Politics

Behind The Tweet: Rage and Frustration

Posted on by Tom

Saw this tweet today:

I like Al Franken, I’ve always liked Al Franken, I have a lot of respect for the work he did to transition from a comedian to a knowledgeable elected official (no small feat), and I think it’s a shame he has to resign.

But this is a political no-brainer.

Franken resigning is the Democratic side fighting. Fighting to at least bring back some shred of integrity to the current American government. They won’t have a moral leg, foot, or tiny pinky toe to stand on if they don’t clean house of anything and everything that even remotely hints of corruption right now. They simply cannot use integrity (“we are the Not-As-Bad-As-Trump Party”) as a voting issue in 2018, 2020, or ever, if they don’t deal with this quickly.

That is why Franken immediately decided to submit to an ethics committee (the right thing to do for many reasons). That showed the world that “Democrats take this stuff seriously, whereas Republicans, clearly, do not.”

Conyers blew that strategy out of the water, because most people know on some level that Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, and Conyers confirmed it. That made any attempts Franken could have made to transform Democrats into the Party of Integrity well nigh impossible. (Not to mention all the followup allegations against him.)

So Franken is probably resigning today, and it’s the right thing for him to do for the Democratic Party and America right now. It sucks that he got caught up in this storm, but life isn’t particularly fair.

I’m no expert, but I have also heard there is a good chance that the Minnesota governor (Mark Dayton, a Democrat) will appoint a Democrat to replace him, so there’s really no political down side for the Democratic Party.

And as I’m finishing up this post, Franken is resigning.

 

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Tom