I think the topic of Al Franken, the recent revelations, the potential impact to the political landscape, etc. are all fair game as topics that can be discussed outside the Pit for those who wish to do so. This is not to say a pit thread free of the burden of the rules of this forum could not be started. But if folks want to discuss this electoral political issue in this forum, that’s also appropriate.
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What possible bright line could you draw? There are infinite shades of egregiousness vs ambiguity, as well as credibility.
I don’t care where it resides. I didn’t start it in the Pit because I wasn’t intending to rant about it. Or debate, or ask questions about, and I didn’t think it was pointless. Basically I envisioned a discussion of a serious politics-related matter and thought it fit naturally in this forum.
This forum is, per the main page: “For discussion of elections and electoral politics, including strategy and tactics, political parties, individual races, political news, and politicians and public figures.” Lots of overall with GD.
“Credible” is not really objective, but I think that should be the line – credible allegations that aren’t very quickly disproved or retracted. Maybe it’s not terribly “bright” since people might disagree on what is credible, but at least it’s a start.
If these credible allegations are later retracted or disproven, then the politician can come back and be welcomed back. But I think credible allegations are enough. That opens the possibility of weaponizing false allegations, but I think fashioning credible allegations, and finding a credible accuser, are a lot harder than might be commonly thought.
Not a perfect solution, but better than the alternatives, I think.
This is the conundrum, isn’t it?
I agree that proportionality is important, and that we ought to sanction people in a way that’s not out of proportion to their offense.
The problem is, AFAICT it’s really all or nothing. The Senate could censure Franken, but that doesn’t really mean anything. They could strip Franken of his committee assignments, but that is a punishment to the people of Minnesota that Franken represents, in addition to punishing Franken.
I just don’t see a meaningful condition to “he stays in the Senate, on the condition that…”
If someone can come up with one that makes sense, I’d like to hear it. But if the choices are “Franken resigns” or “Franken stays but sanctioned in a meaningless way” I’m still on the “resign” side.
(BTW, Spice Weasel, I’m quoting your comment not so much because I disagree with you (even though I reach a different conclusion) but because I think you’ve nailed the dilemma. There needs to be accountability, and there needs to be proportionality. But is there a way of having both? And which do we choose if we can only have one?)
I don’t have answers. I struggle with this–both with my own partisanship, and with my fear of swinging too far in the opposite direction out of an overabundance of caution.
But here’s one thing I’m thinking about: the point here is that our government and culture treats women in unfair ways, and that’s gotta end. Sexual assault/harassment/violence is one of those unfair treatments. There are others.
Getting rid of powerful men who assault women is a way of ending that unfairness. An action that gets a powerful abusive man out of power is, by itself, a good action.
What complicates matters is if that man’s position of power is in other ways ending unfairness. Franken has spent a lot of time acting in other ways to end sexist treatment of women, and from what I can tell, he’s effective at it. Getting him out of power may have detrimental effects, may make it harder to move forward legislation that ends sexist practices, may make it easier to move forward legislation or appointments that further sexist practices.
The same calculus doesn’t apply to Roy Moore or Donald Trump: getting them out of power is a win/win for women, removing their ability to regress legislation and appointments.
I’m not saying that Franken should stay in office; as I said, I don’t have an answer. But I am saying that it’s possible to appear to apply a different standard to Trump and to Franken, while really applying one simple standard: will getting this man out of power act as a net positive or a net negative for women?
If all you’re interested in is punishing the guilty, then sure, he should be gone: he’s guilty as hell. But if you’re interested in the larger issue, it becomes tricky, IMO.
I think that’s much too low of a bar, but even leaving that aside, it’s anything but a bright line. It’s not an either/or; there’s more credible and less credible.
I tend to agree. If this is the extent of his transgressions that’s about the level of punishment it deserves. All bad acts are not equally bad.
SNL when he worked there was like Sodom and Gemmorah only with more coke. I would be surprised this is the worst thing he has done and he had a reputation of being a jerk at the time. All that was known before he got elected.
If you were a dictator you could apply inconsistent standards as much as you want. If you’re living in a democracy which contains millions of people who disagree with your relative rankings of Trump and Franken, then you need to have other considerations beyond the ones you named.
