"In the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate." – Sen. Al Franken
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) December 7, 2017
So January, after the CR/DACA & Tax fights and with space to line up a replacement. Fair enough. Bye. https://t.co/9516c2oH1G
— Zeddy ( me [ person ] ) (@ZeddRebel) December 7, 2017
My first thought was “After the holidays, which will make it easier for his staffers to restructure their paperwork, update their resumes, and keep unpleasant at family gatherings to a minimum.” (Yeah, I’ve always been in the lower levels of the employment pyramid.)
The Washington Post has a transcript:
… A couple of months ago I felt that we had entered an important moment in the history of this country. We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men’s actions affect them. The moment was long overdue. I was excited for that conversation and hopeful that it would result in real change that made life better for women all across the country and in every part of our society.
Then the conversation turned to me.
Over the last few weeks a number of women have come forward to talk about how they felt my actions had affected them.
I was shocked. I was upset. But in responding to their claims I also wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation, because all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that in fact I haven’t done.
Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others, I remember very differently. I said at the outset that the ethics committee was the right venue for these allegations to be heard and investigated and evaluated on their merits, that I was prepared to cooperate fully and that I was confident in the outcome…
Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life. I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator — nothing — has brought dishonor on this institution, and I am confident that the ethics committee would agree. Nevertheless today I am announcing that in the coming weeks I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.
I of all people am aware there is some irony in the fact I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party. But this decision is not about me. It’s about the people of Minnesota. It has become clear that I can’t both pursue the ethics committee process and at the same time remain an effective senator for them.
Let me be clear. I may be resigning my seat but I am not giving up my voice. I will continue to stand up for the things I believe in as a citizen and as an activist. The Minnesotans deserve a senator who can focus with all her energy on addressing the challenges they face every day…
For the record, everything I’ve seen so far suggests that Franken has behaved ineptly, sometimes stupidly, but not criminally. If the accusations are true, he deserved punishment, although not IMO to this degree. But given current circumstances, I also think he’s making the best possible choices for himself, his staffers, his party, and his country… and I look forward to his next steps!
.
Watching the politics of sexual harassment unfold, I find myself thinking of what Frederick Douglass (whose work people are appreciating more and more) said about Abraham Lincoln 1/ https://t.co/cOCeOhrKZx pic.twitter.com/0qTJbLuotD
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 6, 2017
But they are acting. They are cleaning house, and taking the issue seriously. Meanwhile, the GOP is rallying behind a child molester. The parties are not the same. 3/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 6, 2017
A story on the immediate impact, also from the WaPo:
… The resignation of not one but two prominent Democratic lawmakers over allegations of inappropriate behavior points to the wider reckoning taking place around the country as women come forward to accuse powerful men of misconduct. Members of Congress have spent the past month grappling with how best to respond to allegations of harassment against colleagues and criticism of the way workplace complaints are handled in the legislative branch…
He is expected to make his resignation effective at the end of the month, according to a person familiar with his decision-making. This timetable could allow him to cast several consequential votes on the Republican tax bill, funding the government and possibly the fate of “dreamers,” immigrants brought to the country illegally as children…
Once Franken makes his resignation official, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) will pick a replacement to serve until a November 2018 special election. Whoever wins the special election will have to run again in 2020 to begin a new term if they want to stay in the Senate.
In a statement Thursday, Dayton extended “my deepest regrets” to Franken’s accusers while saying his heart “goes out to Al and his family during this difficult time.”
“I have not yet decided on my appointment to fill this upcoming vacancy. I expect to make and announce my decision in the next couple of days,” he stated.
Franken suggested Thursday that he will be replaced by a woman. Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has a large and largely female bench of up-and-coming candidates, three of whom are seeking the party’s 2018 gubernatorial nomination…
The drive to purge Franken was a dramatic indication of the political toxicity that has grown around the issue of sexual harassment in recent months. It also stood as a stark — and deliberate — contrast with how the Republicans are handling Moore’s candidacy in Alabama, where voters will cast ballots next week in a special Senate election…
For some, it was an emotional moment. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), sitting just behind Franken, removed her glasses twice to wipe tears from her eyes. In the visitors gallery, Franken’s wife Franni sat with a group of friends, family and consultants, including Klobuchar’s husband, John Bessler, and Franken’s top political aide, Mandy Grunwald. Some clasped tissues; others held their heads in their hands as they watched the speech.
When Franken concluded, Klobuchar approached and hugged him. So did Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who slapped him on the back as they tightly embraced.
Franken then turned to the 26 aides seated behind him, shaking each of their hands and hugging them. The final aide he greeted, a younger woman, both laughed and burst into tears as they spoke…
I’m so old, I can remember when “everybody knew” that Joe Biden had permanently destroyed his political future back in 1987, when he dropped out of the presidential primaries over accusations of plagiarism. Right now I’m hoping Franken’s ongoing political career is as long-lasting and consequential as Biden’s has proven to be!
.
Mary G
See ya on the other side of the T. Bogg unit.
Hunter Gathers
@Mary G: Will it take less than 12 parsecs to get there?
Jsmith
And isn’t special that in their idiotic rush to judgement by our esteemed spineless Dems we didn’t have time for stuff like this to come out:
Leann Tweeden’s and Donald Trump Jr.’s buddy-buddy Twitter correspondence going back to 2011. Nah, better just to give him the heave-ho w/o any investigation.
H/t to Democraticunderground where this was just posted today.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%20‘donaldtrumpjr’%20from%3Aleeanntweeden%20&src=typd&lang=en&lang=en
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Cry Franken! And unleash a thousand posts of rage!
(
it was the hair plugs what done him in, it was the hair plugs what brought him back. And Barack Obama)
TenguPhule
And the party abandoned this man.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Because we always throw them away.
SiubhanDuinne
I see exactly what you did there, K-Thug.
TenguPhule
@Hunter Gathers: This is no Kessel run, Farm boy.
guachi
Called my Senator, Kamala Harris, and told the poor sap answering the phone that when the Republican wolves come for her – and they will as she’s a Democrat, a woman, and black – I won’t be there to defend her.
I will, however, call back and say “You reap what you sow.”
Bex
So Trent Franks resigned from Congress today? Nobody will miss him.
eemom
I’d say this won’t end well, except that I doubt it will end at all.
B.B.A.
And I hope the truth comes out. Because if he’s a serial groper he can go to hell.
And if not, I guess he can run for his old seat back next year?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
my god! Has she resigned in hopeless terror yet?
Humdog
What was the reason he had to act before the ethics investigation had even begun?
Anne Laurie
@TenguPhule: No, ‘the party’ (we!) have not abandoned him. Individual actors, in Congress and elsewhere, have made their own choices regarding Franken’s situation. Choices are still being made.
Bitching that All is lost! we are doomed, doomed I tells ya! is for adolescents and ratfvckers; which do you want to be considered?
Trollhattan
@guachi:
Anybody know what DiFi had to say? Was disappointed with Harris, thinking her attorney general background would have her gathering evidence before jumping on the train.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.:
“Sure, we destroyed his reputation on a careless whim, but he can pick himself up by his bootstraps and try again!”
/SMH
Mike in DC
Ethics investigations opened into Franks and Fahrenthold. Likely more to come, if reports about the WaPo story are true.
Mnemosyne
I’m calling Senator Harris tomorrow to complain about her participation in this witch hunt. I couldn’t do it today because I would have used so many swears that they would have hung up on me.
Again, I can’t fucking believe that someone wrote a long, teary, accusatory essay in the Atlantic because Franken squeezed her waist. And he was forced to resign based on a Hannity commentator, anonymous accusations, and a waist squeeze.Jesus fucking Christ. Thanks for ruining #metoo, assholes.
Fleeting Expletive
Earlier someone here said CNN is reporting 5-30 members may face investigation for harassment. So, I’ve got a little bit of a theory here–don’t laugh. Franken is real smart, and I still believe a fundamentally decent person. If you look at both those factors, what if it’s 30, or if in the next X weeks we hear of 100 credibly investigated allegations. Franken was cooked, and I grieve that, but he might be throwing his feminist self on a grenade for constituents, the party, the institution, and the citizens by establishing an absolute precedent–if you did it, you’re gone. He also surely suspected that should any “investigation” take place, the chairman of that committee would likely be that Farenthold fellow, therefore a farce.
