“I feel badly about the kids. I guess.”

Tales of political dirty tricks abound. Anyone who has canvassed or leafletted will know anecdotes of posters being pulled down or covered up and worse. And of course that is but a pale shadow of what happens when there is a sniff of executive authority or state power (however attenuated) and how political opponents are – ahem – dealt with either by provision of services or otherwise to voters or in more active ways, gerrymandering and so on. So this really shouldn’t be a surprise, the tale of how Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey and great moderatish Republican Hope for 2016, is having to firefight some pretty dismal allegations as recorded in this morning’s Guardian about:

…revelations in newly disclosed emails that one of his top aides was involved in a decision to block lanes on the approach to the George Washington bridge, the world’s busiest. The act of petty retribution caused traffic misery in a town with a Democratic mayor, who had refused to endorse Christie’s bid for re-election.

And that expression of sympathy quoted in the headline of the post?

“I feel badly about the kids. I guess,” said the associate.

“They are the children of Buono voters,” Wildstein said, in an apparent jibe against Democratic families in Fort Lee. Barbara Buono was Christie’s Democratic challenger in the November election, which was held less than two months after that text conversation.

There you go.