Franken Agonistes

Al Franken wants his old job back:

At his house, Franken said he understood that, in such an atmosphere, the public might not be eager to hear his grievances. Holding his head in his hands, he said, “I don’t think people who have been sexually assaulted, and those kinds of things, want to hear from people who have been #MeToo’d that they’re victims.” Yet, he added, being on the losing side of the #MeToo movement, which he fervently supports, has led him to spend time thinking about such matters as due process, proportionality of punishment, and the consequences of Internet-fuelled outrage. He told me that his therapist had likened his experience to “what happens when primates are shunned and humiliated by the rest of the other primates.” Their reaction, Franken said, with a mirthless laugh, “is ‘I’m going to die alone in the jungle.’ ”

And now, a musical interlude:

Regrets, he has a few, which Franken shared with Jane Mayer, last seen going after Brett Kavanaugh for things Kavanaugh hadn't done, but now in commiseration mode with a politician who actually did things:

When I asked him if he truly regretted his decision to resign, he said, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” He wishes that he had appeared before a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, as he had requested, allowing him to marshal facts that countered the narrative aired in the press. 

The piece I've linked, in the New Yorker, is very long and full of attempts at exculpation. Does Franken deserve a second chance? Was what happened to Franken fair?

Well, Franken's not going to get to represent Minnesota in the Senate again, unless Tina Smith were to stand down. Do you see that happening? I don't. Do you think Franken is going to primary Smith, the former Planned Parenthood executive? Do you think the DFL would let him? I don't. If Amy Klobuchar were to retire after her term is up (she's not going to be president, you know), Franken could run for that seat, but he'll have to wait until 2024 to have a chance. Franken will be 73 years old at that time, and there's little reason to believe Klobuchar would give up her seat in any event, unless she runs for president again. If that were to happen, there's a gaggle of younger DFL politicians a mile long who would want her seat and would not be amenable to standing aside to let Franken assuage his psyche.

If Franken really wants to avenge his situation, there's another solution: move back to New York and challenge Kirsten Gillibrand. Of course, he'd have to wait until 2024 for that chance, too. But if he's got anyone to blame for his fate, assuming he doesn't look in the mirror, Gillibrand is the culprit. Back to Mayer:

Minutes after Politico posted the story, Senator Gillibrand’s chief of staff called Franken’s to say that Gillibrand was going to demand his resignation. Franken was stung by Gillibrand’s failure to call him personally. They had been friends and squash partners. In a later call, Gillibrand’s chief of staff offered to have Gillibrand speak with Franken, but by that time Franken was frantically conferring with his staff and his family. Franken’s office proposed that Franken’s daughter speak with Gillibrand instead, but Gillibrand declined.

Gillibrand then went on Facebook and posted her demand that Franken resign: “Enough is enough. The women who have come forward are brave and I believe them. While it’s true that his behavior is not the same as the criminal conduct alleged against Roy Moore, or Harvey Weinstein, or President Trump, it is still unquestionably wrong, and should not be tolerated.”

Minutes later, at a previously scheduled press conference, Gillibrand added insult to injury: she reiterated her call for Franken to resign while also trumpeting her sponsorship of a new bill that banned mandatory arbitration of sexual-harassment claims. She didn’t mention that Franken had originated the legislation—and had given it to Gillibrand to sponsor, out of concern that it might be imperilled by his scandal.

For her part, Gillibrand regrets nothing:

I recently asked Gillibrand why she felt that Franken had to go. She said, “We had eight credible allegations, and they had been corroborated, in real time, by the press corps.” She acknowledged that she hadn’t spoken to any accusers, to assess their credibility, but said, “I had been a leader in this space of sexual harassment and assault, and it was weighing on me.” Franken was “entitled to whichever process he wants,” she said. “But he wasn’t entitled to me carrying his water, and defending him with my silence.” She acknowledged that the accusations against Franken “were different” from the kind of rape or molestation charges made against many other #MeToo targets. “But the women who came forward felt it was sexual harassment,” she said. “So it was.”

So Franken got knifed by an ambitious pol who pretended to be his friend. Should we be sympathetic to his plight? You can if you'd like. But as far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to feel sympathy for a former Minnesota senator, I'll pick Norm Coleman instead.

Ahem

It's not complicated. If you are willing to vote for infanticide, your claims about protecting children mean nothing. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith? You're ghouls, both of you.

Where are we?

