I like Al Franken well enough. He's not my favorite senator but he certainly has a great voting record-- ProgressivePunch rates him a strong, solid "A" and his lifetime crucial vote score is 95.69, pretty much identical to Bernie Sanders', Jeff Merkley's, Dick Durbin's... right between Kirsten Gillibrand's and Tammy Baldwin's. Last time I saw him, I was leaving Cafe Gratitude and he was just entering. I introduced him to Randy Bryce and he stood and gave Randy a lot of generous advice... and then sent him a check (which Bryce has since donated to a Milwaukee shelter for women veterans).If you don't live in Michigan-- or even if you do-- you had probably never heard of Dana Nessel, a candidate for her state's Attorney General. When her ad started getting played, I doubt anyone was happier than Patrick Miles a former US Attorney for the Western District (not to mention Republicans state House Speaker Tom Leonard and state Senator Tonya Schuitmaker, all candidates for the same job Nessel is campaigning for. I don't know anything about her other than her anti-penis shtik.She'll lose, either the primary or the general. Men are furious, even if they're not running to the mic whining about it. I only know about how pissed off liberal men are. I imagine conservative men are even angrier. A gender war only benefits the GOP and forcing Franken to resign was the overreach of the year. At least this will mark the end of Gillibrand's presidential hopes, Gillibrand-- the former Blue Dog and NRA champion who became the xenophobic poster girl for keeping immigrants from getting drivers licenses-- before she suddenly was reborn a Wall Street fake progressive.Today I was out with a woman friend hiking. She was furious Franken was being forced to resign. We met half a dozen neighbors-- men and women-- and every single one of them was as angry as she was. Jeff, an old friend (decades) who I know to be a reflexive progressive and who is the father of two uber-liberated daughters, sent me this note this morning: "I never write to politicians... ever, but I just sent this to Schumer and a modified version to Gillibrand, Feinstein and Harris." He always takes the lead from his even more left-wing wife and I was eager to see what he had to say to Schumer.
As a lifelong Democrat, I am disgusted by your support for Al Franken's resignation. Like thousands of others, I will be resigning from the Democratic Party, and resigning from making donations to the party. Franken was a supremely qualified senator and his transgressions minor compared to Roy Moore or the President, or I’m sure many senators and congressmen as will be revealed in the coming days. The fact that the Democratic Party would waste time and effort attacking one of their own, instead of Roy Moore or the President astounds me. Under your leadership the Democratic Party has shot itself in the brain.You should be embarrassed to be leading the Senate.
I see where he-- and most people in know in the real world-- are coming from; but another friend, Eugene Puryear, an author, journalist and one of the country's most enlightened political leaders, had very different perspective, one that progressives angered about Franken should read carefully and take into account:
Just historically here, there was always a push for the Civil Rights movement to moderate itself, or subject itself purely to the political demands of the Democratic Party at the moment. The argument was that if they did not it would cause a white backlash that could kill the momentum on civil rights legislative priorities. In fact the 1966 election WAS a backlash election, and DID kill the open housing bill. Who here wants to argue the MFDP should've taken those two seats and shut up though?Further, that same bill ended up passing after the uprisings after King's assassination in 1968. That same liberatory upsurge produced the initial positive moves, the backlash, and then more positive moves. Politics can't be governed purely by what this or that piece of electoral math in the moment dictates. That is how you can end up with huge election shifts, that result in, well, less than huge political shifts in the direction of the country. Racism isn't gone, but for sure, it is now considered terrible to be a racist, where the actual racists do not even want to be called racist.This moment is bigger than the Democrats or the Republicans, it is bigger than partisan politics. We are seeing truly mass steps towards an extremely necessary, critical, indispensable cultural change in this country. We need to fan the flames. The time to fight to take on (and hopefully crush) the patriarchy is now, women are fighting and leading, we need to join them not lament that some pissed off dudes are gonna vote next year.
So what do you walk away with? Gillibrand may be an idiot but Eugene is correct-- "This moment is bigger than the Democrats or the Republicans." Pass it along.