Think of what he may know about his rich white male acquaintances and Republican senators. No male R senator really respects women, that would be my guess. So, precedent.
I’m gonna watch and see.
chris
In before the tsunami.
And out.
B.B.A.
@TenguPhule: Worked for Mark Sanford, didn’t it?
TenguPhule
@Anne Laurie: I just watched the ratfucker’s job be done for them by our oh so knowledgeable Senators.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.: Only works for Republicans.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I’ll put you down for ‘adolescent’ then.
Anne Laurie
@Humdog:
I don’t know his calculations, but my best guess (what I’m seeing from others) is that he decided it was better to step away and let a Democratic governor appoint his replacement, early enough that the seat will be properly competitive in 2020. It can’t have been easy to watch his family & his staffers get blasted by the shitetons of hypocritical Repub smile, either. And taking this one ‘for the (Democratic) team’ removes one rhetorical weapon from the current Alabama election, among others.
debbie
I have to say that Baud knew when to disconnect and get out of town.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: tell me that after the next accusation comes against us in the Senate.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
All the Republicans need to do now is create enough attention around accusations (doesn’t matter what they are even) that Dems resign because the accusations become such a distraction that the Dem can’t perform their job or conduct their campaign.
lamh36
@guachi: Mark my words, of all the female Congressmembers who signed that letter to have Franken resign…the one who will be most penalized will be Kamala Harris.
The majority of them have “the complexion for protection” and seemingly no ambition for higher office…we shall see…
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I think what people are angry about is the double standard.
They don’t like what Franken did, but they see the media screaming for his scalp while the very same media hail a sex criminal like Drumpf as presidential.
TenguPhule
@MomSense: And when the accusations are proven false, they get to condemn #metoo as an obvious fraud.
Win-win.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: ??
Anne Laurie
@Fleeting Expletive:
Seconded — except I think the committee chair will be Louie Gohmert, for maximum media-friendly noise & stupidity.
MomSense
@debbie:
Poor Poco. He likes to put his nose in inappropriate (for humans) places. Think Quinerty will be able to train him not to before the campaign starts?
dr. bloor
Al Franken is a smart, tough, cold-blooded mofo. I continue to be surprised by how many otherwise smart people–who are on the wrong side of an asymmetric information situation–completely discount Franken’s own view of what is appropriate in this situation.
MomSense
@TenguPhule:
Yup. As a #metoo, I’m angry that we are diluting it this way.
TenguPhule
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Its not just that. Its the quality of the accusations that there is almost literally no comparison between Franken and Trump or Moore.
The first accuser’s credibility is falling apart. Now we’re getting reports she was COACHED for this shit, TODAY.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
That’s their plan, yes. Hopefully the Congressional Democrats will wake up before it’s too late.
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
Death Penalty. No Exceptions. //
Anne Laurie
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Yup. What we need to do now is make sure that double standard turns into a weapon against the Republicans who promulgate it.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
David Vitter committed crimes by hiring a dominatrix to dress him in a diaper and engage in scatological sex.
Media didn’t demand his resignation and he got another 10 years in office.
Cacti
@Anne Laurie:
30 Dem Senators mobbed out one of their own without due process, and effectively overturned a statewide democratic election in which he was chosen by more than 1 million of his constituents.
No amount of polishing is going to put a shine on this turd.
lamh36
Yay Ethics Committee
TenguPhule
@Anne Laurie:
Good luck with that.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
I’m sorry to say it, but she deserves to get reamed over this. She was our attorney general. If she can’t stand up for due process, who can?
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. bloor: Agreed.
Major Major Major Major
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: that… is a very bad analogy.
TenguPhule
@Cacti:
“Polish HARDER, Assholes!”
“Sir, Yes Sir!”
dr. bloor
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: You understand that bought and paid for kink =/= violating interpersonal boundaries.
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie: Great post. Well said. I also hope that Franken continues to speak out and to help the causes he believes in.
I’ve already said what I think about the Democrats and their urging that Franken resign. I’ve never been much for leftovers, so I will leave the rehash for another time.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@TenguPhule: She’s also a birther. And the media ignored that inconvenient fact.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, because Moore refuses to even admit wrongdoing. This will actually be used as evidence that Democrats are immoral perverts (especially those “cosmopolitan elites” like Franken, IFYKWIM) while Republicans are beleaguered innocents being unfairly attacked by people with an agenda.
B.B.A.
@TenguPhule: Credible reports, or just from Tom Arnold?
TenguPhule
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
To be fair, Donald Trump already set that precedent.
HumboldtBlue
@Trollhattan:
Franken is a concern. I think resignation is the right thing for him to do,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein tweeted Wednesday
Mike in DC
@lamh36:
In a perfect world this would be followed a few weeks later by “Nunes indicted in Mueller probe”.
Brachiator
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
I don’t care as long as it was consensual. Had I been one of his constituents, I would have wanted him to resign, if only because of his lack of imagination.
Cacti
@Anne Laurie:
Now who’s being naïve, Kay?
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.:
He’s more credible then Jezebel or the Huffington Post.
geg6
I hate what happened today and will never forgive Gillibrand and Harris and the rest who insisted on this. Never. But it’s done and time to fight the more dangerous enemy once again. My memory is long and I’m famous for my grudges. So this won’t go down the rabbit hole. But the country is under attack, from both within and without. Time to find a way to make them pay for this travesty. I’m ashamed to be a Democrat today and I don’t say that lightly or often.
smedley the uncertain
Thank you AL. This thread helps me understand why Franken made the choice he did and will be moving on.
The fact that my NY senator led the lynch mob destroys what little cred she had with me but should she survive the primary, I will perforce vote for her.
RedDirtGirl
Reposted from below: I just called my Senator Gillibrand, and told her office that I felt she had done the wrong thing.
I won’t be that surprised if it turns out that Al Franken is “hands-y”. The sad truth is that men violate the personal space and bodily integrity of women all the time. It’s on a continuum. At one end it’s merely someone being overly familiar, standing to close. At the other end is sexual assault and femicide.
An ethics investigation would have been an opportunity to address this.
Also, too, remember Shirley Sherrod?
Jsmith
@TenguPhule:
Not just that, someone on DU just searched and posted – for the 1st time today as far as I can tell – her twitter correspondence with Donald Jr. from 2011-2014 and she comes off like a Trump groupie. Photos of the hotel, the golf course.
All of this would have come out during an investigative process that the Dems short circuited.
Again, here’s the link to the Twitter search results between her and Donald Jr.
B.B.A.
@TenguPhule: (a) that’s a very low bar and (b) I don’t agree that he clears it.
Sophie Montane
and
Reading the transcript of his speech made me sick at heart. And the annotations by the WaPo reporter (Amber Phillips?) are infuriating. She mocks him for defending himself and stating clearly that the accusations are false. What if they are false? Our whole system of justice is predicated on the presumption of innocence.
My personal wish is for all these idiot youngs like that WaPo reporter to be personally accused of something they didn’t do. And be fired/have to resign without even a hearing.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Also, to be clear: this is California. Harris’s job as a US Senator is not in jeopardy, and never will be. But she may well have shot herself in the foot when it comes to becoming governor or president.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: “he was elected so he shouldn’t resign” is a bad argument.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.: Just the fact that we have his name clears condition (b).
TenguPhule
@Sophie Montane:
You may yet get your wish if the lynchings continue.
Cacti
@Sophie Montane:
Not in the Democratic Party. Our new tribal shibboleth of “All women should be believed” pretty much precludes the above.
dr. bloor
@smedley the uncertain: Interesting. I’m agnostic on Gillibrand, but if you’re a Democrat who wants a hard-ass with take-no-prisoners political instincts, her stock only could have risen in your eyes over the past few days.
