The New Yorker article may be a “great big steaming pile of shit.” And I won’t be voting for Kristen Gillibrand.
Nor am I going to be voting for Pat Leahy, Heidi Heidkamp, Tammy Duckworth, Angus King, Jeff Merkley or Tom Udall. What a bunch of Cowards.
To hell with them!
Oh yeah, Bill Nelson, too!
Considering how poorly she is polling this is probably a moot point unless she gets tapped for a VP slot. And I wouldn’t give that great odds either, as a New Yorker is less likely to be at the top of any Democratic Party contender’s list for the #2.
…it was. Gutter journalism.
Cowards? You think they lack courage? How so?
To hell with them for…believing women?
You want Bill Nelson to “go to hell” as well?
A coward to me is one who doesn’t support a friend. Each of these people in one way or another is saying, “I failed to have my friend’s back. perhaps he was wrong, but I bailed on Al Franken too early.”
That to me is a coward.
I read the whole article and I am conflicted. I think Al Franken is a handsy guy. Joe Biden strikes me as a handsy guy. I suspect there are women out there who are handsy women. I don’t want anyone touching me, quite frankly, so I don’t have Al or Joe’s or any other politician’s issues.
And I do believe that Joe and Al and politicians for time immemorial have touched women. And women, for time immemorial have wanted to be beside politically powerful people. Yes, I believe women, too. But I don’t believe the woman at the center of the Al Franken Story.
And when politicians begin to say that, “Kristen told Angus that Bill told Bill that something happened that we all think that you have to resign.” That’s a pile that represents cowardice and I think that is what overcame the party back in 2017. And No, I don’t think that Al Franken got a fair shake.
From what I’ve read, but who’s to say that represents reality anyway? Right?
…they were all friends with Franken? Really?
If a friend of yours was credibly accused of grabbing women on the butt you would “have their back” regardless, simply because they were your friend?
If that person were my friend I would be seriously re-evaluating my friendship. And if I chose to end that friendship and speak out against them, that wouldn’t be cowardly.
You haven’t demonstrated that they were all “friends” yet.
The New Yorker article is a terrible article to read if you want to understand what this story is all about. If you read that heavily biased article and still came away “conflicted” I’d love to see what your opinion would be when you read a source that isn’t dedicated to attacking one of the alleged victims.
You’ve heard reports of Biden grabbing women by the butt? We have photos of Biden maybe grabbing (or at the very least pretending to) grab them by the breasts? Why are you conflating the accusations against Franken with those against Biden?
If a woman grabbed you on the butt (without your explicit consent) I’d be calling for her resignation as well.
Billions of people have touched women. With their consent. “Touching” isn’t the issue. Its all about consent, and boundaries.
You “believe women”, just not these particular eight women. Sounds legit.
The party wasn’t “overcome” by anything in 2017. And we all had a chance to listen to the accusations directly from the people who made them.
Al Franken chose to resign. That’s about as fair a shake as you can get.
Well that’s just how things work. You read something. You judge the credibility of what you’ve read. What else can you do?
For those who are arguing that Gillibrand and others should now be regretting their decision, do you feel that Franken has been vindicated? That in the two years since his resignation, it’s been shown that the charges against him are baseless? Or are you saying the accusations, even if true, did not justify him leaving office?
Not to speak for anyone but judging from the last couple of threads on this topic, they seem to be saying that it was inappropriate to pressure Franken to resign before a full investigation was done. The underlying assumption seeming to be that Tweeden was a biased accuser that might have been exaggerating Franken’s conduct, the other seven accusations were arguably weak sauce that might be explained by him just being touchy-feely in general and the odds were decent he’d beat the wrap after that whole interminable process ground to a close. Which would mean a strong, articulate, clever and liberal senator would have remained in play.
They’re wrong. Tweeden by herself was probably not enough, but Tweeden + seven certainly was. It was more than appropriate to pressure him to resign because the optics were awful. If I had been a personal friend of Franken I would have advised him to do the same. And being handsy has always been inappropriate in American society even when it was tolerated. Yeah he didn’t attack anybody, but if you had eight separate accusations of inappropriate kissing and light groping taken to HR you’d get fired at any reasonably run business or government agency in the country.
Franken made his own bed. Then he slept in it when he voluntarily waived his right to an investigation and resigned. That he regrets it now merits nothing more than a huge shrug from me. That he was pressured to do so also merits a huge shrug, because what else do you expect when you put yourself in that position?
Not sure why this subject merits such dead horse beating.
Personally I think those who think like Tamerlane are wrong.
I readily acknowledge that my take is biased by how I have seen the individual players pasts.
Yup I see Franken’s behaviors as described but I also see him as a person whose sense of ethics was such that he thought his resignation, his minimally short term career sacrifice, at that point was in service of the greater good. I see him as very much believing in the importance of that greater good.
If he decides to run for office it will be up to those who can vote for or against him to decide his political future from here. At the time at least there was not huge support in his state for him to resign and if he does run in the future I hope everyone else can accept whatever verdict those voters as a group pass.
Gillibrand has her own track record. She was quite conservative and has gone from a strong gun rights supporter and a a solid House Blue Dog when she felt that served her ambitions to strongly for gun control and when in a different arena. I cannot help but believe that her jumping to be the forst to call for Franken to resign was based on what she (mistakenly) thought was in her own political best interest with no regard for the the actual issues, for fairness or justice, or the good of the party.
