Lileks <\/a>puts it this morning, <\/p>\nAfter all, Toricelli didn\u2019t quit because he discovered an eight-pound neoplasm in his small intestine, or had his brain turned into a fine red mist when a marble-sized meteorite from the Oort cloud struck him in a 7-11 parking lot. He\u2019s not even under indictment. He resigned because there was such a bad odor coming from him and his campaign that actual wavy cartoon stink lines were coming off him, and the cameras were starting to pick it up. He was going to lose. So he quit.<\/p>\n
Hell, if he’d been swept up by the FBI as an Enemy Combatant and swept into some detention cell somewhere (something I’m sure the Democratic leadership would have preferred, actually), I’d be the first to say that democracy is being thwarted. After all, that’s how autocracies in other countries work, when they want to avoid getting voted out of office by reformers — they just lock up the opposition.<\/p>\n
That’s not the case here. Toricelli is not being physically prevented from running, be it by death, jack boots, or even some circumstance which might engender some compassion. No, Toricelli acted like scum, was rebuked by the Senate as scum, but still decided to run, still got the local Democratic party behind him, still got nominated democratically<\/i> in the primaries, and still was willing to take the chance that the voters might say in November, “Hey, you’re scum. Hit the road, Bob.” <\/p>\n
Until, that is, it looked like the voters really were going to say that, and the Democratic control of the Senate was threatened. Now the Dems want do-overs. The Democratic governor has hand-picked a new candidate to replace Toricelli.<\/p>\n
Quoth Angelo Genova, the New Jersey Democratic Party Counsel: <\/p>\n
The right of the voter to exercize a free and competitive choice is paramount to any technical nicety that might be suggested by a time limitation in a statute.<\/p>\n
Ah, those suggestive laws full of technical niceties. I wish Mr. Genova would point out to me which other laws are actually only suggestions, not mandates. I might save on some taxes this year, or get to the office a little more quickly.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that the voters of the state of New Jersey had, and have, a “free and competitive choice.” No outside force came in and said that people could not vote for Toricelli — or even for the Democratic Party. Toricelli made that decision, because he decided he could not win. That he did so at the urging of the state Democrats even makes this more laughable, since it is thus they<\/i>, and not some “technical nicety” (a\/k\/a “law”), that are removing the choices in this election.<\/p>\n
Sorry, guys. That’s now how it works.<\/p>\n
It’s not about democracy. It’s not about fairness. It’s about playing by the rules and living with the decisions you made. <\/i>You made your bed — now sleep in it.<\/p>\n
Even if it means that we’re all liable to have a headache in the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I would really rather that the GOP not take control of the Senate. I think the Democrat control of that house of Congress has provided the sort of balance that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":14773,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/05\/11\/we-were-against-federal-control-before-we-were-for-it.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":0},"title":"We were against Federal Control before we were for it!","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 11-May-09 11:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"As I noted in the Joe the Plumber article, the Right plays a deft ongoing game with federal vs. local control. Basically, if they feel they have the votes to dominate in the national arena, or if they see some other grand political agenda they can push forward, they have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LGBTQ &c"","block_context":{"text":"LGBTQ &c","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gay-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5754,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/22\/whiplash.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":1},"title":"Whiplash","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 22-Jul-04 1:15pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Wasn't just a week or two ago that GOP lawmakers in Congress were trying to impose a one-size-fits-all Constitutional amendment against gay marriage, to quash even states from allowing such...","rel":"","context":"In "LGBTQ &c"","block_context":{"text":"LGBTQ &c","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gay-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11737,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/13\/when_will_someone_say_no.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":2},"title":"When will someone say “No”?","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 13-Feb-08 9:19am","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush continues to act as though he has carte blanche to dictate laws -- and Congress, even ostensibly with a Democratic majority, continues to accept that. In some ways, they...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2525,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/10\/goofiness.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":3},"title":"Goofiness","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 10-Jun-02 1:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Republican activists are compiling dossiers of lobbyists to identify which ones are Republicans, which are Democrats, and how they have been making personal contributions to candidates in the past. The...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4408,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/08\/winner_takes_al.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":4},"title":"Winner takes all?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 8-Sep-03 2:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Dean Esmay offers a hypothetical situation: Let's pretend that the election of 2004 is the worst-imaginable in the entire history of the Democratic Party. Not only does Bush win re-election,...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10501,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/04\/turnabout_is_fair_if_mild.html","url_meta":{"origin":2716,"position":5},"title":"Turnabout is fair, if mildly alarming, play","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 4-Jan-07 11:27am","format":false,"excerpt":"Cue endless whinging by GOP House members over how they're being shut out of agenda-setting, amendment-offering, text-reviewing participation in the House legislative calendar for the 110th Congress ... exactly the...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Asking](\"http:\/\/i.cnn.net\/cnn\/2002\/ALLPOLITICS\/10\/01\/elec02.nj.s.torricelli.race\/story.vert.torricelli.ap.jpg\")
I would really rather that the GOP not take control of the Senate. I think the Democrat control of that house of Congress has provided the sort of balance that keeps the Federal Government as a whole from lurching, unrestrained, to the Right. (I note, parenthetically, that I feel much the same about not having a Democratic Pres and Congress. Gridlock is bad, but a Frictionless Surface is even worse.)<\/p>\n