No facts presented in this feature -- let's face it, in 2018 politics, facts are difficult to get. Opinions are everywhere, though. Here are mine:

• I suspect the long knives will be out for Keith Ellison after this election. I've never thought he could win statewide office and his campaign for attorney general has demonstrated that nicely. The larger question is whether or not he'll hurt the other DFL candidates. Doug Wardlow could be a very useful fellow in the AG's office.
• While it would be wonderful if Jeff Johnson could pull of the upset and win the governor's race, my guess is he falls short. Tim Walz is not a particularly strong candidate and nothing about him suggests he'll be any good at being a governor, but the DFL machine in the metro will likely be enough to get him elected. 
• You know what would give us a better Minnesota? The demise of Alliance for a Better Minnesota, that's what. Their latest attack ad, in which they exploit a handicapped young man, is beyond the pale. Every ad they run is filled with lies and yet somehow KSTP's "Truth Test" and WCCO's "Reality Check" never get around to vetting them. Wonder why that is? No, you don't, because you know the reason why already.
• Lately some Wisconsin ads have been airing here. The Dem candidate for governor, Tony Evers, has the personality of lint and is frankly creepy, but he's running neck and neck with two-term Scott Walker, one of the most consequential politicians of his generation. I know that people get fatigued with politicians over time, but it's astonishing to me that Evers is even close.
• Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith, and Tammy Baldwin are all up for election. They are all dismal, but all are likely to return to Washington. There's a chance that Karin Housley might beat Smith, who has never won a statewide election, but I'm not confident that Housley will get there.
• We may flip four Congressional seats in Minnesota. It's almost certain that Pete Stauber is going to Washington in the 8th, and it's quite possible that Jim Hagedorn is finally going to get elected in the 1st. But it's also looking likely that Erik Paulsen is going down in the 3rd, and Jason Lewis will be fortunate if he is reelected in the 2nd. I knew Paulsen a little bit when we worked together at Target and he's a good guy, but he's run a poor campaign against Dean Phillips, who has more money than King Canute and came up with a good shtick. Lewis went to Washington and actually did some useful things, but his district is turning left and the odious Angie Craig has an excellent chance to beat Lewis. If Lewis loses, we'll miss him more than most people realize.

What do you think?

Drizzle

Not really a lightning round. Just a few random things:

• So the DFL is going to try to brazen it out on Ellison. They'd better hope Karen Monahan doesn't have a tape. I expect Tina Smith and maybe even the never-to-be-challenged Amy Klobuchar will get to answer a lot of questions in the coming days. The DFL will have a chance to do some message testing at the State Fair and if it breaks badly, you may yet see some maneuvering.
• We're getting ready to travel again, as Fearless Maria will begin studies at Saint Louis University next week. SLU has been in the news lately because it will be the first school to put an Amazon Echo Dot in every residence hall room. Is it Big Brother? Is it necessary? I'm guessing students will use the devices here and there, but it would not surprise me at all if most of them are unplugged and thrown in a desk drawer before too long. It's not particularly difficult to get information from other sources, so I'm guessing it won't be a big factor in FM's life.
• I get the sense that our favorite president (he says so himself) is about to flip the chessboard on the Russia game. That September 1 deadline his attorneys gave Robert Mueller has a larger meaning, I suspect. It could get interesting.
• The NFL has to figure out their rules about hitting the quarterback. My stance on the Anthony Barr hit on Aaron Rodgers was that it wasn't illegal, but it was unnecessary. The penalty called on Vikings linebacker Antwione Williams in Saturday's preseason game was frankly bizarre. Either you get to tackle the quarterback, or you don't, especially if he still has the ball. 

Ellison in the spotlight

Keith Ellison may be about to get Torricellied:

“I was listening to my podcast and he walked in, he said, ‘I need you to take the trash out.’ And I kept, I was on my stomach, I heard him and I … shook my head [in acknowledgement]. And he looked at me [and] goes, ‘Hey! You f—— hear me?’ And then he looked at me, he goes, ‘B—-, get the f— out of my house!’ and he started trying to drag me off the bed. That’s when I put my camera on to video him,” Monahan said.

That's Karen Monahan, the former girlfriend of Ellison, looking right at the camera. And there's more:

The two broke up, but Monahan claims they met before he announced his attorney general run in June. He was allegedly concerned she would go public about the incident that she says happened in 2016.

“At this point in time, I’m grounded and I know who I am. I have healed for a year and a half. I looked straight at him, I said, ‘I never ruined your career, I didn’t choose to do the things you did, I didn’t choose for you to drag me off the bed, call me a b—-, tell me you hate me. I didn’t choose that,'” Monahan said.

She has chosen to come forward and tell her story, and the DFL apparat is nervous:

With just 82 days left until the November election, DFL party leaders say they are still looking for answers from their candidate.

