William Jefferson's silver lining

I wrote the following in response to a post at Steve Gilliard's about the Congressional Black Caucus standing behind pretty obviously guilty corrupt whiny jerk William Jefferson. I'm so impressed with myself I'm going to reproduce it here for your comment.

Jefferson's selfish intransigence could be a blessing in disguise. The lack of enthusiasm Francine Busby generated makes me wonder whether it would be so bad after all if the Democrats weren't able to run on Republican scandals. Basically that's all Busby seemed to talk about, and if that were going to work as a tactic it would have worked there, with the last guy sitting in jail. You can repeat "Republican culture of corruption" 800 times and it will stop people from voting Republican, but in a low-turnout midterm nobody's going to get off his or her ass and vote Democratic instead unless we tell them what we're going to do. Like pull out of Iraq, get to work on universal health care, take on global warming.

Of course, Jefferson himself stinks and Democrats should get rid of him, but as a matter of principle, not tactics.