As you’ve probably heard by now, Anthony Weiner’s wife is pregnant. Joan Walsh, the Salon editor-at-large who spent last week embarrassing herself with defenses of Weiner, has finally given up: “The pregnancy changes everything,” she tweeted today. “Weiner could depict fighting as political courage, but dragging a pregnant wife deeper in this muck?” Expanding on this point, she writes that he can’t “fight the coordinated right-wing effort to run him out of office,” but that’s laughable.

Weiner’s humilation may fuel schadenfreude on the right, but the coordinated effort to push him out of office is coming from Democrats (a senior Democratic aide explicitly confirmed this point to radio reporter Todd Zwillich.) Democrats are not at all happy to be talking about Weiner’s peccadilloes, and the list of Weiner’s copartisans who have called for him to resign keeps getting longer. (A hidden factor in all this: Weiner has a reputation as an unpleasant boss whose staff turns over frequently. It’s a safe bet that plenty of Democratic congressmen have a staffer who can say “Yeah, a friend of mine worked for that guy, he’s a jerk. Don’t stick your neck out for him.”)

A rational Republican partisan, meanwhile, must relish the idea of Weiner sticking around for as long as possible, preferably becoming Lifelong Mascot of the Democratic Party.