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
He was elected, so he shouldn’t resign without due process of law, even if a mob is screaming for it, OTOH, is an excellent argument.
lamh36
Anyway, back to something that doesn’t raise my pressure…
Any Streetfighter movie fans. I admittedly don’t hate the Streetfighter movie…esp love Raul Julia.
I knew it was his last film before he died, but I didn’t know why he chose it as his last film.
This explains why, and wow…basically cause his children loved the game, and he wanted to be cool for his children, one last time I guess…made me a little misty…
https://twitter.com/TheMikeLawrence/status/938806915999596545
Ruckus
@dr. bloor:
How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Major Major Major Major
@geg6: Gillibrand lost me some time back, hopefully Harris isn’t going down the same opportunistic road and this is merely a misjudgment, not a pattern.
mai naem mobile
Al Franken is a smart man. I would not be dissapointed at all if he took up some decent amount of his time to fucking destroy Roger Fucking Stone.
Major Major Major Major
edit: whatever never mind
TenguPhule
@lamh36:
Yo!
The good die young, the bad live on and on and on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dr. bloor: as someone who is far more ambivalent about what happened than most here, she’ll impress me when those instincts take down, or at least severely wound, a Republican. There are a couple of people here, I think, who have argued she’s a national player, I’ve never seen it.
The Simp in the Suit
@Humdog:
Cacti
@Major Major Major Major:
I did. I’m sorry your reading comprehension is poor.
Any other strawmen you’d like to whack?
lamh36
FUQ U Bernie…and FUQ Trump voters/supproters their “pain”…how bout that
dr. bloor
@Ruckus:
There aren’t any conclusions in that post. Unless you have information contrary to the assertions that (a) Al Franken is a smart, cold-blooded mofo and/or (b) 48 sitting Democratic senators–including Franken–have more information than we do.
I’ll wait.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: sorry, what? I can’t read apparently.
magurakurin
some of youse really need to get over yourselves.
smedley the uncertain
@lamh36: Dreams of 2020 dance in my NY Senators head…
Miss Bianca
I think it’s time to come clean about the fact that Senator Kristen Gillebrand groped me that one time a long time ago when i asked for a photo op with her. And i felt SO violated. And IN NO WAY is this a politically-motivated statement. But as soon as that nice Mr. Stone can organize the testimony of half a dozen other women, i expect her to resign.
Of course, i expect her to protest, and play that “believe the woman” card – so awkward, isn’t it? I mean, which woman are you going to believe? I think it ought to be the woman making the accusation, don’t you? Because “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny, bitchez”. You should have thought about not copping a feel of my waist before you decided to run for Senator.
Oh, you are working on very important issues? Well, don’t worry. I’m sure Gov. Cuomo will be able to pick someone to fill your place. Maybe that nice Mrs. Clinton. She’s out of a job right now.
The Simp in the Suit
@dr. bloor: Dumbest thing I’ve read all day.
What’d she do? Kill one of our own and hurt several causes. Color me unimpressed. Get back to me when she has an R head to hang on the the wall, not another D.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@dr. bloor:yes I do. my point is that in many states people found guilty of solicitation have to register as a sex offender and if Vitter had been a Dem he wouldn’t have received a free pass, but instead he would have been hounded out of office.
Chip Daniels
I liked Franken, and still do.
As with K Thug, I think the appropriate sentence is penance and contrition, but ultimately this will be for the better. This sends a clear message to women everywhere about which party takes them seriously, and which one doesn’t.
We have other Democrats in Minnesota, and Franken isn’t finished; he can run for another office or do advocacy work.
Aleta
I’m patchy on the news lately but it seems like the press were down south checking on the opinions and feelings of Alabamans a few times a day for several weeks. Not nearly so many stories on Minnesotans. Maybe they expected this to die down, so Minnesotan’s opinions didn’t matter to them. Or maybe I didn’t see the stories.
Cacti
Bob Menendez is still a Senator, Al Franken is not.
What did one do that the other didn’t?
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca: Well Played.
dr. bloor
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: He would have chosen to leave office under political pressure. Maybe.
Al Franken is a big boy, who wears big boy pants every day. He looked at the landscape and stuff he knows that we don’t, and decided to resign. Get over it.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule:
Maybe Franken’s pulling a bit of a rope-a-dope strategy on the way out? Let the Right punch itself out/punch itself stupid(er)?
TenguPhule
@Chip Daniels:
“We have ensigns, so why do we need Admirals?”
mai naem mobile
@dr. bloor: Don’t think it’s take no prisoners and I don’t think her political calculation is all that great. Frankens seat in 18 is no guarantee and it’s only for 2 years. Same goes for Doug Jones. I also think Frankens stock had gone up vs. Gillibrand and I honestly feel Franken was going to be a lifer in the Senate.
TenguPhule
@dr. bloor:
Now repeat that every time we lose a decent Democratic Candidate.
Better get some lozenges.
joel hanes
@Humdog:
What was the reason he had to act before the ethics investigation had even begun?
Leading female Dem Senators felt that he should, and said so in public.
It will be interesting to see how it all falls out.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
how long do you think it would take to explain to whoever plans their parties what the problem is?
also, I couldn’t copy it because of that weird tweeted text thing, but the trump company whatever the fuck they call it had a “Holiday Party” the other day, and tweeted out pictures with the message “Happy Holidays”
Cacti
@Chip Daniels:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
If virtue signaling was a vote winner, why do Republicans control all the political branches of Federal government, a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures?
We go high, they win elections.
dr. bloor
@The Simp in the Suit: Oh, please. She’s not some embedded Republican who’s mission is to pick of Dems and Dems only. She’s the sort of hard-headed opportunist that a lot of folks around here (not necessarily you!) want to be heading up the party.
Franken is a Dem who will be replaced by a Dem appointee, who will have far better odds in an election than Franken would have. Fair or not, he was toast, even before the Democratic piled on. I’ll miss his pithy committee inquisitions, but he’s not some worldbeating saint. He’s a Democrat who will be replaced by another one from MN, and if you think he’s all the caucus has to offer you need to broaden your horizons.
B.B.A.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: hey, Jared’s busy in Jerusalem fucking over the Palestinians who certainly haven’t lived there for thousands of years, you can’t expect him to handle every detail.
Jeffro
@Mike in DC:
Or even in this not-so-perfect one.
Eventually, the bought-off or otherwise suborned Congressmen will be brought to light via this investigation. I can’t decide if it’ll be Rohrbacher or Nunes who will be indicted/have to resign first, but they will be the first two of several…
Duane
The scuttlebutt going around Right Wing Crazy Town is Franken’s announcement is a cynical ploy to do something cunningly political. For once, I hope they’re right, but I’m skeptical.
TenguPhule
@dr. bloor:
Facts not in evidence.
dr. bloor
@mai naem mobile: Al Franken was not going to be re-elected.
Cacti
@TenguPhule:
I thought I had heard the replacement Senator was going to be a seat warmer with no interest in retaining it.
B.B.A.
@dr. bloor: for my money, Gillibrand throwing Franken under the bus is the same kind of ruthless realpolitik as Obama doing the same to Rev. Wright. Unfair, but it’s an unfair game.
Major Major Major Major
@dr. bloor:
No, we tried somebody who a lot of folks thought fit that mold. The new flavor of the month is reckless purity.
TenguPhule
@Cacti: I saw that too.
Mnemosyne
@Chip Daniels:
Don’t watch cable or local news, then, because the message you’ll see is, Pervert Al Franken resigns in shame while brave Roy Moore fights on against false allegations.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve read that his replacement has no plans to run for reelection. Maybe she’ll change her mind once she gets a taste of that sweet Senate life. Some people hate it (Obama, HRC), some can’t get enough
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
None of the Credit, All of the Blame.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Is that what we’re calling insanity these days?
dr. bloor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe the replacement doesn’t run, but Franken has been polling miserably. Just about any Dem will have better odds going into the race.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
He wasn’t up for re-election until 2020. Are you sure you live in Minnesota?
barbequebob
@TenguPhule: Yes, I’m not so sure that Dems eviserating each other to occupy the moral high ground is a a useful strategy in the current world we live in. Playing nice and thinking anyone will notice, care, and reward us for it has not really been a winning approach.
