Eric Swalwell and the double standard for sexual harassers

Eric Swalwell has plummeted to earth faster than Artemis II.

If you weren’t familiar with Swalwell, you’ve missed your chance. Mere days ago he was a rising national Democratic star, vocal U.S. congressman, cable TV fixture, and aspiring California governor. Today he is toast, having been outed by the press as a serial sexual harasser and credibly accused rapist.

After the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN shared damning cringy details, he pledged to stay in the gubernatorial race and fight the “false” allegations. Naturally, his statement had the life span of a Tsetse fly because that’s always what happens when pervs vow to tough it out.

Such is the fate of Democratic pervs.

What’s noteworthy is how quickly the blue party bailed on the guy and ran for the hills. The chairman and co-chairman of his campaign both quit, all 21 members of the House who’d endorsed him speedily rescinded, and the head of California’s Democratic party backed away. So did the House leadership team, the California Labor Federation, two major unions, and Nancy Pelosi. To top things off, Swalwell’s senior campaign and congressional staffers said in a stunning joint statement they’re “horrified” by the allegations, that the boss’ “behavior in these reports is abhorrent,” and everyone should stand with the multiple women who’ve come forward.

One key element was missing. It would’ve been nice – maybe a paragraph or two – if somebody had reminded readers how asymmetric the two parties are on the issue of sexual harassment.

Swalwell was basically told to hit the road with all deliberate speed, and to that I say “good riddance.” But we still have a serial pervert in the White House.

Trump was found liable by a jury of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and the judge subsequently said that his actions met the New York definition of rape. He’s also been accused of groping and worse by at least 16 women, and he’s been exposed in the Epstein files as the accused rapist of an underage girl. Yet MAGA Republicans to this day utter nary a peep, so he gets away with it all.

I’ve been pondering this asymmetry since early 2018 when Al Franken was compelled to exit the Senate – 30 fellow Democrats wanted him gone – amidst reports he’d done some inappropriate touching a decade earlier. Trump’ was halfway through his first term and his piggy past was common knowledge, but of course he got a pass. And while Franken was being forced out, Trump was busy endorsing Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race. You may remember Moore was a credibly accused serial child molester who’d been banned from entering a local mall because he’d been seen preying on girls.

One party polices itself on the high road, while the other party (or cult, if you prefer) hews to the low. As legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick noted when Franken was first in peril, Democrats play “a game of righteous ball, in which the object is pride and purity, and Dems are the only ones playing.”

That was a busy time for Democrats. Michigan congressman John Conyers was compelled to quit after several aides accused him of harassment. In New York, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was told by fellow Democrats that he was a goner when four women told The New Yorker that he’d physically assaulted them. Meanwhile, care to guess what Trump was doing that year, besides endorsing Roy Moore? He insisted that the voice on the Access Hollywood tape (“When you’re a star they let you do it, you can do anything”) was not him.

Democrats, flawed as they are, at least try to enforce some moral standards. And yes, I know that Democrats protected Bill Clinton back in the day. But I’m talking here about the 21st century.

By contrast, MAGA Republicans are so hooked on mindless tribalism they will defend or excuse or ignore any and all sins past and present committed by their degenerate leader. The sole standard that matters is the acquisition and retention of power. Democrats can try to be good by ousting someone like Swalwell for behavior that should sicken everyone on a non-partisan basis, but the MAGAts in power are only too happy to break bad. And why shouldn’t they, given how well they’ve been rewarded at the ballot box. Trump even won the majority of votes among white women in 2024, just as he did in 2020.

However – dare we dream? – there are some intimations of doom in his realm. Swing voters and the small percentage of persuadable Republicans won’t use the midterm elections to punish Trump for his dirtbag behavior toward women – we’re long past the point where he’ll be held politically accountable for that – but everything else, from his mental deterioration to his warlord buffoonery, is on the table. And the electoral downfall of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, one of his authoritarian role models, is proof people en masse can cast off oppression.

Orban discovered on Sunday that even when you’re a star, they don’t let you grab ‘em by the throat. May his crushing loss portend the end of MAGA.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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