Remember Anthony Weiner?  The onetime New York congressman who was hailed as one of the Democratic Party's brightest upcoming stars?  The man Hillary Clinton introduced to her top aide, Huma Abedin, as marriage material, before Bill Clinton presided over their nuptials?  The onetime front-running candidate for New York mayor – a man who almost became mayor of New York?  At a minimum, this guy almost became a presence in the White House, given Clinton's close ties to Abedin and the possibility of Hillary becoming president.

Turns out he's a blithering puddle of mush, whining through his lawyer that he's a "weak man" in a "self-destructive spiral," according to the New York Post in a bid to plead with courts to keep out of prison after multiple incidents of text-messaging photos of his private parts to underage girls.

"This crime is a product of a sickness," the memo read. "No one can dispute that Anthony's operatic self-destruction, of which the instant case has been but the final act, was born of deep sickness."

The memo filed in Manhattan Federal Court were in preparation for Weiner's Sept 25 sentencing.

The lawyers asked for no jail time as their filing brags about his "remarkable career in public service" and laments his "troubled childhood."

The point of this is to show that the media hype about some of these people is pretty darned inaccurate.  Instead of being a leader or doing great things for people or engaging in anything that might lead to greatness, as his earliest press coverage suggested, Weiner has shown that his only notable trait is for compulsive perversion, endangering underage girls, and then trying to get off scot-free once (or in his case, more than once) he got caught.  His political legacy is so toxic that he's the person who brought Bill de Blasio to the mayor's office in New York City and triggered events that blame-happy Hillary Clinton thinks cost her the election of 2016.

Now Weiner is showing himself to be nothing but a whiner, trying to say anything to stay out of jail.  In a way, it's a full circle.  Weiner represents the responsibility-evading that is so evident in typical Democrats, and his downfall is the blame-casting we see in Democrats when they lose, too.  We don't see these traits nearly as often in Republicans, and that must say something.  What a pathetic picture Weiner represents for his party as its once adored standard-bearer come to a bad end.