Look, I’d like to give Democrats kudos for this, but it’s a change that’s been in existence for about three days now, and some of you guys are crowing about it like you’re angels. Last week Pelosi was still explaining how Conyers is an “icon”, so I’m going to wait, at least for the paint to dry, on this new zero-tolerance policy before I start singing your praises. The real acid test will be when it’s someone who’s resignation would actually hurt the Democrats politically: some red-state Dem Senator or the next time a D president gets accused of rape and impeached for lying about his affair. Then we’ll see how sincere their “trying to live by the rule of law and the rule of ethics” is.
Tell us more when Roy Moore gets elected, willya?
You appear to have a very active imagination. I admit, I’m a bit jealous.
I don’t think that this is a case of serious allegations being thrown at them and it’s disingenuous for Al Franken to suggest otherwise. Al Franken believed that he should have been allowed to play by a different set of rules. “Oh I’m an entertainer. I’m a hip comedian. Come on, just joking.”
Franken might have stopped when they pushed him away and told them to stop (if they ever did). But I’m sorry, somewhere along the way he needed to learn what boundaries are, like after the first time someone gave him an awkward look or walked away from him in disgust – maybe a little introspection and inner speech along the lines of “Whoa, maybe I misread the signs here. How can I not do this again?” I’m assuming this happened, because if they all just played along with getting ass pinched and slobbered with this tongue then I guess he is the world’s unluckiest guy. But I doubt that’s the case. I doubt this is a conspiracy. He’s a victim of his own arrogance.
I don’t think this story necessarily defines Al Franken. I agree that Donald Trump and particularly Roy Moore’s actual conduct and response to the scandal are worse. But Franken’s not a victim of a party purity test. I admit that initially thought that he might be, but 8 women and counting can’t all be lying.
I’d agree, if your side wasn’t already caught making false allegations for the specific purpose of discrediting the other women that have come forward.
I’m not making this out of cloth, I’m watching your side’s playbook.
No, there’s no crowing because Al Franken’s departure doesn’t change the fact that a callous group of people control the government party and seem to be trying giving tax breaks that most people don’t want and taking away health care and other services that most people DO want. There’s no gloating; it’s just a reckoning with the fact that Democrats, like Republicans, have some bad apples in their midst, but unlike Republicans are willing to confront them.
The Dems are offering Franken up in sacrifice to seal the allegiance of women voters. Of late, men lean Republican, women lead strongly Dem.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/363273-poll-women-voters-favor-dems-over-gop-by-20-points
I am somewhat surprised and heartened to see such ruthless and cold realpolitik from them. Too often the Dems bring a nerf bat to a gunfight. Of course, there’s that whole thing about the results of peering into the Darkness…
I don’t see a problem with sending Franken and Conyers out the door, but they’re wrong if they believe that this alone is going to help them be seen as having strong values. People aren’t going to elect Democrats to protect women. Ultimately, they need to talk about economics.
No. We had someone who committed adultery. That was the charge you guys made at the time. That was the big deal. That was why every Republican said they hated Clinton.
There is one credible accusation now. And that person, at the time, signed an affidavit saying that he had not abused her. So no one believed that accusation.
You cannot mix up what was known now with what was known then.
Furthermore, even if you were right, it would be irrelevant. You can’t blame someone for what they did in the past if they are not only no longer doing it, but actively working to stop it. For example, if I used to do drugs, but then stopped, and now actively work to keep kids from doing drugs, you can’t turn that around and attack me for doing drugs.
Especially when you are currently still doing drugs yourself. The Republican Party is currently coddling its abusers. You don’t get to accuse the Democrats of having previously coddling an abuser, when they are now specifically kicking them out.
This is, ultimately, just another tu quoque argument. Those have no value. The fact that the Republican Party is coddling abusers cannot be deflected by saying that, at one time in the past, Democrats coddled an abuser. Especially when they are actively kicking out the abusers now.
And in case the above is too complicated for you (aka tl;dr):
Republicans are coddling abusers NOW. You can’t defend that by saying the Democrats did it THEN but no longer do.
I have no interest in arguing whether or not the Democrats are(I should have said “were worse” in my post you quoted) worse when it comes to dealing with sexual abuse within the Party. My point was thet both parties are historically at the same general level when dealing with harassment and abuse in their parties. Certainly I could make a case the Dems have been worse. As late as 2016 the vast majority of Dems were still supporting Hillary; a woman who was as much behind the smears against Bill’s female accusers as anyone. I don’t believe Hillary is responsible for Bill’s sexual actions but Hillary is responsible for the smear jobs against Bill’s female accusers. She is as responsible as anyone for the unwillingness to seriously deal with sexual assault within the Democratic Party. She is culpable for the inaction, the cover-ups and the tendency to sweep it all under the rug.
I believe prominent Republicans have also called for the sexual harassment deals in Congress to be released. Let me say this; the high probability is that both parties will come out evenly smeared if these claims are made public. Both parties will contain roughly the same number of sexual scumbags and sleazeballs. Only in a partisan fictional universe will one party come out significantly worse.