Meanwhile, those who break the rules and play to win are working furiously, with some success, to undo a century of social progress and inflame tensions throughoutthe world.
Cacti
Just how badly did Dems fuck up when they can make Tucker Carlson sound like a reasonable man:
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: your local news isn’t covering the fires, then?
BruceFromOhio
@Fleeting Expletive: Really truly hoping this happens.
Meanwhile, Alabama will elect Roy Moore. Purity Ponies, exalt in Your Righteousness!
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Are we sure they live on Planet Earth?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dr. bloor: meh, he had a full two years before deciding if his poll numbers were fatal with time to retire and let a replacement step up
local news in LA is weird. I woulda thought there were all about the fires
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
That actually happened to Tucker Carlson. A crazy woman accused him of attacking her, and he was able to prove that he wasn’t even in the same state as she was at the time of the alleged attack. So he may actually be feeling a genuine twinge right now.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: I don’t live in Minnesota. Curiously, poll numbers are circulated nationally.
Now, let’s look at it from another angle. What does it say to you that a dedicated senator decides his best course of action is to resign even though he has three years left in his term? What might he know that we don’t?
lamh36
And here we go…anyone remember what I said about Bryan Singer and his being fired from the Queen biopic and his complete disapperance…
Welp…chickens coming home to roost?
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Our local TV stations aren’t owned by Sinclair Broadcasting. Most of the rest of the country isn’t so lucky.
Cacti
@dr. bloor:
I didn’t find that reasoning compelling when the Bushies used it for the Iraq war.
It hasn’t improved with age.
danielx
@Fleeting Expletive:
All good and well, but I feel reasonably confident that no Republicans are going to be leaving because of any accusations short of felonies…
1) because a much smaller proportion of their constituents give a shit. One would think that Republican plans to stick probes up the lady parts of women of childbearing age would have given pause to at least Republican women voters, but such has not been the case. Republican men, well, men will be boys will be the prevailing attitude.
2) because they are more interested in winning than in purity. the RNC just gave money to a fucking child molester, how much evidence do you need?
3) because their members have no shame – “I recognize the hurt and embarrassment I have caused to myself and others. never the less, i feel the holy task upon which we are engaged – to wit, rewarding the rich and punishing the poor – overrides all other considerations. therefore I will serve out my term and WILL run for re-election, letting the voters of bumfuckistan render judgment upon me and my deeds, past, present, and future. also, suck it, libs!”
4) Republican leadership – see #2.
So yeah, Franken did the right thing as I’m sure other Dems will if the question arises. Their colleagues across the aisle will not, short of actual criminal charges – ethics, schmethics. My sympathy towards those accusing Dems of sexual misbehavior is going to be tempered in inverse proportion to Republican legislative success.
Sophie Montane
@Cacti:
The problem here is that the underlying meaning of “believe women” is still not getting through: women are human. We are not a race of evil succubi who constantly lie and plot to thwart and destroy men. We are human beings. We behave like other human beings.
That means that most of the time, when we say something happened, it did! Most people tell the truth most of the time. And when it comes to reporting that they’ve been sexually assaulted, women are the same as other humans who report that they’ve been victimized by a crime. Something like 95% of the time it’s true. So the default treatment of women who say they’ve been assaulted should be the same as society’s default treatment of other people who report a crime: the working assumption is that they’re telling the truth.
That’s what “believe women” means. Or should mean. But because the underlying problem is still that large numbers of people can’t really process that women are human, they take it literally. “Oh, so women aren’t evil succubi who lie all the time? They’re really magic unicorns who never utter a false word? Got it!” No, fucktwit, it means we’re human.
Sometimes people lie about shit, especially in politics. That includes women.
Chip Daniels
@Mnemosyne:
We can’t aim for the Jim Hoft demographic and shouldn’t try.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
He might know that the charges are bullshit, but the rest of his caucus decides to throw him under the bus, and without their support, he’s dead in the water.
But if you think Franken was lying when he got up on the floor of the Senate today and declared his innocence, then you should just say so.
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. bloor: Also, what do the D senators know that we might not?
frosty
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed. Just watch in the next few months:
“Disgraced Democrat Senator Al Franken”
“Falsely Accused Republican Senator Roy Moore”
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: I dunno — looks like Gillibrand has the inside track for “Most Grasping, Scheming, Devious Bitch Evah.” She took over Hillary Clinton’s senate seat, so it would fit rather neatly if HRC passed the “America’s Most Power-Hungry Woman” torch to Gillibrand too.
lamh36
@lamh36: FYI: Not the first, but I’m gonna bet not the last to make it beyond just Gawker/Jezebel blind items
Cacti
@Sophie Montane:
Thanks for womansplaining it to me.
AnotherBruce
Basically, what the Dem Senators did today, was put party before country. This is a damn war. People, even good people in the age of Trump, are going to get dirty. Maybe the next thing we should do (No we should not) Is go after Gillibrand for her Goldman Sachs money. That way we save Repulicans the trouble. Which is exactly what our Senators did with Franken. We killed our own soldier. And believe me. Roger Stone is laughing at us and drinking Champagne.
cintibud
@Miss Bianca:
Heh, heh
I was pissed, but I’m over it now and hope that some of the more optimistic scenario come true. I have too much to be pissed about.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
The D Senators who were there in 2009 decided not to put a budget through because it might look bad in the 2010 midterms. We’ve been living with the consequences of that mistake ever since.
In other words, I’m not sure I trust Senate Democrats when they form a herd and start to stampede.
Anne Laurie
@lamh36: Yeah, I did a post about that overnight.
Take a look at the video clip I linked there — St. Would-Won gets pantsed live on tv by two young Repub grifters.
Miss Bianca
@dr. bloor:
Actually, what might he know that’s been amply demonstrated to the feeblest of minds among us? That even if the charges against him are bullshit, a bunch of his colleagues are prepared to throw him under the bus. And a bunch of high-minded Democrats are prepared to shrug and say, “oh, well…. what a shame, but surely the Democratic leaders must know best! I mean, they panicked over ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, and Jocelyn Elder! Look how well that turned out for us!”
Under those circumstances, I might have elected to walk out with my head held high, too. And he’s a better person than I – I’d have been extending a middle finger for all of middle America to see.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: I haven’t a clue, and to answer others, I don’t know what other senators might know because, you know, I’m not a senator. I’m also not naive or arrogant enough to assume I know everything they do.
All I know is that a pretty tough senator with a few years to rehab his reputation took a look at the landscape, and decided to walk away from one of the best 100 jobs in America. If you happen to think he was hounded from office by a bunch of intellectual and moral lightweights in his own caucus, then you have to re-evaluate just how valuable he was in the first place.
smedley the uncertain
@dr. bloor: Frankly, No. This strikes me as an opportunistic grab at the reins of the Band Wagon. I have seen little of the strong, take no prisoners etc. behavior. I have voted for her as she seems a steady predictable legislator who has been nurtured by Shumer in the paths of Democratic righteousness. Perhaps, agnostic applied to me at one time…
Bruuuuce
Hell, even conservative women can see that Franken was railroaded. I hate that it was him, but, especially if it now gets Dems’ backs up to the point where they hold their ground and start insisting on equal treatment (yeah, I know, pull the other one, it has bells on, and what AM I smoking?), this could have some positive results.
Still, dammit.
Sophie Montane
@Cacti: I wasn’t explaining it to you, I was using your comment to talk about this “believe women” thing.
danielx
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Ooh, I’d forgetten about diaper boy!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Fleeting Expletive:
No, Faraenthold is not a Senator.
joel hanes
@Bruuuuce:
this could have some positive results.
Possibly.
Protip: don’t hold your breath while waiting.
Dems derived no discernable benefit from throwing Jocelyn Elders, Shirley Sherrod, or ACORN under the bus. Past performance is no guarantee of future events … but that’s the way to bet.
lamh36
@Betty Cracker: well if HRC passed the torch to her, Gilibrand certainly threw it back in HRC’s face.
germy
Bruuuuce
@joel hanes: Please also note (yeah, I know, pull the other one, it has bells on, and what AM I smoking?), anticipating your comment
Cacti
@Sophie Montane:
I got it. Woman accuses, man presumed guilty. Constitution? Fuck it. Who needs it?
