Did Franken Make A Mistake By Resigning? Some Want Him To Reconsider, Including Republicans

The Democratic Party-- or at least the DCCC-- loves to recruit so-called "ex"-Republicans to run for Congress. Normal Democrats know better than to listen to a Republican about Democratic Party strategy... at least most of the time. That excerpt from Arne Carlson is worth considering though, even if he was Minnesota's Republican governor from 1991 through the end of 1998. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and two years later endorsed independent Tom Homer for governor and Democrat Tim Walz for Congress. He was purged by the GOP and prohibited from participating in party events for 2 years. Oh, yeah... and last year he endorsed Hillary against Señor Trumpanzee. So when he says we should all "sober up," maybe we do need to listen. I hope Franken does, but I can't imagine he would.

Bruce Bartlett used to be a Republican too. In fact he worked for Ron Paul and Jack Kemp and was a Reagan domestic policy adviser and a Treasury official under the first Bush. He attacked the second Bush and his policies frequently and quit the Republican party 10 years ago. Yesterday he did an OpEd for the New York Daily News, Toughen up, Democrats: Why the party will live to regret its hasty purge of Al Franken. "It will be recorded," he wrote, "that he was pushed out by his own party even as a man guilty of more serious sexual misconduct sits in the Oval Office and Senate Republicans prepare to welcome sexual predator Roy Moore with open arms."

This division between the two parties isn't just about morality or hypocrisy; it's about having a fundamentally different view of the world.

Democrats are idealists while Republicans are realists. Of course this isn't true in all cases; Republicans idealistically claim to love liberty, worship the Constitution as James Madison wrote it, and assert that sacred principles guide their policies rather than crass pandering to their contributors and primary voters, which is really the case.

But they know they are lying and it's all for show.

By contrast, Democrats seldom ever climb down from Mount Olympus to engage in political hand-to-hand combat. They whine and wring their hands about the dirty tricks Republicans constantly play on them, but on the rare occasions when they have some political leverage, they seldom use it effectively.

In the end, Democrats are constrained by responsibility while Republicans will do whatever it takes to win at all cost. It's not a fair fight.

This is not a new problem. All democratic governments that respect individual rights, permit free speech and assembly, and are responsive to the will of the people expressed in free elections are vulnerable to ruthless enemies from within, who use democratic freedoms to undermine and destroy those very freedoms.

It's worth remembering that Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany quite openly and legally, as were other dictators and strongmen around the world.

It is hard for small-D democrats to respond to internal threats without believing they are sacrificing their core principles in the process. Sometimes a foolish consistency makes those who support liberal values balk at actions clearly needed because they necessarily involve illiberal policies.

Not funny, kids

Going to war is the most obvious example, and great Democratic presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and, yes, Lyndon Johnson struggled with the inherent contradiction between their ideals and their actions.

Republicans, of course, have no such qualms. They are like the ancient followers of Manichaeism who saw everything as black and white, dark and light, good and evil. There was never any gray, no nuances to confuse issues. There was one path and it had to be followed.

The Republican attitude succeeds in part because it is easy to understand. Most people have neither the time nor the expertise to study an issue well enough to have an informed opinion. They depend on political parties to sort through the issues for them and tell them what to think.

It's like following a movie reviewer. If over the years you have found that you enjoyed and hated the same movies, you are inclined to trust her judgment. So too with parties. When the acquisition of information is costly, it is reasonable to economize.

The problem is that unscrupulous people or those with poor judgment sometimes get control of your party and lead otherwise good and honest people down the wrong path.

That has happened to the Republican Party, my former party and also the former party of a growing number of my friends from the days when I worked for Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

...While obviously Republicans deserve primary blame for the disgusting state of their party and have principal responsibility for fixing it, Democrats are not without blame.

In many cases they have offered poor opposition to Republican policies, put up bad candidates in winnable elections, fallen back on time-worn slogans rather than finding creative new ways to advance their agenda, failed to create organizations and institutions to counter the Republican echo chamber, turned their attention too quickly to new issues and given Republicans a second shot instead of finishing the job, and permitted their ideals to overwhelm political common sense.

The Franken problem is a perfect example. Over the last two months, ever since the New York Times broke the story of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's sick sexual behavior, a number of stories have detailed indefensible sexual behavior by many others in the entertainment industry and politics. Many more will follow.

Franken, a longtime professional comedian, straddled both worlds and was an obvious target for those in the media and Republican dirty tricksters like Roger Stone to dig up dirt on. Sadly, they found incidents that could perhaps have been defended or overcome in the pre-Weinstein era, but were indefensible in today's political environment.

I am not going to defend Franken's actions, and of course I agree that sexual misconduct must be punished. But it doesn't follow that forcing Franken to fall on his sword was the right way to handle his situation.

