Now, Al Franken

[Sherrerd]

@Kent_Clark

Al Franken 2020.
He doesn’t seem so bad now, does he?

Well, that slogan could use a little work (true though it is).

But I would vote for him in a heartbeat.

[Little_Nemo]

@Sherrerd

It was wrong to ask him to resign without due process.

Many of us had doubts about Tweeden’s story in particular, and the others appeared to boil down to ‘I asked for a picture with him and he put his hand around my waist’-level of “harassment.”

We know now that when someone asks to take a picture with a public figure, that public figure would be smart to do what Bill Maher does: put both his hands up in ‘peace sign’ gestures. Both hands completely visible = no chance for false accusations.

My guess is that there have been times Franken was a little handsy. Not George H.W. Bush-level handsy (pinching butts), but more prone to grabbing women by the waist during photo ops then he should have been. That’s not appropriate for a public figure. But I’m troubled by equating it to “sexual harassment.”

In any case: due process. It’s important.

I feel it would have been wrong to force him to resign without due process. But I have no problem with him being asked to resign.

Franken presumably knew what he had done and what evidence would have appeared in public if he had fought. If he believed he was innocent and would be exonerated, he could have stayed in office and fought the accusations. He chose not to.

I regret that Franken left office. I feel he was a good senator and I think he might have made a good president. And I am very unhappy that Republicans are not being held to the same standard that Democrats are holding themselves to. But I feel it’s a fair standard.

[Sherrerd]

@Little_Nemo

…Franken presumably knew what he had done and what evidence would have appeared in public if he had fought. If he believed he was innocent and would be exonerated, he could have stayed in office and fought the accusations. He chose not to.
…

This contains a pretty big assumption: that Franken resigned NOT because he’d accepted that it was best for the party, but out of fear of being found guilty.

I don’t see how such an assumption can be supported—particularly in light of the facts that no new accusations have surfaced, and that the earlier accusations have not fared well in the light of further investigation (as witness the New Yorker story linked to earlier).

[Chimera]

@Little_Nemo

Franken presumably knew what he had done and what evidence would have appeared in public if he had fought. If he believed he was innocent and would be exonerated, he could have stayed in office and fought the accusations. He chose not to.

Operative word being ‘could have’. That he did not does not in any way imply the kind of guilt you infer.

[RTFirefly]

@Sherrerd

It was wrong to ask him to resign without due process.

There’s a process, due or otherwise, for asking someone to resign??

I thought you just, you know, asked.

[Sherrerd]

@RTFirefly

There’s a process, due or otherwise, for asking someone to resign??
I thought you just, you know, asked.

My post was short for “it was wrong to ask him to resign before he could be provided with due process of the law, for example an independent investigation and a Senate hearing, among other possible options.”

[Sunny_Daze]

I read the New Yorker article. Nothing within it convinced me to believe that his behavior was acceptable, or that he was contrite in any way. He regrets leaving his office, but he does not regret his actions. He was wrong. Furthermore, no one forced him to resign before the ethics investigation. He chose to do it.

I regret that the person I believed Al Franken to be is not in the Senate. I do not regret that the person he was revealed to be chose to leave.

[octopus]

The governor of Virginia demonstrated how to let outrage blow over.

[CaptMurdock]

@octopus

The governor of Virginia demonstrated how to let outrage blow over.

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out. A door slammed. The maid screamed.

Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were stringing random sentences together and calling it free prose.

:smack:

[madmonk28]

Salon had a good take down of the New Yorker article. A couple of quotes:

… The problem here, however, is that even if the first accusation was an old-fashioned right wing rat-f*cking, the next seven accusations were not. The accusers were, in order: A fan of Franken’s who said he grabbed her butt during a photo, two women who say Franken groped them at fundraising events, a soldier who says Franken groped her during a USO event, another progressive politician who says he forcibly kissed her, a Democratic aide who says he tried to kiss her, and an Atlantic writer who objected to the way Franken grabbed her waist…

Of these, the “due process” one is perhaps the worst, because it sounds so reasonable. Who doesn’t love due process? Its due-ness is right there in the phrase!..

Mayer does, to be fair, include writer Rebecca Traister pointing out that such investigations might take months, meaning that Franken’s Democratic colleagues would have endured “being grilled on it every day” until that wrapped up.

That almost certainly would have meant Franken sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, giving Republicans a neat and, frankly, irrefutable piece of evidence that Democrats only take credible allegations from multiple women seriously if it benefits them politically. Even if the investigation had somehow been wrapped up and Franken pushed out, the fact that Democrats fought for Franken would have been used as justification for Republicans fighting for Kavanaugh.

What drove the New Yorker's Jane Mayer into Al Franken denialism?