“The DFL party takes any allegation of domestic abuse seriously. It’s a fluid situation, it’s still developing,” said Minnesota DFL party chair Ken Martin. “We believe that Keith Ellison should answer the questions that have been posed to him, and he should address those questions head on.”

It's worth remembering there are earlier allegations against Ellison from another woman. Could a third woman be out there? If so, that would be the end of him.

The DFL has held the AG's office for over 50 years. Ellison could lose the election and damage the entire ticket. Do you think Tim Walz wants to spend his time talking about Ellison? How about Tina Smith? Watch what happens at the DFL central committee meeting this weekend.

Mene Mene Franken Upharsin

At the moment, Al Franken is calling reports that he is going to resign tomorrow premature, but he's gone and he knows it. You can't have half your caucus calling for you to resign and then expect to survive. He has been weighed and found wanting in the court of public opinion, and his continued presence in the Senate complicates the efforts of his party to keep the heat on Roy Moore. If Chuck Schumer wants Franken out, he'll be out. And Schumer wants him out.

So that means Mark Dayton will be appointing a successor. The Star Tribune believes Lt. Gov. Tina Flint "Abbatoir" Smith, former Planned Parenthood honcho, will get the nod as a caretaker and that a full-on raging battle for the seat will take place in the fall 2018 special election to fill the seat for the remaining two years of Franken's term. The notion is Smith will not be interested in staying in Washington. Are we sure of that? It's pretty nice in D.C. and I'm sure Planned Parenthood would love to have their own personal senator, beyond the 48 or so they already have.

So let's handicap the field:

Tina Flint Smith. Whether she'd want to stay or not, she'd be a completely loyal soldier for Schumer. She also would not likely get in the way of Amy Klobuchar's ambitions. I think there's a strong chance she'd get the nod.

Lori Swanson. Currently the attorney general, she's better at making waves and offering soundbites than Smith, but her prosecutor profile is perhaps a little too close to Klobuchar's for Amy's comfort. However, if Dayton wants to reward Swanson for her hard work as a DFL apparatchik by giving her a head start, this could happen.

Keith Ellison. Some of the more excitable conservative commentators think Ellison would be the pick, but I don't see it. I seriously doubt he could win a statewide election, and there have been enough rumors about his zipper issues over the years that he could get the same treatment Franken has received. He's reached his career apex as the congressman for CD-5 and he's smart enough to know it.

Betty McCollum. She's stayed in Washington for nearly 20 years by living inside the lapel pocket of Nancy Pelosi. If McCollum ran for statewide office, she'd have to speak. That wouldn't go well for her. No chance.

Ilhan Omar. The DFL has high hopes for her, but she's not ready. And Scott Johnson has a few questions for her that she's never really answered.

Chris Coleman. The outgoing St. Paul mayor, who wants Mark Dayton's job, but Tim Walz is standing in the way. I could see Coleman making the switch from the governor's race and take a shot at the seat in 2018, especially if Smith gets the nod and does not run. It's also possible for Walz to decide he'd rather run for the Senate, but I think he'll have a better chance running for governor.

John Choi. A darkhorse. Currently the Ramsey County attorney, he's been less overtly partisan than some of the other county attorneys and he's been generally successful in navigating a couple of high-profile cases, especially involving the scandals at the Archdiocese. He didn't get Jeronimo Yanez convicted, but sending a cop to jail is awfully tough to do. He could get the seat and hold it for 30 years.

Who do you think will get the nod? Cast your vote in the comments section!

The Jester's Thorny Crown

Before you consider the fate of Al Franken, it's worth looking what the accusation was, directly from the his accuser, Leeann Tweeden:

When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.

On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’

He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.

We are talking about events in 2006. We are talking about a man who had been married for 31 years and was 55 years old at the time. Back to Tweeden:

He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.

I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.

I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.

I felt disgusted and violated.

Not long after, I performed the skit as written, carefully turning my head so he couldn’t kiss me on the lips.

55 years old, remember. Franken wasn't done:

Other than our dialogue on stage, I never had a voluntary conversation with Al Franken again. I avoided him as much as possible and made sure I was never alone with him again for the rest of the tour.

Franken repaid me with petty insults, including drawing devil horns on at least one of the headshots I was autographing for the troops.

But he didn’t stop there.

The tour wrapped and on Christmas Eve we began the 36-hour trip home to L.A. After 2 weeks of grueling travel and performing I was exhausted. When our C-17 cargo plane took off from Afghanistan I immediately fell asleep, even though I was still wearing my flak vest and Kevlar helmet.