You said so yourself:
Actually, part of the investigatory process is ruling out the possibility that the accusation is false. But, no need anymore.
fuckwit
@lamh36: Harris went on a jihad as CA AG against prostitutes. She’s got that kind of church lady moralist thing going.
It’s annoying, but consider she’s very attractive, and very smart, and very tough, my guess is she is a survivor or sexual assault or worse, and this influences the causes she takes on.
Cacti
@germy:
I called that one earlier. The GOP will use this as a chance to say “we believe in due process, unlike the unhinged liberal mob”.
debbie
@MomSense:
I’m betting on it!
debbie
@Anne Laurie:
Don’t leave out the Russians having a role.
Lizzy L
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The Chair of the Senate Ethics Committee is Johnny Isakson, Republican from GA.
HumboldtBlue
Bunch of Bernie bros have shown up I see.
Gvg
A commenter on LGF surveyed friends and acquaintances about Franken and it turned out they thought that photo of the comedy routine was of Frankenstein actually groping a soldier. Most non political junkies miss a lot of details that seem obvious to us. Because of what they thought they saw in that photo most of that unscientific survey thought he needed to go. I suspect that specific idea is a part at least at why he went. I had never even thought of this possibility before. Can’t be sure if it’s widespread.
eemom
Again, reality fucking check: THIS is what we’re obsessing over today, instead of the republican tax heist that is going to kill us all; the government shutdown; armaggedon in the middle east…..
Oh, and the latest NRA dick suck that passed the House yesterday; and the latest murder of kids, today.
Where’s the threads on those things?
Emma
None of this will end well. If all accusations must be considered convictions the first one proven a lie will be used to taint all the others.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: Clinton was right that the “comment was somewhat contradictory.” I don’t think Gillibrand meant it the way Reines took it, but who knows? Anyhoo, my point was, it looks like a lot of people are settling on Gillibrand as the villain of this tale, both here and on Twitter, so maybe Harris is safe from becoming the scapegoat. I get the anger about what happened to Franken. I’m not happy about it either. But some of the women senator bashing is giving me 2016 flashbacks.
lamh36
Alright, more non-politics news…
GAHHH….CANNOT WAIT for XFILES in January!!
Ridnik Chrome
Anyone seen this yet? Al Franken’s Selfish, Damaging Resignation Speech.
Or, Why Appeasing Purity Ponies Never, Ever Works.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: FFS! The person you are arguing with is agreeing with you!
joel hanes
@Bruuuuce:
Please also note what ? Was there a link or something?
Or your stated dismay at the turn of events, which I share? If that’s it, consider it noted.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: I’ve always been a sucker for that show, no matter how outlandish it gets.
Sophie Montane
@Cacti: You’re really being aggressively stupid about this. Are you a guy? You sound like a guy who is very angry and baffled.
I’m not interested in getting into a flame war with an angry baffled dude.
smedley the uncertain
@dr. bloor: Interesting statistics: 58% he should stay until investigation (22% Stay. 36% wait for investigation). 33% say go now! Oh, and 53% favorable a year ago. Your assertion is questionable at this juncture.
mai naem mobile
@dr. bloor: that’s fine but he could have dragged it out to past ’18 so that his replawent would face election in 2020. I am not even talking about what his numbers would be after the initial hit to his numbers. Doug Jones, if gets elected faces another election in ’18 so chances are you get him for a year.
Ridnik Chrome
@Cacti: They’re already saying it. See Bruuuuce’s comment at #145.
Eric S.
FWIW my own journey on Franken has been a pendulum. When i first heard the accusations I had 2 reactions. 1. He should resign if true. 2. I knew sexual harassment would cross party lines but dammit why such an effective voice.
As the saga played out and I heard the voice of many women, not defending, but calling for caution I listened. When i saw multiple women, several here, say the accusations did not ring true, they sounded like hit jobs, I retreated from my initial reaction.
I do not believe in black and white. There are degrees, there are scales. Offenses may have a similar base but come in many degrees of severity.
Three argument that or side is disarming while the GOP retains and promotes their offenders, offenders in a worse degree, is a valid argument.
In the end I remain torn. In an ideal world, Franken should face consequences including the possibility of being forced out. In the real world Moore and Trump should be gone first.
It feels good to have the moral high ground but when it gains us nothing the sacrifice is wasted.
TL;DR Franken did wrong but shouldn’t resign.
Bruuuuce
@joel hanes: Note my commentary “(yeah, I know, pull the other one, it has bells on, and what AM I smoking?)”, indicating my cynical disbelief in what I am about to say (that is, what you critiqued), despite my hope that it might be true.
Sophie Montane
@Ridnik Chrome: Yeah, this is insane. He said quite clearly that the allegations are false and he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.
Apparently if you think you’re innocent you’re not supposed to say so. This is fucked up.
mai naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: I remember when she was appoineed to Clinton’s seat, there were NYrs who thought she was too centrist/this way for NY because she had represented an upstate area. I think part of the response is that some people’s fears are coming true.
lamh36
@Betty Cracker: the relationship between Scully & Mulder are the bedrock that holds the entire show together.
The later seasons when they tried to go without the Mulder/Scully dynamic was shite, IMHO
amygdala
@lamh36: Ooooooh, yeah. Fell over laughing at Mulder’s handcuff clapback.
Miss Bianca
@Anne Laurie: I’m not bitching, “all is lost, we are doomed, doomed!”
But I am saying….
that for the first time in my long life as a Democrat – been registered since 1984, and actively worked for the party since 2008…
I am disgusted and infuriated enough to want to say “fuck ’em”.
I say this as someone who has endured sexual harrassment and assault.
I say this as someone who won’t cease to *vote* for Democrats, but who may very well, at long last, cease to identify myself as one.
Because, as ruemara pointed out earlier today, I know I don’t have a choice.
I know I have to vote for a party of craven, cowardly, opportunists who won’t hesitate to slip and fall on the panic button, knifing their colleagues and supporters while bleating, “but the hiiiiigggghhhh moral ground….there are priiiiiinciples at stake!”
But because they are – however slightly – less despicable, craven, cowardly, and opportunistic than the opposition, I will have to vote for them. Because they at least pay lip service to my concerns, however unable they may be to actually, you know, DO anything about them, because they’re so busy staking out the hiiiiiigh moral ground that they forget to stick together and stick up for each other long enough to be able to get anything useful accomplished.
ruemara was right to remind us…Democrats have a long history of betraying POC and their interests, taking them for granted. But they don’t want to actually kill them, unlike the Republicans.
So, I will no longer make the mistake of presuming that Democrats actually care about *doing* good, as much as they care about being *perceived* as doing good. That they care about loyalty, that they care about due process, that they are able to see the big picture, or that they are even able to find their asses with both hands in a dark closet.
They don’t want to actualiy kill me, *and* they’re prepared to pull sorrowful faces and tut-tut while Republicans try to do so. So, they’ve got my vote! Yay…ish?
Now, despise me as an adolescent or a ratfucker.
Lizzy L
A comment from a politically aware friend of mine who lives in Minnesota:
planetpundit
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Dem party and the Country would have been better off if Biden had retired after he enabled Clarence Thomas to ascend to the Supreme Court.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: We missed the 6-parter but I’m looking forward to this one.
/sucker for X-files/
joel hanes
@Bruuuuce:
Apologies. My knee is jerking on this one.
I’m going to turn away from the internets and do something else for a while.
frosty
@Miss Bianca: I’m an Old Bald Fat White Guy (TM) and I agree with you 100%.
dr. bloor
@Sophie Montane: No, he said some of them were false and he said he remembered things differently with others. This is damning one’s self with faint praise, and the clearest indication to me that he knew an ethics investigation was a dicey proposition for him.
Kay
The CEO of Fix the Debt is paid 500k a year to promote gutting Social Security and Medicare.