[CarnalK]

That hits on the most serious reason why he had to go quick. To ride the #metoo wave, the Dems had to jettison Franken.

[madmonk28]

Also, because the Democratic Party is the party for decent people, it holds itself to a higher standard (except in Virginia).

[Fiddle_Peghead]

@madmonk28

Salon had a good take down of the New Yorker article. A couple of quotes:

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/22/what-drove-the-new-yorkers-jane-mayer-into-al-franken-denialism/

I think Marcotte makes some decent points in the article, but quite frankly, she is something of a hack.

Despite this, Franken’s defenders are married to the delusional belief that it’s all just a frame-up and that if he’d had “due process” in the form of a Senate ethics investigation (run by Republicans, who control that chamber) he would have somehow managed to prove this.

Starts right off with a whopper. First off, some Franken defenders are not in fact married to anything, are not delusional, and are under no illusion that Franken would have been able to prove anything about allegations that happened years ago, but do think that at least his side sould have been fully heard, and yes, the women would have had a chance to come forward again, or for the first time. And what in the name of fuck is her problem with “due process”?! What, Marcotte, are you saying you don’t believe in the idea of both sides being heard??!!

Of these, the “due process” one is perhaps the worst, because it sounds so reasonable. Who doesn’t love due process? Its due-ness is right there in the phrase!

“I asked him for due process and he said no,” Mayer records Franken saying of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

When you start out an article in which you immediately being making ridiculous arguments attacking a person’s defenders, it is not encouraging about how honest an article you are writing.

Anyway, this is really more a response about Marcotte than Franken/Tweeden/etc, so enough about her.

[Little_Nemo]

That almost certainly would have meant Franken sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, giving Republicans a neat and, frankly, irrefutable piece of evidence that Democrats only take credible allegations from multiple women seriously if it benefits them politically. Even if the investigation had somehow been wrapped up and Franken pushed out, the fact that Democrats fought for Franken would have been used as justification for Republicans fighting for Kavanaugh.

Of course, as it turns out, the Republicans didn’t feel the need for any moral justification to fight for Kavanaugh.

[Fiddle_Peghead]

@CarnalK

That hits on the most serious reason why he had to go quick. To ride the #metoo wave, the Dems had to jettison Franken.

I would agree. It seems highly unlikely that Schumer told him he had to be gone by 5pm because he was worried about Franken groping other Senators back in the cloakroom. This was politics, pure and simple.

[Little_Nemo]

@Chimera

Operative word being ‘could have’. That he did not does not in any way imply the kind of guilt you infer.

I disagree. It doesn’t prove he was guilty but it certainly does imply he was.

[Fiddle_Peghead]

@Little_Nemo

I disagree. It doesn’t prove he was guilty but it certainly does imply he was.

Given that Schumer said he had to resign by 5pm, and thinking, I assume, any power he had would evaporate overnight, he simply said fuck it and accepted his fate? That he didnt think he was guilty of wrong behavior but knew it was futile to try to be heard in the Senate?

[Little_Nemo]

@Fiddle_Peghead

Given that Schumer said he had to resign by 5pm, and thinking, I assume, any power he had would evaporate overnight, he simply said fuck it and accepted his fate? That he didnt think he was guilty of wrong behavior but knew it was futile to try to be heard in the Senate?

Franken was an elected Senator. Schumer had zero power to force him to resign.

This was the equivalent of a plea bargain. The offer was “We both know the evidence exists. If you don’t resign, it’ll go public. And then you’ll lose your job. But if you resign, we won’t release the evidence. So you lose your job either way but one way you’ll also be humiliated.”

But the key point is that this only works when the evidence exists. If you think you can win the hearing, you stay and fight.

[Royal_Nonesutch]

@Sherrerd

My guess is that there have been times Franken was a little handsy. Not George H.W. Bush-level handsy (pinching butts), but more prone to grabbing women by the waist during photo ops then he should have been. That’s not appropriate for a public figure. But I’m troubled by equating it to “sexual harassment.”

I know, huh?

The poor kid. 7 or 8 ginches, (almost all of them politically alligned with you and previous fans of your comedy career) all independenty report that you grabbed their ass or their tits and the neo-Puritans rush to label you a friggin’ “sexual harasser”!!!

Madness!

[JKellyMap]

@Little_Nemo

Franken was an elected Senator. Schumer had zero power to force him to resign.

This was the equivalent of a plea bargain. The offer was “We both know the evidence exists. If you don’t resign, it’ll go public. And then you’ll lose your job. But if you resign, we won’t release the evidence. So you lose your job either way but one way you’ll also be humiliated.”

But the key point is that this only works when the evidence exists. If you think you can win the hearing, you stay and fight.

In a court of law, yes. But this is within a larger political context — the additional factor of what optics might be best for the party at that time.