Have we just witnessed the political lynching of Herman Cain?

So Herman Cain has dropped out of the  race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Yes, he paid money to his alleged mistress. Of course, he never denied having tried to help the woman, who was having severe financial problems.

Yes, he did settle a sexual harrassment suit brought by one of the several women who suddenly accused him of inappropriate behavior. But making such an embarassment "go away" is by no means an admission of guilt.

I don't know whether Cain is guilty of adultery or secual harassment or not. But I do know that literally any woman can make such claims about literally any man, and that Cain was driven from the race by little more than mere accusations. Contrast this with former President Bill Clinton, whose notorious "bimbo eruptions" not only proved no final obstacle to his election as president, but who even survived an accusation of forcible rape.

Accusations are not proof. They should not automatically be taken at face value. Yet when Clarence Thomas was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, in many circles Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment were accepted without hestitation by many on the Left. Somehow, when the accusations emerged against Cain, I had a feeling of deja vu.

Here's a prediction. Remember it: the next time a conservative male African-American makes a credible run for the Republican nomination, he, too, will be accused by somebody of sexual harassment, and maybe of adultery, too.

The accusation is just too easy to make, to hard to disprove- and all too available in the face of something which would be an absolute disaster for the Democratic party and the Left: the emergence of a black Republican leaders who might actually bring a substantial percentage of the African-American vote back into the Republican column where it started out.