DISPATCHES FROM THE BLANKET PARTY: Eric Swalwell Finds Out About Sudden ‘Investigative Reporting.’

California Democrats have been growing increasingly panicked at the polls in their “jungle primary” for governor — where the top two vote-getters (regardless of party) advance to a general-election runoff. It had become disastrously possible that the top two could both be Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Democrats needed to shrink their field of candidates. So, voila, “investigative reporting” dropped a bomb on Swalwell — from the liberal San Francisco Chronicle and liberal CNN.

That’s not to say that Swalwell’s accusers don’t have deeply disturbing facts on their side. It’s all about the remarkable timing. Swalwell ran for president in 2020, which would have been an obvious occasion for investigative reporting, even if Swalwell wasn’t exactly a front-runner in that cycle. Swalwell was one of many Democrats that CNN rewarded with a primetime “town hall” program for national publicity.

It reminded me of the early months of the 2011-12 presidential primaries on the Republican side. They started with Sarah Palin, who never even proclaimed her candidacy. NBC ran with wild allegations from leftist author Joe McGinniss that Palin and her then-husband had used cocaine, and he claimed Palin slept with NBA star Glen Rice when she was a sports reporter in Anchorage.

“Just last year, Swalwell showed himself wearing a ‘No Kings’ protest shirt, bragging to a bunch of supporters that he’d come up with a new Democrat Party campaign slogan: ‘It’ll All Come Out.’ Then it did. He didn’t see the train coming until it hit him.”

(Classical reference in headline.)