Half a million dollars a year. She’s CEO of a slogan. Who funds these fake jobs? It’s like they’re printing money somewhere to fund all this bullshit work.
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
As a fan from back in the day, I’m wondering: Mulder and Scully lived together for years, they had a kid. How much closer could they get?
Kay
This is the second night in a row they’re arresting protesters who are occupying Susan Collins office. Last night it was 5 arrested. Tonight it’s 9.
They’re saying she lied about the tax bill. She did, of course. I bet someone could beat her running on her lying about Medicare. Maine is huge as far as land mass but it’s a small(er) state as far as population and they love them some Medicare.
MomSense
@Kay:
We’re also the oldest state in the union.
The group getting arrested tonight are all clergy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Pete Peterson, billionaire investor IIRC, who seems to fund three or four different anti-New Deal campaigns. I don’t know if he gets other billionaires to pitch in. When I clicked on your link, I half expected to see Ed Rendell’s smarmy grin. He’s been a blessed absence in MSNBC in recent months.
frosty
@Amir Khalid: Ah, but this is X-Files. Can you be sure that really happened?
dr. bloor
@Kay: She’s going to finish third in the general, if she even gets that far. The only question is why LePage isn’t letting the protesters muck up her operations.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: I’m an atheist, but… God bless them.
Citizen Alan
@dr. bloor:
I got the exact opposite impression. I thought he was trying to avoid flat out calling them liars as diplomatically as possible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dr. bloor: for governor? I thought she’d opted out and LePage was term limited
MJS
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m from PA, and let’s just say that Ed’s probably wise to keep a low profile while the topic is sexual harassment.
Kay
@MomSense:
I’m so happy they’re doing it! She should lose her seat over that. That’s a huge lie. Unforgivable. She can’t be permitted to weasel out of it. It FELT big when she ran around telling it, you know? I thought “oh, that’s gonna back and bite you, madam senator”
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
You are being aggressively stupid about this.
Let’s say for a minute that you got mugged and someone stole your wallet. When you walk into the police station, they say, Well, sure, you say your wallet was stolen, but how do we know you didn’t just give it to that guy and now you regret it? What proof do you have that he violently took it from you? We tracked him down and asked him, and he says that you gave it to him. Who are we supposed to believe?
We’re trying to get to the point where someone can at a minimum go to the cops/HR, tell them she was assaulted or harassed, and get an investigation started. Apparently, to you, saying that suspected assaults should be investigated based on a woman’s say-so is just like summary execution.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
Pete Peterson would be my bet.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I loathe Ed Rendell. The best part of the ’08 convention (for me- I love gossipy Democrats) was the AA Pennsylvania delegates telling me they hated Rendell. I was like “I KNEW people hated him, and who can blame them!”
Sophie Montane
@Citizen Alan: That is EXACTLY what I thought. Exactly.
From the very beginning, I have read his behavior as tracking exactly with what a feminist man would do who has been falsely accused, but is enough of a feminist that he is loathe to get into a “she’s lying” thing right at the moment when the world is starting to change. He has categorically denied forcing a kiss on that staffer. He has denied groping anybody. He has said if he inadvertently did anything to make someone uncomfortable, he is sorry.
As for “I remember that rehearsal differently,” I would not be surprised if there were goofball hijinks in the rehearsal and that it was mutual joking. I used to be in show business, fwiw; people goof around all the time. And that skit was about sexual harassment.
Ridnik Chrome
@dr. bloor: The Democrats just forced out a sitting Senator over accusations that were by no means clear and convincing, with no investigation at all, and the writer of that stupid Vox piece is upset because Franken didn’t grovel enough in his resignation speech. Give me a fucking break. Please.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
Did you read the Atlantic essay that was apparently the last straw for the senators? The woman who wrote it said that Franken “groped” her by squeezing her waist during a photo op.
Her waist. Not her ass, or her breast, or even her hip. Her waist.
If someone accused you of sexual assault because you squeezed their waist when you took a photo with them, would you remember that as you sexually assaulting them, or would you remember it differently?
Kay
@MJS:
I’ve heard that about Richardson, too, the former NM guv. Probably good a lot of these people are down the road.
B.B.A.
@Mnemosyne: The last straw was the Politico article that morning, with an anonymous accusation of a forced kiss. The Atlantic essay was…something else.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: This wasn’t some “let’s wait and see” interview with Judy Woodruff. He was resigning his seat in the Senate, and couldn’t find it in himself to call bullshit. Either there was something to it, or he wasn’t the lion everybody thought he was. I have no idea which is true, but either suggests that Al Franken wasn’t All That to the extent that many see him to be.
Mnemosyne
@B.B.A.:
Don’t even get me fucking started again on these fucking anonymous accusations. Apparently now we can force Democrats to resign just by getting a convincing whisper campaign going.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
My single meeting with Obama was when he came out to Toledo to campaign in ’12 and thanked the locals for the 08 and 12 campaigns. Anyway, we had a group photo with him and Obama joked that one of the men in our group had his hand “too low” around the President. Obama’s tall and this guy wasn’t so his hand may have ended up a little low when he put is arm around and behind Obama for the photo. We all laughed. I thought about that today.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
Answer the question: if someone said that you sexually assaulted them by squeezing their waist during a photo op, would you publicly call that person a liar, or would you say that you remembered the incident differently?
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: I’d call them a liar. Is that supposed to be some tough dilemma?
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
The constitution says “due process of law” in black letter, twice.
Could you point me to the “all women should be believed” clause so that I can fix the error of my mistake?
I’m being a bad member of the tribe, I know.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
She has the photo of you squeezing her waist, and she says that she felt assaulted by you touching her there. What is she lying about? You clearly touched her.
dr. bloor
@dr. bloor:
Or more precisely, I might call it bullshit and overblown. But I sure as shit wouldn’t call it “remembered differently.” That’s weak sauce in any situation, and particularly in the one at hand.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@B.B.A.: Seriously dude, may others show you the same mercy you would give others when the time comes.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Yep. When the problem is that some people didn’t like that a politician touched them on the waist or hip or shoulder during a photo op, we are in big trouble.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: @dr. bloor: I think I’m goddamned sick and tired of men telling me Franken wouldn’t have resigned if there hadn’t been a little fire along with the smoke. Maybe because there have actually been situations in MY life where accusations against me have been bullshit, but I’ve found it too much of a struggle to go on when no one around me was willing to believe me or support me. Funnily enough, the particular situation I’m thinking of involved sexual contact.
When you look around and see that no one is prepared to support you, you might just choose to dry your tears and move on. Because that always makes everyone else feel so good about feeling SORRY for you, while getting to feel righteous themselves.
Damn, I’m getting worked up. Maybe I should quit this thread while I’m behind.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, then say so. Don’t go with some “remembered it differently” bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
She has a photo of you touching her waist and writes a long, tearful column in a national magazine about how your doing that made her feel sexually assaulted.
Still want to call her a liar and say that her story is bullshit?
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
If the same photo shows her arm draped over my shoulder in a familiar way, does that mean we engaged in mutual combat?
The Simp in the Suit
@Anne Laurie: Sure, Anne, sure.
What’s your plan for that again?
debbie
@Kay:
Had the guy squeezed Obama with his hand, would Obama have joked it off?
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne: You can call it bullshit or you can admit guilt. One or the other when you’re walking away from the Senate.
But keep moving the goalposts, I’m still here.
Bobby Thomson
@B.B.A.: Grayson is the “gift” that keeps “giving.”
Ridnik Chrome
@Mnemosyne: The beauty of this whole thing, from a Republican ratfucking perspective, is that the accusations are just vague and contradictory enough to make Democrats fight over them. If this was Louis CK or Harvey Weinstein stuff, Franken would have been gone weeks ago, and nobody would be arguing about it at all.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
Say what, exactly? If you’re accused of making someone feel creepy by putting your arm around them for a photo that you don’t even remember taking because you took hundreds of photos at the Minnesota State Fair that day, what exactly is your defense supposed to be? What if your hand did accidentally brush someone’s breast or hip or ass while getting positioned for that photo? Are they lying when they say you touched them there? Or do you remember that accidental moment differently than they do?