As many others including Cathy Young here in The News have pointed out, Franken was essentially tried, convicted and sentenced without any semblance of due process. There was no investigation. The charges against him, some of which were anonymous and some of which he denies strongly, were simply accepted at face value.

This is not only wrong but politically stupid. Democrats now have no defense against completely bogus charges ginned up by nefarious right-wing characters such as James O'Keefe, who has already tried once to manufacture a phony sex scandal.

Moreover, the political situation in Minnesota is such that Franken's departure has now put his seat in jeopardy. It may well go to a Republican next year, according to political analyst and Minnesota native Norm Ornstein.

Democrats are convinced that they have seized the high ground and this will hold them in good stead when they oppose seating Roy Moore, should he win his Alabama Senate seat.

Maybe so, but they may also lose the support of reasonable people who believe Franken was railroaded and made the victim of obsessive Democratic identity politics. Conservatives like Fox's Laura Ingraham and Newt Gingrich are already reaching out to such people by defending the liberal Franken.

Many Democrats insist that Franken's treatment is demanded by having to do the right thing regardless of the cost. But as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell eloquently pointed out last Thursday, where were these principled Democrats when New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez went to trial for corruption?

Surely the evidence required to bring him to trial exceeded the threshold of the hearsay and anonymous charges that got Franken thrown under a bus. The only difference, it seems, is that a Democrat will name Franken's replacement while a Republican would have named Menendez's.

A competent political party would at least have tried to get something in return for Franken's sacrifice. For example, Democrats could have used the occasion to call attention to Donald Trump's admitted sexual indiscretions or those of other Republicans such as Representatives Joe Barton, Trent Franks, and Blake Farenthold.

Franken made glancing mention of Trump and Moore in the floor speech announcing his retirement.

But for the most part, Democrats decided instead to adopt a policy of unilateral disarmament, making Republicans pay no price for their hypocrisy in continuing to defend Trump and Moore.

During the Cold War, Democratic Presidents understood that even if you are willing to disarm unilaterally, you should still try to get something in return. But for Democrats today, virtue-signaling is its own reward.

I know Democrats think they will be rewarded-- perhaps not instantly, but over time, including in 2018-- by voters for their principled stand against sexual harassment.

I don't buy it. Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape, in which he bragged about groping women against their will, was known to virtually all voters before the election, and it didn't seem to have any impact except on people who had already decided to vote against him.

I think Democrats need to toughen up if they hope to win in the Trump era. Yet many Democrats seem to think that being tough requires being mean, underhanded and unethical.

I often joke that Democrats are the class nerds while Republicans are the school bullies. Maybe in the long run, the nerds will become the rich software developers while the bullies are doing manual labor, but in the short-run, the bully is winning.

The nerds must study the martial arts if they hope to win.

Republican success today is built on a foundation they have built since the 1970s, financed by right-wing billionaires such as Charles and David Koch, Robert Mercer and Rupert Murdoch.

They are systematic, and they are ruthless. They created institutes, organizations and media outlets that relentlessly promote their agenda and give well-paid employment to professional right-wingers.

Democrats and progressives depend on the universities, the mainstream media and ineffectual organizations like the AARP, which went AWOL during the recent tax fight.

The Republican strategy can be copied without sacrificing progressive principles to create a more powerful, effective and aggressive opposition to GOP efforts to restrict abortion rights, slash programs that aid mothers and children, despoil the environment, gut consumer protections and take other actions that hurt women just as sexual harassment does.

In my opinion, sacrificing the best and brightest of the Democratic Party in a vain hope that some uncommitted voters will care and reward them looks like another losing strategy.

I was hoping he'd suggest that opportunist Kirsten Gillibrand resign instead. That would stop this insanity fast enough-- but, let's face it, the insanity is still needed to move our sicke society along in the right direction towards killing off extreme patriarchy once and for all.

McCain Blames Bush For His Campaign's Collapse But Is He Being Honest With Himself?

Almost daily we're hearing how McCain "blames" Palin for his death march to political oblivion. I doubt it. Blaming Palin means buying in to what every serious McCain detractor from both sides of the aisle has been saying: McCain's poor judgment and cynicism-- for selecting her in the first place-- make him unfit for the presidency. So who does he blame for his sinking poll numbers and what is shaping up to be the biggest disaster for the Republican Party since the last time a senator from Arizona headed the national ticket? Bush, of course, his old nemesis.

