but his successor, I am afraid, will mostly display the same behavior albeit in a less open and direct manner.

Assuming you mean will be corrupt, I beg to differ. Blagojevick’s story is all too similar to me because the “favors for improper access to the Governor’s office” story is somewhat similar to this one.

Meanwhile, the person (a Republican) who replaced the disgraced governor in my state has not shown signs of corruption. Nor seems to have had any involvement or knowledge in his activities.

In the case of the Republicans, this cocoon was punctured by a merciless media that helped Democrats whip up public outrage resulting in an electoral tsunami. But the media in this case usually seeks to help insulate the broader progressive movement (including the Democratic Party as an institution) from the taint of its members’ misdeeds. Thus, I think it is unlikely for at least a while that the Democratic Party leadership will be forced to pay the costs of actually acknowledging the real scope of the problems in its ranks.

After Obama’s first four years maybe media adulation of Democrats will subside enough for them to start actually looking at the problem in a manner akin to the early 1990s. Then again, the horrifying specter of a Republican getting elected to the presidency or the speaker’s chair may encourage many in the media to self-censor even then.

It has been remarkable in the last 24 hours to listen to the verbal contortions that many major media commentators put themselves through to avoid saying “Democrat” and “Blagojevich” in the same paragraph.

These institutional barriers to reform are supplemented by strong cultural aversion to even the concept that progressives could be morally flawed. So many members of the Democrats’ most committed supporters have spent so long demonizing Republicans as the source of all evil that they are basically cognitively incapable of forcing accountability on their own. To do so would require them to sacrifice their Manichean worldview and that’s just not going to happen. Read any lefty blog today — FireDogLake, ThinkProgress, DailyKos, pick one — and you will see the Blagojevich story being played as an isolated and very temporary distraction from the real project of continuing the war on ideological opponents, not an issue warranting ANY significant internal reassessment.

Though I would expect many people thought he’d try to leverage the appointment, I bet almost all of them are shocked by the sheer audacity with which he put the seat up for sale. The man knew he was under investigation and yet he was that open about the corruption. The stupidity and chutspah is mind-blowing.

According to super-Fitz, the only involvement Obama has in the matter is that of being insulted by Blago, who called him a “motherf@#@r” because all he was going to give in return for his favorite candidate (a woman, I forget her name) being appointed was “appreciation”. There’s also a rumor that the guy tried to get Rahm Emmanuel to promise something and that Rahm refused and promptly reported it to the Feds, but at this point that is only an uncorroborated rumor.

Back to my point in my post last night. The Democrats NEED to do a transparent and through house cleaning and fumigation. They cannot allow this to drag on like Watergate. They need to get to the bottom of things, and they should make sure Patrick Fitzgerald remains the man running the federal investigation of the political mess in Illinois. At the same time, the Democrats need to make good on getting rid of problems like Charles Rangel. And they need to be seen as willing to do it, and to drop the talk about how much more law-abiding the Dems are.

Yes, Dear Kos Kids, Merry Fitzmas to you.