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: in her case, I think she’s grandstanding for fifteen minutes of fame (like her former boss) and needs to get a grip on social reality. Hugging outside the bikini zone is considered groping now?
B.B.A.
@Ridnik Chrome: It’s always the ambiguous cases that cause the biggest fights. If Captain Dreyfus were obviously guilty or obviously innocent, there’d be no Dreyfus Affair. More recently, there’s… well this thread is already too long.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
How am I moving the goalposts? I’m repeating back the exact accusations that were made against Franken. Women said he touched them inappropriately while taking photos with them. You say he should have said they were all liars and the photos of them together prove nothing. I say that would have sounded even worse.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Or do you not remember that accidental moment *at all*? But oh, how insulting *that* would be to some random woman’s fee-fees!
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There are some non-theist clergy in the group. As they were being arrested by police, they sang This Little Light of Mine.
Bangor Daily News has video and photos.
Lyrebird
@Bruuuuce: Yeah, you said it. And agreeing with that scary writer you linked to AND Laura Ingraham in the same day??? things I never woulda believed could happen.
MomSense
@Kay:
It happens to me a lot by accident because I have really long legs. My but is at waist height.
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ve decided I want Franken to run for an open Senate seat. The Republicans always say “the people of X_Place decided”; it’d be damn stupid if we wouldn’t take advantage of that, for behavior that really doesn’t merit resignation.
Emma
@Miss Bianca: come sit by me, as the young ones say. Because I know that feeling exactly, and for a similar reason.
Mnemosyne
@Ridnik Chrome:
Yup. Maybe Franken made a habit of playing grab-ass during photos. Maybe women misinterpreted accidental touches. Maybe both things happened at the same time. And now we’ll never know, because there will never be any kind of independent investigation.
dr. bloor
ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz…..
Either you think you did something wrong, or you don’t. If you don’t, you file it under “piling on” and say as much during your resignation speech. If you can’t affirmatively stand up for yourself in a situation like that where you have nothing to lose, I don’t know when you can.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
Trump thinks he did nothing wrong. Moore insists that he did nothing wrong. I’m not sure that insisting that you did nothing wrong is the magical indicator of innocence that you seem to think it is.
As other people have said, Franken’s words seem to be the words of a liberal man who is thinking, Oh, shit, have I been making women uncomfortable for years without even realizing it? Franken doesn’t have the assurance of a Trump or a Moore because he’s actually thinking about the other person’s feelings and wondering if he inadvertently hurt them.
But, sure, let’s take a public insistence that one did no wrong whatsoever and everyone who says otherwise is a liar as an indicator of innocence. That can’t possibly go wrong.
Ridnik Chrome
@B.B.A.: There wasn’t even much argument about Conyers. But Conyers at least had some kind of hearing.
@Mnemosyne: The other thing about this is that the accusations are such that if Franken is forced out, Republicans can accuse Democrats of overreacting and/or conducting a witch hunt. Which some Republicans (Tucker Carlson and Cathy Young, so far) are already doing.
MomSense
Here is a Bangor Daily News article with videos of the clergy.
clergy arrested
B.B.A.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Suits me. I don’t expect or deserve to be treated mercifully.
Lyrebird
@Mnemosyne: @Miss Bianca:
I admire your perseverance.
I have read only a small fraction of these threads, and I am exhausted.
I wish the new motto was, “everyone deserves a fair hearing” rather than “believe the women.”
I wish we could all adopt the Betty Cracker code she offered earlier, but since folks won’t, I am glad I am not the only person saying
(block-quoted for formatting)
If your family combines north and south European heritage, or both Chicago German and Chicago Mexican roots, or even just huggy people and not-huggy people, there will be non-sexual space invasion at family gatherings. Gonna happen.
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne:
I literally laughed out loud at this.
Davebo
@Ridnik Chrome: If you’re basing your argument on what Tucker says you may want to re-think your argument.
debbie
@Lyrebird:
I’m not understanding how a squeeze can be accidental.
Mnemosyne
@dr. bloor:
I know — it’s ridiculous for people to have empathy and wonder if they hurt someone’s feelings without meaning to do it. Next time you accidentally step on someone’s foot, make sure to tell them, “Quit whining, I didn’t do it on purpose.” Never apologize, never explain, amirite?
Miss Bianca
@dr. bloor: ah, so you’ve either never made women uncomfortable, or never even thought about whether you’ve made women uncomfortable. Which is it? Do tell us – I mean, your opinion *must* be right, since you appear to be *so* comfortable asserting what an innocent man would do and say.
ETA: And we’re just poor little women, after all – what worth is *our* opinion on the matter?
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
What if you’re squeezing something different than what you thought it was?
And I’m still not on board with saying that squeezing someone’s waist during a photo op is a horrible sexual assault that they should still be traumatized by a decade later.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
I’m married to a guy who worries about that stuff all the time, to the point of sometimes crossing the street so he doesn’t make the woman walking in front of him feel like he’s following her.
But he’s a nice guy with empathy, so I guess he’s doing it wrong. He should walk two feet away from those women’s backs just to prove he’s totally innocent of being a creep.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
If it’s unwanted, it’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. Period.
I assume you wouldn’t have been upset if Franken squeezed your waist during a photo op. Would you feel the same if it were Trent Franks squeezing your waist? Would you defend him as energetically?
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
Of course. But putting your arm around someone for a photo is such a common social convention that the social burden rests on the person who prefers not to be touched. If you’re going to find an action as common as someone touching your waist during a photo to be traumatic, you need to say, “Please don’t do that” rather than letting the other person assume that you’re okay with an action they’ve done in a hundred other photos with a hundred other people who didn’t mind.
I wouldn’t ask to have my photo taken with Trent Franks. If some insane impulse to do so seized me and he squeezed my waist, I would laugh about how icky it was later, but I wouldn’t run around telling people that he had “groped” me.
ETA: And I will say, on the “hugging” scale, I fall somewhere in the middle. I’m not an indiscriminate hugger, but I will hug if the other person indicates they want to hug.
Lyrebird
@debbie: I have read and appreciated many of your comments. My wording doesn’t always come out the best, but I’ll try – I have been accidentally squeezed by some the more clumsy and more huggy members of my extended family (including by other women). I have also encountered folk dance partners who were copping a “legal” feel at every mixer dance.
Emma
@debbie: I don’t know Mem would answer but since I have personal experience of this I can tell you what I did. Big family reunion, number 752 of the family photos. I smiled at him and whispered “hand or bollocks?”. I have a small rep in my family for follow-through so the squeezing stopped pronto. Photo taken, I sashayed away without looking back.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Me, I won’t ever run for office due to my life. But I have talked to women (solidly Democratic – some of them since before you or I were born.) other than those who are posting here, who have said they think he should go.
Franken made a call. I think that he is smart enough to have made the right call. I don’t think that he was hounded out by other senators. I think he made the call and told them. At that point, they went political and it was mostly kabuki.
Despise me if you want.
Ridnik Chrome
@Davebo: I’m going by what Cacti quoted at #119, and by no means am I suggesting that Carlson is arguing in good faith.
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
Part of what’s so ambiguous here is that it’s not clear that Franken was touching people with intent. A hand on the waist — even a squeezing hand — is not the same as a hand on the ass. As with Kay’s story above, sometimes hands get innocently misplaced in photo ops. Sometimes they’re not-so-innocently misplaced. But we don’t know enough about these incidents to say for sure what happened, and everyone is viewing them through the lens of their own experience.
I have relatives who would grab my waist and comment on my weight, or just grab on during a photo. I didn’t like it, obviously, but it also was obviously not sexual.
debbie
@Emma: @Lyrebird: @Mnemosyne:
You’re all more or less talking about friends or family. Me, I’d slug whoever tried. They know better.
But it’s different when it’s a person with some form of power. I’ve had my shoulder squeezed (and not quickly — lingeringly?) by a boss, and I still say, all these years later, that it was very wrong. I wish I could have manned up and belted him.
