Franken Resigns

It must be awful right now to be Al Franken. I saw his resignation announcement, and to me, he did not look well. But how must it feel? Two months ago, he looked like a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. He was getting a lot of coverage for his grillings in Senate committee hearings. Now he must resign his seat.

And really, his misdeeds don't seem to warrant this. Unless I missed something, we are talking about grabbed bottoms and forced kisses. Boorish, creepy, and requiring an apology, but not more than that—no serious harm done.

Franken is trapped by circumstances. His party wants to make a big deal of the alleged sexual offenses of Roy Moore, during his current senate campaign in Alabama. They want to make a big deal of Trump's comments on videotape about grabbing and kissing women. They want to paint the Republicans as the party that wars on women. If they do not make a big deal out of Franken, they look hypocritical. So they turned on him.

Besides taking out Franken, the current wave of sex scandals probably takes out Joe Biden. He is too vulnerable to similar accusations of creepy behaviour. They take out Hillary Clinton, if she was not already taken out by Donna Brazile's revelations about her fixing the primaries in 2016. It would be hard to avoid Bill Clinton's history in a 2000 race, and her part in defending him.

This is not especially worrisome for the Democrats. They prefer a fresh face anyway; someone will emerge out of obscurity, just as Bernie Sanders did last time. Or, in their day, Howard Dean, Jimmy Carter, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gary Hart, and so on. Democrats prefer a dark horse.

But to a Canadian, it is shocking how Americans treat their prominent people. One day you are a god, the next day you are the devil. It seems inhumane.

Roy Moore

On Judge Roy Moore, things seem to be getting distorted. The last I saw, there were exactly two accusations of genuine impropriety: one of aggressively propositioning a 14-year-old, and one of giving alcohol to someone 18. Neither, even if true, are that far out of line. He is also accused of dating, and kissing, a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old, when he was in his thirties. Take away any ageist prejudice, and there is simply nothing wrong with that. It is traditional in most cultures to have a similar age difference, and by Alabama law the women were above the age of consent, 16.

Note an important distinction here between the Moore case and the current Hollywood scandals. Aside from their particular actions, the Hollywood accused are accused of using a position of power to exploit others for sex. Even if the charges are true, this is not so for Moore. He was just another eligible bachelor going on dates.

So we have two accusations? More may come out, but that is not enough to presume guilt, in the middle of an election campaign, when his opponents have every motive to smear him with false allegations. In good faith, he is still innocent until proven guilty.