The controversy that began when three women accused Hogsett’s former chief of staff Thomas Cook of sexual harassment or inappropriate sexual conduct has escalated. The once-isolated voices calling for Hogsett to resign have swelled into a chorus. And the council now is divided, with members hurling insults, obscenities and accusations of misconduct, disloyalty and betrayal at each other.
That’s the way it is with family feuds. Such fights are vicious because all involved know each other so well and expect so much from each other.
As the scandal has developed and deepened, it has become clearer and clearer it is a fight among Democrats about what it means—or should mean—to be a Democrat.
Republicans, by and large, are sitting this fight out for at least two reasons.
The first is that it never makes sense politically to get too close to one’s opponents when they’re in the middle of a process of self-demolition.
The last thing Republicans with any sense want to do at this point is throw Democrats in Indiana’s largest city and county a lifeline or give them an opening to blame this mess on the GOP. If Democrats want to beat the tar out of each other—well, savvy Republicans are just fine with that.
But there is another reason that thoughtful members of the GOP are more than happy to watch this imbroglio unravel from the sidelines.
Though they are diminished in numbers, there are still Republicans around who possess some self-awareness.
They know they are members of a political party that avows that a man who has boasted on video about being a sexual predator and whom a court has found liable of committing sexual assault is fit to occupy the highest office in the land.
They recognize that their defenses of Donald Trump compromise their moral and political standing to criticize anyone else in matters of sexual conduct.
Smart Republicans know that attacking anyone for sexual harassment or impropriety just invites Democrats to respond with ads combining images of the president alongside the GOP moralizers’ own words.
So, that’s why the GOP is content to munch on popcorn while Democrats tear each other apart.
And make no mistake about it—that is exactly what Democrats in Marion County are doing.
While Hogsett continues to assert that he’s not willing to consider, even for a moment, resigning his office, the Democratic caucus of the council has descended into chaos.
Council member Crista Carlino, a Democrat, called for Hogsett to resign and accused Council President Vop Osili and Vice President Ali Brown of attempting to provide cover for the mayor.
What followed was the stuff of farce.
News reports said the Democratic members of the council gathered in a private meeting to kick Carlino out of their caucus because she had been “disloyal.” Osili and Brown both responded to her charges with anger.
Then almost immediately, Carlino once again was a member of the caucus, supposedly because she had issued a public apology.
Right on the heels of that apology, though, she said that she stood by her criticisms of Osili and Brown and her demand that Hogsett resign as mayor.
And the council’s Democratic caucus now is supposedly hopelessly divided.
All this, of course, calls to mind the great Will Rogers’ famous quip: “I’m not a member of any organized political party—I’m a Democrat.”
At least part of what makes this infighting so savage is that Democrats like to think of themselves as sensitive and attuned to the pain of survivors of sexual harassment and other forms of misconduct.
Republicans in this Trump era barely shrug at accusations of rape from within their ranks, but Democrats respond at a more visceral level.
What was the most revealing about the meltdown within the Democratic caucus was how personally affected and affronted Brown and Carlino were by each other’s words.
Each saw their clash not as a disagreement but as a betrayal.
On television, family feuds make for great if not particularly edifying entertainment.
In real life, they leave wounds that linger for years, if they ever heal at all.
I’ve heard Democrats in Indianapolis saying the party soon will move past this ugliness.
They’re wrong about that.