And … meh. She has no chance at the nomination and, as with Franken if he ever runs for anything again, it will up to those who vote for her to decide if she is an honest champion for women or a political opportunist who should be tossed out.
I know that if I could I’d vote for Franken and against Gillibrand as D nominee for Senate or whatever, but I can do neither, and most of those posting here can’t either.
Meanwhile this past done history is a subject that potentially divides those who are mostly on the same team. Why so much equine zombification?
She’s isn’t going to change her opinion of Franken now and did not in the interview. Of course not. But what do you mean about “consistent”? I’m not aware of her crusading or otherwise being involved with sexual harassment causes before Franken. A cursory Google search turned up nothing. Maybe I missed it.
If you don’t mind, please elaborate. How much evidence is needed to turn spin into opinion?
This nails it for me. Seems to me one should at least consider this possibility. It takes a certain amount of naivety not to do so, especially where politicians are concerned. This is not a silly concept to keep in mind. I’ve seen plenty of opportunistic politicians in my life, and even if one has no specific reason to doubt one, a bit of skepticism is always appropriate.
I have no quibbles with the above.
I also don’t really care one way or the other about Gillibrand herself. She’s not my senator and I regard virtually all politicians in higher office as opportunistic to a greater or lesser degree - it’s virtually a requirement of the job. Most importantly I don’t have to worry much about this because she’s not likely to be within sniffing distance of the presidency. It’s just that whether she was opportunistic or principled or both( which might actually be the most likely answer ), I don’t disagree with the stance she took.
But you’re right it’s a long dead horse. I’m pretty sure I’ve been repeating myself across multiple threads.
…primary sources available on the wiki link.
No need to elaborate. The sentence you quoted concedes the statement was opinion: it was an opinion presented as fact.
As should be obvious, I disagree. I believe Gillibrand made the right call in 2017 and I believe that everything that has occurred since has vindicated her decision.
It all comes down to two central questions:
To me, the answer to both questions is yes.
While I am not convinced of a yes or no to item 2 (and IMHO certainly there was not enough done at the time for anyone to really know) I would ask you subquestions to item 1:
Is all that can be called sexual harassment as serious of an offense as all else that can be called sexual harassment?
Does a belief that sexual harassment is a serious offense require a belief in the same off with their (career) heads for all levels of offense? Should someone accused, to make a clear these things are not like another example, demanding a blow job to keep a job be handled the same as someone accused of making an inappropriate joke or of placing an unwanted hand on a shoulder?
Is the more global issue of sexual harassment best served by a zero tolerance policy coupled with a default presumption of guilt, or is there a place for action plans to improve behaviors even inclusive of ones that had no ill intent but still resulted in another’s discomfort, and working towards structural fixes that reduce future harassment?
My belief is that in many areas and in many cases the desire to punish is often counterproductive to the goal of improved outcomes in the future. Certainly not always so and there are many cases in which punishment is required for justice … but usually so.
One thing that affected the entire calculus is that the Franken accusations came at the worst possible time for him, namely when Roy Moore was defiantly not stepping down due to credible sexual assault allegations during a close election. Gillibrand didn’t make Roy Moore a pedophile and she didn’t make WaPo decide to head down to investigate but, once that had happened, there was increasing pressure to differentiate the Democratic party from Republicans and show that they treated sexual assault allegations seriously.
Now that Doug Jones has safely won the election, there’s a pressure to look back at decisions an analyze them in a vacuum without considering the larger political context but the context couldn’t have been ignored at the time. I truly believe if it had happened at any other time for him, then it would have been easy for him to let the ethics investigation to grind on and they would have found concerning things meriting a censure but he could have accepted the censure and moved on and continued a successful career.
That being said, I absolutely think him resigning was the right thing to do. Part of “believe women” is the fundamental belief that women aren’t acting out of some conspiracy to derail mens lives. Every woman in America knows the absolute torrent of hate they are guaranteed to receive in the face of any public sexual assault allegation, no matter now minor. They need to weigh this against the probably effects of them speaking out which is, in many cases, much more minor than it should be. When you have multiple women independently come out and present credible accusations in specific detail that show a common pattern, the investigation becomes a formality at that point and the chances of there being nothing is infinitesimal. Public accusations are only ever the tip of the iceberg, if there were 8 women who came forward, it’s likely there are dozens more women who were also made to feel deeply uncomfortable by Franken who simply didn’t feel like receiving the torrent of shit that comes from coming forward.
I’ll address these questions in general rather than one by one. I do not feel that all cases of sexual harassment are the same. Some are much worse than others. Raping a woman is certainly much worse than grabbing her breasts. I’ve said it other threads that Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh have done far worse than Al Franken did.
But the fact that other people are guilty of greater crimes doesn’t make Franken innocent. What he did was well above the level of being unacceptable sexual harassment. The accusations were not about making inappropriate jokes and putting hands on shoulders.
I’m not arguing for zero tolerance. But what happened was well above zero and shouldn’t be tolerated. And there was no default presumption of guilt. There was and is credible evidence of guilt.
On the subject of punishment, I don’t feel that’s a relevant issue here. Al Franken wasn’t sent to prison. He was asked to resign from the Senate. If not being a Senator is punishment it’s one shared by hundreds of millions of people in this country.
And I think that holding people who commit sexual harassment responsible for their actions, not minimizing those actions, and making sure there are consequences when they’re deserved are the kinds of structural fixes we need to reach the goal of improved outcomes in the future.