Condoning and enabling adultery seems dangerous does it not? Did Hillary consent to be exposed to all the potential disease Bill was immersed in?
So can we expect your unwavering call for resignation, even when the bad apple is in a red state and likely to be replaced by a Republican?
For goodness sakes, guys. The likelihood of any one person making a fake accusation is 5%. If you have multiple independent accusers, that number goes down very fast. Even if we increase the initial number for public figures, the number still goes down really fast.
I did it before with Cosby, so I’ll do it again here. Let’s put it at 50%. There are 7, based on a Google search. That’s a chance of 50%^7= 0.78% chance that all of them are liars. And that’s a large upper bound, to accommodate the occasional person doing it for political reasons or jumping on the bandwagon.
And all of that is without just actually, you know, reading the accounts of the accusers and seeing if they ring true. Yes, the first one was weird and suspicious. The second one sorta so. The third one on, however, were fairly credible.
If there are multiple accusers, and they are not shown to be connected in any way, then the likelihood that all of them are lying is rather low. Myths about how anyone can be taken down are ridiculous. It’s positing a conspiracy, since that’s the only way to force this to happen.
I was sympathetic a bit to those who were hesitant on one or two accusations, especially when the first one was very political and very Republican. But now there is no excuse. This myth that Democrats believe everyone, when they very clearly did not believe the first few accusers, needs to stop.
Yes, and you’re right, that’s coming out of cold calculation. But on the sincerity front, I think a lot of Democrats do feel genuine guilt and even anguish at having failed to denounce Bill Clinton, when it became clear that he really had been cavorting with an intern in White House.
Al Franken is the sacrifice on the altar of that guilt.
Unlike others in the thread, I don’t see the stories told by the three anonymous accusers and five named accusers as being credible. But I would have been happy to see all eight stories fully investigated. Perhaps full investigations, including sworn testimony by those involved, would have changed my view; as things stand I don’t buy that Franken chases women or gets his jollies from demeaning women. Maybe if all these matters received more sunshine, that opinion would change.
But Franken was a victim of the post-Weinstein-revelations imperative for the progressive man: not only is he prohibited from saying that female accusers are liars; he’s prohibited from any suggestion that the accounts they are giving aren’t fully accurate. He can’t say ‘I didn’t grope or grab women’ because that comes across as Disrespectful to Women–even if he knows he committed no aggression or harassment.
Republicans face no such constraints.
The Republican way is to call accusers liars; they will not abide any investigation of accusations. That should be what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans: Dems should say ‘let all accusers be taken seriously, heard fully, and let their allegations be investigated thoroughly.’
Instead the Democrats have adopted “accusation = guilt = removal from office” as their standard. It’s a terrible mistake–one that the Right will exploit comprehensively and gleefully.
The rape and sexual assault allegations came out during the Clinton Presidency. They were refuted and denied by Clinton and the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. An attempt was made to destroy every one of Bill’s female accusers. The accusations against Bill were then dismissed by millions of Democrats and independents(and some Republicans too) who continued to support Bill Clinton.
I can sure blame someone for what they did in the recent past. And the fact is the Democratic Party were complicit in enabling a woman to run for President who has herself possibly* enabled sexual crimes to go unpunished.
*I use the word possibly as I have no idea if the accusations against Bill Clinton are entirely true, partly true or untrue. I do know that the accusations were made and that the Democratic Party as a whole decided they were either unimportant or untrue. Barely a fuck was given by the Dem Party at the time or indeed for years afterwards. Yet on this thread there are numerous posters who claim the Democrats are somehow morally superior than the Republicans in all this; sure, the Dems are morally superior to the Repubs IF you only choose to morally judge both parties over the past 3 days.
Correct! And as I said before, the Democrats are taking the high road, not knowing that the high road in this case leads off a cliff.
GOP rep from AZ stepping down , seems the rumors about him are nothing new
Maybe a media outlet was going to report on him
“in this case” there are no serious consequences. Franken will be replaced by another Dem in the Senate. But, I think it’s likely that in some future case they may face cliff-like consequences. I’ll be interested to watch then if they take the high road or not.
I think you’re right (and that’s a great metaphor–unfortunately!)
Dems have handed the Right some terrible weapons:
** Anonymous accusations work great! Since they won’t be investigated beyond ‘can you find one person to say X did Y, and a second person to say First Person told them about it’, the sky’s the limit.
** “Democrats are so sleazy-dirty they had to throw out two members of Congress within a week! But the Republicans are totally clean–they didn’t have to throw out anyone”—this will be widely used. And despite the fond hopes of some on the left, this WILL work on independents and swing voters. The Democrats have now indelibly labeled themselves as the party of Sexual Harassers.
As was said earlier in the thread: this may mark the beginning of the end for the party.
That hardly seems possible. After all this guy is a Republican. They should be getting ready to make him Speaker.