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Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.  

Here in California we’re having a primary coming up in June. Since 2010, by ballot initiative, we have jungle primaries, where the top two vote-getters, regardless of their party, face off in the November election. Because we have an overwhelming Democratic registration majority, the Democrats pushed this 2010 ballot initiative with the idea that you would only have Democrats in the general election. And that’s happened. That happened with Eric Swalwell. 

So I’m going to talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell. He’s been a six-term congressman from Northern California. He grew up in Dublin. He’s a lawyer. He was in the first jungle primary and he defeated the incumbent representative [Pete] Stark, I think his name was, and he’s been there for well over six terms now.

Who is he? He was very controversial. He is sort of rambunctious. He cuts these commercials about himself as an athlete. He was very vocal on Russian collusion and he pounded that day after day that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin. He was on the House Intelligence Committee. He was an ardent foe of the chairman, Devin Nunes.

He, if you remember, allegedly got involved in a personal relationship with a Chinese consular official, or at least an ad hoc Chinese spy, political activist here in California. And he was on the House Intelligence Committee. Not only got involved with Fang Fang, as we knew her, but he hired one of her associates on his congressional staff. 

So he was under a lot of controversy. And finally, his partisanship and his dubious reliability to maintain secrets while on the House Intelligence Committee after having this relationship with Fang Fang of some sort, he was removed.

And now we see him, he’s back in the news and he’s running for governor. And he is polling either third or fourth. The top two, believe it or not, are Republican Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, the sheriff from Southern California.

And then Eric Swalwell, in many polls, is third or he’s neck and neck with Hilton. And suddenly the perceived favorite, Kathleen Porter, another House representative, has kind of imploded because of videos that showed her as a bully and screaming and yelling at various staff members and pretty much becoming on film an unsavory character. 

So what happened to Eric Swalwell? Well, on April 10, his world blew up because suddenly, out of the blue, some of his [former] congressional staffers, all female, came forward, and one of them said that she was raped by Eric Swalwell while intoxicated on two occasions.

Another one said she was sexually assaulted. Two or three others said he had a habit of forcing young congressional staffers, many women, many of them 20 years younger than he was, to sign nondisclosure forms so that they could not voice what he had done to them. And he had chronically, insidiously sexually harassed them. 

Now the latest bombshell is people on his gubernatorial campaign staff have said that they believe that these charges are true, and some of them have resigned. And this made a—there were other—this made a great controversy the last few days in California.

There were other even more disturbing [allegations] and Anthony Weiner-style, there were women who had been receiving texts from Eric Swalwell, allegedly showing his genitalia, something like Anthony Weiner did that destroyed his congressional career.

There were also stories that he was using campaign funds for his own child care. He has been married twice. His second wife and he have three children. But reportedly he was improperly using campaign funds. 

Well, why did this come up right now? Why did this? Some of the stuff dates back to 2015 and 2016, and apparently it was widely known among California politicos, both nationwide and in California, that he had been a serial sexual harasser, and yet no one came forward. 

The answer is analogous to Joe Biden. People knew in 2020 that he was non compos mentis, but they used him as a waxen effigy because the other candidates were not viable. And once he was elected by staying in the basement, the Obama era of politicos took over his government and we essentially had the most left-wing administration in modern history, and we called it the Biden administration. 

Today, you can’t find any legitimate person who believes that Joe Biden was fit to serve. Then they said he was fit—fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack. 

What’s going on now? Eric Swalwell is threatening to break up the Democratic field. There are more viable Democratic candidates than Republicans. The Republicans really have only two viable candidates, and they are leading.

And the way that the primary voting looked like, we may see two Republicans only in the general election, a boomerang to the Democrats who dreamed up and pushed this jungle primary over a decade ago. 

So I imagine someone got together and said, “is it Swalwell or Porter?” And they said, “well, Swalwell has more baggage. Maybe it could leak out. He’s a loose cannon, and somebody began leaking this.” 

But what my point is, if Eric Swalwell had been way ahead in the gubernatorial race, I don’t think that any of this would’ve surfaced. It would’ve been analogous to Joe Biden. He would’ve been a useful vessel and he would’ve won the governorship, and the Republicans wouldn’t have had a chance. 

But once it became clear that he and Porter had split the vote, along with two other Hispanic candidates, [Antonio] Villaraigosa and [Xavier] Becerra, it looked like the fragmentation would give the gubernatorial race to a Republican. And so, then these leaks surfaced. 

And they’re not just leaks. They come from a representative who was one of the most vocal critics of Harvey Weinstein, of all of these people who were caught up in the MeToo movement, and more importantly of Judge [Brett] Kavanaugh. Eric Swalwell was very critical of Kavanaugh and said he was unfit to be in the Supreme Court. So, there’s a sense of nemesis, irony, karma in all of this. 

But the wider point is that the Democratic Party who brags that it doesn’t let democracy die in darkness and it’s the guardian, the protector, of democracy, has a bad habit when they feel that something is politically antithetical to their agenda. 

We saw this when Joe Biden was told not to run again and Kamala Harris was effectively anointed without having won a single delegate. And this isn’t very democratic. She was the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States who had never won a single delegate. She was appointed because suddenly Joe Biden, after his disastrous debate performance, went from sharp as a tack to a buffoon and embarrassing, and he can’t be on the ticket. 

Same thing is happening with Eric Swalwell. There was a decision made that some of the Democrats had to be thinned out, willed out, when, you know, got rid of, got kaput, and they chose Eric Swalwell. Once these allegations suddenly were untenable in their secrecy, they couldn’t suppress it anymore. 

But the point is that I’m making, they knew about this. People in California are on record [saying] that Eric Swalwell had a reputation for being reckless in his personal life and untoward toward women’s staffers, very ironic given his advocacy for women’s rights and his MeToo activity. 

And so, as the Democrats always do, they made a decision that he should go out. And as I speak, he’s being pressured to step aside and consolidate the Democratic vote, apparently, behind Kathleen Porter. 

And it’s typical for the Democratic Party of today to talk about democracy but make these decisions—who candidates are, who will face the voters—on backroom politics. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

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