It wasn’t until I was back in the US and looking through the CD of photos we were given by the photographer that I saw this one:

I'm your handyman

Tweeden's reaction? Well, what do you think?

I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.

I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.

How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

It's not funny. In the least. But what do you expect from a guy who would say something like this in a major publication?

In the New York Magazine article, dated March 13, 1995, entitled "Comedy Isn't Funny: Saturday Night Live At Twenty--How The Show That Transformed TV Became A Grim Joke" Franken veers off of a discussion of a skit involving Andy Rooney, and proposes a skit involving the drugging and rape of Lesley Stahl.

Franken: And, "I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley's passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her." Or, "That's why you never see Lesley until February." Or, "When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her."

The punchline became reality, I guess. You'll notice that the source of this anecdote is City Pages, from back in 2008. It's worth remembering, my fellow Minnesotans saw fit to elect this guy in 2008, and once again in 2014. Yes, the 2008 election was probably stolen, but we don't get to unring that bell, and Franken won a second term comfortably in 2014, when he ran against a painted sheet metal office credenza. I don't think that's exactly who he defeated, but it's been a number of years. It wasn't close, though.

So what do we make of it? My preliminary thoughts:

• Even before I heard of this incident, or read the City Pages piece back in '08, I was pretty sure Franken was a creep. He's always had that vibe. As we entered this time of tumbrels, if I'd had to predict which senators were most likely to be sexual miscreants, Franken would have been in my top 5 choices.
• The continuing saga of Roy Moore complicates Franken's career prospects. If the Democrats needed Franken, they'd have circled the wagons around him by now. They don't need him, though. If Franken were to leave tomorrow, Mark Dayton would have a replacement ready, most likely Lt. Governor Tina "Madame Abbatoir" Flint Smith, who was an executive with Planned Parenthood before she went into the retail side of politics. She would easily have use of the hagiography brigade that has served Amy Klobuchar so well over the years.
• The reason Moore matters is simple -- for the Democrats to claim any moral high ground, they need to appear tougher on their reprobates and more full-throated in their denunciations than the professional Republicans have been with Moore. It's more difficult to tut-tut Moore if you're simultaneously protecting Franken. Once Franken gave the Democrats the 60th vote for Obamacare, he's always been living on borrowed time. The moment you are no longer valuable to Chuck Schumer et al., you get this action:

• But wait -- doesn't Franken have value to the DFL? Not as much as you'd think. He ran well behind Barack Obama in '08 and he did nothing to lift the overall ticket in 2014, as Dayton and everyone else in the DFL won their races comfortably. And while it hasn't been fashionable for the DFL rank-and-file to bash Franken, there are more than a few people in the party who view him as something less than a team player. Some of the Metrocrats are hyenas, too.
• If I were to bet, I'd say Franken only survives if no one else comes forward. But if I were to bet, someone else will come forward. Franken was a reprobate long before he became a politician and if there's value in dropping on a dime on him now, and there's every reason to imagine there is value, we'll have more accusers. Some may even have pictures.

Days of Wine and Fetal Livers

Most of you, I would assume, have heard about the calm lunch discussion Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood had in which she discussed how PP is involved in harvesting fetal tissue:

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

Nucatola also describes how Planned Parenthood abortionists move the preborn child into a breech delivery position so that the body can be preserved while the brains of the child are removed. This account is an almost exact medical description of partial-birth abortions which are illegal in the United States.

Planned Parenthood, though, appears to be concerned internally about the legality of their own behavior, as Nucatola notes how, “At the national office, we have a Litigation and Law Department which just really doesn’t want us to be the middle people for this issue right now.”

I don't see why they wouldn't shout it from the housetops. After all, as Kevin Williamson astutely points out, parts is parts:

Planned Parenthood—and supporters such as Mrs. Clinton—have always argued that what’s in play here is not the butchered body of a child at all, but a meaningless blob of tissue. (What kind of tissue, I wonder? Jackrabbit tissue? Rutabaga tissue?) If Mrs. Clinton and Planned Parenthood and the rest are right, why should it be a crime to deal commercially in these meaningless tissues? Shouldn’t there be a robust marketplace for those little hearts and livers and “lower extremities,” which, we are assured by all the best people, are not little human hearts and livers and lower extremities, but something else? Why not sell them on eBay? Why not have billboards?

I remember when I was told that Kermit Gosnell was an outlier. Good times.

You know, an enterprising reporter might consider asking Minnesota Lt. Governor Tina Flint Smith what she thinks about all this.