Sure, you’re fine with holding your guys to a much lower standard because of how great they are in acting in line with your views. But people on the other side think the exact thing of their guys. So if everyone factors how great their pet abuser is into the calculation, then there’s no standard and everyone fights to defend their guys from being treated any harsher than the other guy.
The goal is to have a common standard that people can agree on. The only way to do that is to look at it independently of other considerations and apply it evenly to everyone.
I don’t think you or anyone should worry about losing an effective legislator and advocate. I don’t think that’s possible for Franken any more even if he stays. How could Franken be a more effective advocate, now, for women, than a hypothetical progressive woman replacement?
This logic, of course, was the crux of the Gloria Steinem defense of why feminists should support Bill Clinton even if they might be inclined to object to sexual harassment/assault by powerful men. It’s also the reason that, notwithstanding iiandyiii’s laudable dream, neither party is going to credibly “stand up to” personal misbehavior (sexual or otherwise) by its members. Leaving aside any policy opinions on what is “good for women,” if you look at the significant questions facing government, it’s always going to be fairly logical to grit your teeth and vote for the person who you think will support policies that are a net positive for America on a larger scale than the scope of the misbehavior (and be able to justify yourself – at least to yourself – in the face of your political opponents accusing you, or your party, of supporting the misbehavior).
I’m not at all talking about applying inconsistent standards, so this fantasy is irrelevant. I’m talking about applying a consistent standard: what action will best result in a reduction in sexist action in our society?
As things stand today, I think that this is a clear differentiation between how the Democrats have handled this sort of scandal and how the Republicans are handling their own. One has but to look at the responses from the two men involved to see the difference
I think the root problem with that analysis has to do with what kinds of political norms we want and which of them will actually work. You cannot create a successful norm that says that since Democrats’ policies help women, it’s OK for them to get less sanction for sexual misconduct. The premise might be objectively true (I certainly believe it is true), but it makes for a lousy norm since few if any Republicans accept the premise.
That norm abandons the idea that we should adopt a veil of political ignorance in assessing the response to misconduct. Maybe that norm should be abandoned. (Maybe it already has been, or never really existed in a bipartisan way.) But I think you sort of have to acknowledge that this is what you’d be doing, effectively. It would make it harder to persuade Republicans that they should oppose people like Moore (or to persuade Democrats that they should oppose people like Menendez), because you cannot point to that kind of norm of behavior any longer. I’m not sure that’s a better world in the end.
And separately (don’t want to present these like one is a response to the other):
There’s two ideas that I think are both important that are definitely at tension here. On the one hand, after rightly railing against inadequate responses to sexual harassment and abuse, the party that holds itself up as the more feminist one has a responsibility to model the appropriate response, especially knowing that its response is going to be emblematic.
On the other hand, what “the left” or “women” or “reasonable people” have really been calling for is a sufficient response to allegations like these. When the response is always feeble and inadequate, calling for harsher and harsher penalties is indistinguishable from calling for a more appropriate response.
I think there’s a strong analogy with other civil rights debates. Starting with Reconstruction, there have always been calls for more, and more aggressive, affirmative steps to break down inequalities, and there have also, in parallel, always been complaints that every step was an overcorrection and went too far. But, in my view and in a lot of people’s views, because we’ve never really adequately addressed the injuries caused by slavery, calling for “appropriate measures” has always been the same thing as a call for “more,” even if in theory at some point you are at the top of the mountain, and treating people differently through that lens would look different. MLK gets misquoted to this effect about colorblindness a lot; it’s a big Clarence Thomas favorite too.
With Moore and Franken and Trump, we’re similarly at a point where we haven’t yet started really consistently taking these things seriously, and I read andy to be saying this is an opportunity to do what we’ve been talking about all along: respond directly and send a clear message. The clearest and most meaningful thing to do would be to force Franken out; zero tolerance. On the other hand, there are lots of practical reasons why sweeping calls for resignation might be out of proportion, taking the individual case on its own merits, and in an alternate universe where we actually were responding reasonably and fairly to all complaints all the time, it would be premature to do so.
The big difference here, obviously, is that these are discrete cases of behavior by individuals. I think that makes it much easier to actually draw a line, and maybe we’re right at that point where we get to draw it. If Roy Moore and Franken are run out of town, and Clinton is persona non grata in the Democratic Party, then the obvious next step is why does Trump deserve a public life, and there’s a hard line there for the next time, and the Democrats have armed themselves to be able to enforce it.
