The first poll numbers are out after the latest Anthony Weiner lewd emails scandal. The mayoral candidate has dropped nine points, according to the NBC4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll, and is now in second place behind City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
“If you cannot control yourself, you cannot control the city. If you can at least present a resume that looks at, ‘Here is what I have delivered for the city in the past,’ I could be compelled to maybe overlook your character problems,” Toure said on Thursday’s The Cycle. “But you have none of that. So all I’m left with is this character sort of grandstanding at these events.”
Still, Weiner is (for now) in second place, so voters may not be as outraged as editorial writers at The New York Times and The Daily News who have called for him to drop out of the race. “The voters know that Anthony Weiner is not an altar boy in his personal life,” Peter Beinart, senior political writer at The Daily Beast, said on Wednesday’s show. The difference between Anthony Weiner and past philanderers is not moral but technological: they weren’t “able to spread it all over the world because of the technology. But most of our presidents have committed these sexual infidelities either in office or before office,” Beinart said. “A lot of people are really flawed and they are some of the best guys we have had.”
Abby Borovitz