Kennedy and Jefferson [and Mollohan] Should Resign?

The chief bat cave of organized Moonbattery occasionally allows a ray of sunlight to penetrate the semi-permanent twilight of the Daily Kos and today is one of those rare occasions.

Here's the problem folks: most Americans who aren't partisans truly believe the democrats and The Republicans are "all the same" and that the power-elite takes care of its own. Via Orthogonal:

Democrats can talk about Abramoff and Cunningham and the Republicans' toothless ethics bill, but so long as the People see us as just the "other side of the coin", they have little reason to go to the polls to vote for Dems.

Now we've got Congressman William Jefferson who despite allegations of bribery won't resign, and Patrick Kennedy who announces he's "going to vote" and so dodges a Breathalyzer test, and now will go into rehab rather than resign.

This gives all the justification in the world to independents who will say that the Dems are "just as bad" and that "all of them are corrupt".

As a former Dem, I agree that both parties are corrupt, having experienced Democratic peculation while working on several Dem political campaigns and having noticed that the DeLay/Abramoff nexus is a K-Street cabal to generate campaign funding.

But McCain started a small brouhaha by an obiter dictum that he cares more for clean government than for the First Amendment. So any sanctimonious Jimmy-Carter-style pieties are suspect, from Dems or Repubs alike.