And just like that, he is gone.
There’s a tendency to roll your eyes and dismiss the whole thing as the worst of politics. After all, Avenatti got famous by repping an adult film actress who has alleged that she had an affair with President Donald Trump in the mid-2000s. He used that notoriety to catapult himself into a cable TV regular, including on CNN, and from that to a possible presidential bid.
It was the most 2018 thing possible. It’s the lowest common denominator stuff that people hate — but watch — about politics in this day.
But don’t be so quick to dismiss Avenatti. Yes, he was brought low in the absolutely most predictable way — a series of financial (and legal) disputes where he was on the losing end, and then the big one: an arrest for suspicion of domestic abuse last month. (The Los Angeles district attorney declined to charge him with a felony but sent the case to the city attorney’s office, where misdemeanor charges are still being considered.)
Even Avenatti allies — and yes, he had built up a few political friends during his travels to Iowa and New Hampshire in the summer and early fall — began to abandon him. For a time, even he and Daniels clashed — as she suggested that he might have been seeking to take financial advantage of her popularity.
But none of that is what made Avenatti matter.
And he did matter, for this simple reason: He forced the Democratic Party to start the debate over what sort of person should be the nominee in 2020.