If all these allegations turn out to be lies, then Franken should sue Stone’s ass to hell and back. But I don’t see how forcible kissing can ever be explained away.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: He chose to walk. Why are you still fighting? He was either guilty of all the bad things or he decided that the Dems in the senate would be better without him.
Lyrebird
ETA: sorry, should start with an @debbie credit!
I can vote for both of these, 100%!
I really wish that we were all looking back at those dark times when a trial or investigation of harassment claims were so unfair (see Anita Hill, plus thousands of others) or just a kangaroo court (see @Fleeting Expletive). I wish all the plaintiffs had gotten their time to testify in a fair and impartial investigation… yes even the ones who were a-tweeting with Jr.
I didn’t mean anyone was squeezing my adipose tissue was trying anything, probably different than Emma’s story, and I wouldn’t slug a clumsy relative who really meant just to hug. I have cared for very old people and for children who end up needing to lean on me in ways that were sometimes uh awkward.
That doesn’t take away the pain of inappropriate conduct at all. Same with a subway: sometimes, I fall and land in someone’s armpit, apologize, and move on. There are also people who take advantage of subway crowds to perv on people. Not the same, and the one does not excuse the other.
debbie
@Lyrebird:
Yeah, I’ve been through that subway dance a few times. I don’t know which made me angrier: that someone did that or that I was too shame-filled to speak up.
Lyrebird
@debbie: Well if we were sitting on opposite physical couches I could find some way to say “don’t ever blame yourself about that!!!” without it sounding preachy. Pretend I succeeded?
Thanks for taking my comments in earnest. Don’t know about you, but I find the constant stream of news about sexual misconduct LESS THAN GREAT for my mental well-being.
ETA: did you see the story about the woman who foiled a subway hold-up (by another woman) by pretending to have an epileptic seizure? I wish I had half of her moxie.
Gretchen
@dr. bloor: Yes, calling accusers liars is a tough dilemma in this situation because that’s the course that Roy Moore and his ilk take, and Franken would look like just another cornered rat. He actually has worked on legislation to make sexual assault reporting better, and actually gets the whole “believe women” thing, and doesn’t want to undermine it. So he’s uniquely at a disadvantage when falsely accused. I still don’t get why Leeann Tweeden, who falsely accused Shirley Sherrod of being a racist who discriminated against white farmers and lied on Fox News in a successful effort to get her fired, has to be believed when she accuses another Democrat to try to get him fired.
debbie
@Lyrebird:
Impressive and ingenious move on her part! I’ll have to Google for that story in the morning.
Gretchen
@dr. bloor: You literally laughed out loud? Then you’re a fucking idiot. How does the ie filter work again?
Gretchen
@debbie: Franken firmly denied the forcible kissing. And the woman who was traumatized by his touching her waist, was the one who asked for the photo op, which typically involves one person’s arm around the shoulders, the other’s hand around the waist. And also often involves a squeeze, to say “we’re done” Have you never had photo taken with another person?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Because I think he got ACORNed, or Sherroded, whichever term you prefer. And I’m very worried that the new standard to require Democratic politicians to resign is anonymous accusations that have no way of being fact-checked or investigated.
Betty Cracker
@Gretchen: I think the damned photo gave the story legs. If it hadn’t been for that photo, the whole might not have snowballed on Franken like it did.
Villago Delenda Est
@TenguPhule:
The classic example: Dick Fucking Cheney
Sophie Montane
@Betty Cracker: I am cynical enough to believe that the photo is why it happened. Fox News lady dug up the photo, said hey, we can do something with this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No doubt about it in my mind. Someone posted up in this half tbogg that some of his/her friends thought that the photos showed Franken groping a sleeping female soldier. I know what the photo shows, he didn’t touch her, he was ‘mugging’, and it was fucking gross, but I don’t think it warranted resignation. I am deeply skeptical of the “my right as an entertainer” accusation”, and the more I learn about Tina Dupuy, the less weight I tend to give her account. But people who wave away the photo are not discussing this coherently
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
@Sophie Montane:
Thirded (or fourthed). The photo gave credence to the vague accusations of misplaced hands during photo ops that otherwise would not have existed.
And, like Gretchen, I think it hasn’t been pointed out nearly enough that Tweeden has a track record as a right-wing ratfucker going back to Shirley Sherrod. She didn’t just happen to find that photo — she was holding it for the most damaging time to use it.
jay
It should be obvious to even the little clique of lefties here at Balloon Juice that pushing Franken out was not a clear-cut win. Ain’t that right? Go read Gillibrand’s Twitter feed and see how much support she is getting. Dems done fked up in a big way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: There is no doubt in my mind that this was set up as a diversion from Roy Moore, and Tweeden played a key role.
Betty Cracker
@Sophie Montane: It would not surprise me at all. The Roger Stone connection is evidence in that theory’s favor, IMO.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed — it was gross, but not in the same moral universe as Trump, Moore, etc.
That said, I had a visceral reaction to seeing it myself, especially in the context of the Weinstein scandal, so I can kinda understand how it started the furor that led to today’s events.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
The only named person who accused him of this is a Fox Professional Ratfucker.
Who has ZERO evidence supporting that particular story.
debbie
@Gretchen:
Wait. She asked for the photo, so she asked for the grope? Are you really willing to go there?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@debbie: It does make me think twice about buying the “any touch is trauma” aspect. It’s atypical behavior.
Assuming I’m not mixing up who we’re talking about.
Paula
@Mnemosyne:
That’s really the crux of the problem to me. All of us opining about what AF did/didn’t do, or what his intent was/wasn’t are just opining. We don’t have “facts”. We don’t have his side of the story. We have very little context, and, in the case of Tweedon, the more context we get the less solid is her story. (As for Tina Dupey’s story – GAWD. I cringed. Sorry, but the woman sounds like she has issues.) We had accusations leveled at a point when they would be most explosive and when any man with a grain of sense would realize he would have to tread very carefully.
As a strong supporter I was naturally appalled when Tweedon’s thing came out. But it smelled from the get-go. Then these other anonymous hits, and these “he touched me for 2 seconds in a fast-moving public situation and I KNOW HE DID IT ON PURPOSE COZ HE GETS OFF ON THIS” allegations. And what was he supposed to do?
He asked for an inquiry and was denied.
That leaves supporters like me out here with no closure and a strong sense of injustice. And now I’m angry at the Dems who got all “we’re metoo so under the bus he goes” without giving him a chance to present his defense. Some say they probably know things we don’t. Maybe. Then we need to know them too.
It may be there would be NO real way to get to the bottom of this satisfactorily. If the Ethics hearing wasn’t public we still might find the conclusions suspect. But we don’t know. We weren’t given the chance to come to our own conclusions based on the “whole story” – such as it is. And that infuriates me.
Dems did not handle this well. To me, instead of looking principled they look opportunistic and disloyal. I like the women LESS now (Gillibrand, Harris, Warren, Feinstein) and they will bear the brunt of the hard feelings, rightly or wrongly. I don’t think this helped ANY cause I think it pushed us backwards. Many folks are painting AF as a sort of “regrettable collateral damage” in a larger cause. I think that’s a stupid, short-sighted pov. But hey, I guess we’ll see, right?
This morning news reports are all over the map re: Franken. Because everyone will twist the situation to fit their narrative. Which was 100% predictable. And, by making him leave without any true resolution, Franken’s story will now just muddy waters rather than clear them.
Fred
@Sophie Montane:Is this a private argument?
The women in question should be willing to put their name and face behind their story. Also the story needs to have some degree of believability. These things don’t seem to be present in the accusations against Senator Franken.
I do recognize how hard it is for anyone to face reporters and cameras to talk about such a painful subject but I think it is the price of admission.
Political ratfvking being what it is we need to set a high bar for this stuff. I’m just really saddened that the discussion of this thing didn’t get going until after the pin was pulled. All of a sudden everybody is saying, “hey wait a minute, this doesn’t sound right.” The elected Dems have jumped to contusions again.
debbie
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
And arguing about it ninety million times hasn’t made it any clearer!