It’s not the line I would draw. I think the more responsible line is that we take accusations seriously, and we treat them as prima facie evidence that there’s a need for an investigation without political attacks on the accusers. Depending on what an investigation reveals, after the accused person is given the opportunity to say what they want to say about it, and the victim is heard on what they feel is appropriate, there is room, I think, for a more broad range of outcomes than simply “everyone out.” I don’t think that specific question is an all or nothing one. Even if Al Franken, under the circumstances, still ends up on the side of the line where you’re too guilty of something too inappropriate to continue to contribute to the country as a public member of the party, I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s possible to be on the other side of the line, even after an accusation. If that’s not zero tolerance, then I’m opposed to zero tolerance. I’m not sure whether or not I agree that this is what zero tolerance looks like, though. It’s just that we’ve usually been so far away from zero tolerance that we’ve never had an opportunity to talk about what it really does mean.
That’s a consistent standard in the same way that “what action will produce the best result for me personally?” is a consistent standard.
Not being from anywhere near Minnesota, I have no idea what the average Minnesotan knew about what things had been like backstage at SNL, and about Franken’s reputation of being a jerk. I was an SNL fan back in the day (mid 1970s to early 1980s) and I didn’t know about either one.
I think this question of what the Minnesota electorate knew is relevant. One of the points Josh Marshall makes about Roy Moore is that Alabama voters know about Moore (unless they actively choose to refuse to know, of course), and if they choose to elect as Senator a first-class theocrat who is creepy around teenage girls, that’s their choice, and the Senate really shouldn’t undo it.
Minnesotans almost surely didn’t know in 2008 or 2014 that Franken committed sexual assault/harassment in 2006. I don’t know what they did know about his personal shortcomings in 2008 and 2014, so it’s hard for me to say if they knew enough about him that they knew what they were voting for.
This is sort of a fair point. I’d expand it: I’m still interested in what’s going to lead to a reduction in sexist harm, but there’s a legitimate argument that ignoring political views in favor of a laser focus on personal actions will in the long run create a greater reduction in sexist harm, as it’ll lead to a standard easier for folks to swallow.
Sure, absolutely. I’m not a woman, so it’s not the same standard, but yeah, that’s another consistent standard. It’s also a consistent standard in the same way that “What will lead to the tastiest butterscotch pudding?” is a consistent standard. I’m glad we’ve established what it means for a standard to be consistent; I didn’t realize we needed to do that, but okay.
Gal says Guy did the bad thing. Guy denies it. Guy’s boss says we have a zero tolerance policy, so you’re boned. We are attempting to establish a new standard of behavior, which is an admirable and worthy effort. But if “Gal says” is held to be evidence and “Guy says” is not, then we have established a standard of evidence, and that is a whole different kettle of piranha.
Someone is going to lie. As sure as we all have navels in the center of our bodies, someone is going to lie. The likelihood of that happening increases as other elements come into the question, such as, politics.
Do I believe Trump’s accusers? Sure I do, we have his own testimony as to his, ah, “standards”. Judge Moore? Multiple allegations with supporting evidence, such as accounts by friends and family that they heard about these offenses right around the time they happened. We can fairly say that corroboration is evidence.
If a political figure can be torpedoed by nothing more substantial than an allegation, it will happen. Sure as the Goddess made little green apples, it will happen. Are we to take the position that our cause is so good and so noble that some “collateral damage” is justifiable and can be safely ignored? OK, if that’s your position, say so. That Gal testimony outweighs Guy testimony because gender.
I think that’s a problem. If there is a workable solution, I’m right here to listen. Because that would mean we can proceed to the right thing without worrying about the wrong one. 'Cause sure as you’re born, if we accept anecdote as evidence, someone is going to lie. Human, all too human.
Love to see the workable fix. I don’t have it. You do? Anyone? Now’s the time.
OK but then why is it fair to ascribe political motivation to Franken’s accuser? Why not give her the benefit of the doubt and attribute the Weinstein Effect (#metoo)
There is a picture i.e. proof of some of the harrassment reported. Are we saying that a victim of sexual assault/harrassment shouldn’t report it based on political timing? Like I said, if that is the game the Dems will play then this will turn out badly for them.