outright lie. Kennedy wanted to change the population of the country and saw this as civil rights legislation that would do that. It worked, according to Pew Research, since this law was enacted, immigrants living here have quadrupled and the ethnicity of legal immigrants has reversed.
Alcee Hastings was appointed to Federal Court Judgeship by President Carter in 1979. In 1981, Hastings was caught in an FBI sting and charged with conspiracy to solicit a bribe for $150,000 in return for lenient sentence for two brothers in a racketeering case. He was acquitted after his convicted co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify at Hastings trial. The evidence was so strong against him that he was impeached from the bench by US Senate in 1989. (An interesting side note is that convicted co-conspirator Borders was later given a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office, evidently under the theory that Democrats must take care of their own.)
Even with this detestable background, Hastings ran for and was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1992 and held that office until his death in 2021. Hastings became such a powerful Democrat that he was appointed to the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence and in 2006, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Hastings Chair of the Subcommittee on investigations.
Liars continue to turn up in the Democrat Party. Elizabeth Warren’s claim to American Indian heritage enabled her to get high paying academic jobs, yet her DNA results show that she is, at best, between 1/64th to 1/1024th Native American.
And then there is Richard Blumenthal. For a decade, he implied that he had served in Viet Nam. He never corrected media stories that he was a Viet Nam veteran, even though he never set foot in that country while serving in the Marine Reserves. Blumenthal only apologized for living this lie after a New York Times article exposed it and President Trump started tweeting and pointing to it.
With this brief partial history, it should not come as a surprise that Democrats keep voting in liars and crooks.
