this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Al Franken still makes me sad. The Dems are always like 5 years behind the curve in how they deal with the Republicans. All the "gloves off Dark Brandon" shit is how we should have been messaging for years but it's like the Democratic party is only JUST NOW starting to acknowledge what they're up against.
I believe that Al Franken almost certainly wouldn't have been pressured to resign if the "scandal" had dropped this year.
That's the price of having actual ethical standards. Yes, Franken would be treated differently right now, but Democrats would still take the allegations seriously.
Remember that this happened at the peak of the then-nascent #MeToo movement. From a neutral observer's standpoint, that movement "taking down" a Democrat goes a long way to establishing it as an independent, apolitical thing. Hypocrisy in that moment could have done a lot of PR damage and stopped other, more credible allegations from being taken seriously.
Franken has never publicly complained about how he was treated, as far as I am aware, and I think that's because he knows his career was sacrificed in order to pay the cost of that movement sticking around. It sucks and it's unfair, but that is how the game is played.