"Fed Ed" and Dancing on Graves

Ed Pawlowski is toast. Done. Finished. It's over. I'm telling you that because at this point, whether he takes a quick fall and is out of sight and mind, or slowly bleeds a political death, Pawlowski is finished as a statewide player, done as Allentown Mayor soon, and is not coming back in any kind of political office. No Governor. No Senator. No Congressman. No County Executive. Not even a comeback someday as a city councilman. He's politically impotent, and isn't a threat to his enemies at this point. Whether he has to leave office before the 2017 mayoral election, or is removed by the electorate, he won't get another term. I'm saying all of this while acknowledging to you that the man is innocent until proven guilty, and that is one of the most important rights that we all have as citizens. I'll even acknowledge that there are some people who still like him, or things he did as Mayor of Allentown, and are pulling for him. Even if Pawlowski is cleared someday of everything, he's not going to come back. There's no good reason to pull for him, from the political standpoint.

So, with all of that said, i'm kind of curious to now see people come out of every hole and crack in Allentown and the Lehigh Valley to make sure they get to take their best crack at Pawlowski. Allentown Council will hold a meaningless, wasteful vote to ask him to step down. Some will call on the Democratic Party to engage in some "CYA," and call on Ed to go away. To be clear, no one on Allentown Council or in the Democratic Party should want Ed to stay. Also to be clear though, all of these gestures are after the fact, and won't change the reality of what happened in Allentown. All of this is simply piling on after the fact.

By no means am I defending Pawlowski. By no means am I saying that the Democratic Party shouldn't want this guy gone. In fact, one may re-call that I have tangled with Pawlowski's operation before, to the point that I once was awakened by a 5:30 am voicemail rant from his top political aide for being supportive of Kim Velez, so I never was on the ship, so to speak. Even so, I'm not handing out too much "moral credit" for piling on now, dancing on the grave of someone who is politically dead (and most likely legally dead), is not a profile in courage. I'm not going to join in that. I hope he's gone soon. I hope he doesn't show up at Democratic State Committee. I hope this whole thing is over soon, and justice is done. I don't need any brownie points for dancing on the guy's grave.

So, with all of that, here's the straight shot of what seems to be happening. The vice is tightening. City Hall is being cleaned out by federal prosecutors, one indictment at a time. I have it on pretty good second hand authority that the Mayor declined a plea deal last week that would have put him in jail for significant jail time. He's not going to resign early, both because he believes he's innocent, and he needs the paychecks. Quibbling over a resignation that isn't going to happen is silly. An indictment, most people I talk to say, is coming soon. So, there's that.

Like I said, I'd politically like the guy to go away. I hope the Feds move diligently to do justice. I hope anybody who violated the law goes to jail fast. My past experience with this team isn't that positive, so I won't feel much sympathy here. You're just not going to read a lot of me trying to score local political points on something that is already a damn shame.