Yesterday on the Double Talk Express, he granted an interview to a couple of friendly reporters from the Moonie Times. He "lashed out at a litany of Bush policies and issues that he said he would have handled differently as president," neglecting to mention he supported almost every single one of them in the Senate. Consistently refusing to take any responsibility for his own rejection by the voters, McCain "blasted President Bush for building a mountain of debt for future generations, failing to pay for expanding Medicare and abusing executive powers, leveling his strongest criticism to date of an administration whose unpopularity may be dragging the Republican Party to the brink of a massive electoral defeat." None of the crowing about how he voted for 90% of Bush's agenda.



No, McCain wasn't talking about how he turned himself into a virtual rubber stamp for Bush-Cheney, especially in the most recent years, when he racked up a disgraceful and shockingly extremist voting record to the right of lunatic fringe senators like Larry Craig (R-ID), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC). The handful of senators to the right of McCain are the bizarre extremists and neo-Confederate obstructionists like David Vitter (R-LA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), John Cornyn (R-TX), James Inhofe (R-OK)... mostly the worst trash in Congress several of whom are in jeopardy of losing their seats in two weeks. Instead, it was all Bush's fault.

"Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously."

Were the lobbyists who run the campaign not certain that the Moonies would let it all pass without reminding the brittle and nasty senator that he voted for every one of these things he's now blaming on his political demise, they would never have been granted the interview. He also took the opportunity to blame the GOP in general for his woes and to lash out on the one person in America who is even less liked than Bush: Cheney. "I don't agree with Dick Cheney's allegation that he's part of both the legislative and the executive branch." (Perhaps he should explain that to ignorant and unqualified his running mate.)

"I think, frankly, the problem was, with a Republican Congress, that the president was told by the speaker and majority leaders and others, 'Don't veto these bills, we need this pork, we need this excess spending, we need to grow these bureaucracies.' They all sponsor certain ones. And he didn't do what Ronald Reagan used to and say, 'No'; say, 'No. We're not going to do this.'"

Presumably he had a little memory thing about what he's been doing for the last few decades. Most voters, on the other hand, know full well that the problems caused by the corporately-dominated Republican Congress can all be blamed on McCain as easily as on Bush and any other Republican in Congress. And this morning's CongressDaily has some of the worst news about voter retribution for Republicans so far. Even Inside the Beltway, an awareness is building that a political tsunami is headed right towards the Capitol. Looking two and a half weeks into the future, one Republican strategist declared flatly that "It's going to be a bad night." How bad?

Republicans are desperately trying to cling to red districts where Republican incumbents are resigning but almost every single one of them is trending towards Democratic challengers. Worse yet, Republican incumbents trying to stay in Congress-- a toxic mixture of extremists and rubber stamps like Marilyn Musgrave, Ric Keller, Robin Hayes, Sam Graves, Tim Walberg, Steve Chabot, the Diaz-Balart Brothers, Joe Knollenberg, Dave Reichert, Randy Kuhl, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mean Jean Schmidt, Dana Rohrabacher, Michele Bachmann-- are polling poorly and sinking rapidly.

"It's hard to change the dynamic of a race in the last 14 days," said one Republican strategist, who criticized the NRCC for not moving earlier to funnel more money to less expensive media markets where Republican incumbents are in unexpectedly difficult races. "It's just baffling the way they're spending this," the strategist said last week.

As evidence of the souring GOP fortunes, The Cook Political Report recently changed ratings for 25 districts, all indicating Democratic momentum. Republicans have suffered a toxic combination of a financial market meltdown, a referendum on the unpopular Bush, anemic fundraising and an increasing number of candidates enduring self-inflicted wounds.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee plans to spend $1 million against Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who said on MSNBC's "Hardball" late last week that the Democratic presidential candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, "may have anti-American views" and suggested that "the news media should do a penetrating exposé" to determine whether some members of Congress are "anti-America."

The Cook Political Report changed Bachmann's race from leaning in her favor to being a toss-up and now rates six Democratic seats and 25 Republican seats in the toss-up category. Cook now projects Democrats will gain 20 to 25 seats in the House.

Cook is the most notorious lagging indicator of all the out-of-touch Inside-the-Beltway prognosticators. If they're saying the Democrats will gain 20-25 seats, it means that with a strong effort the DCCC could confidently expect over 30, possibly 40 seats. As of September 30 the NRCC had $17.4 million in the bank to the DCCC's $41.3 million. If the DCCC doesn't waste it chasing nominal Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- as Emanuel did in 2006 and is demanding they do again-- they will win close races for real Democrats who will support Obama's agenda for change, instead of supporting GOP-Blue Dog agenda for obstruction (of which Emanuel is expected to be an integral component).

I was glad to read in today's Miami Herald that instead of wasting her time and energy trying to save Republican-in-Democrat's-clothing Tim Mahoney from certain defeat, Nancy Pelosi is working to elect progressives Annette Taddeo, Alan Grayson and Joe Garcia and some moderates.

Congressional Republicans are blaming McCain for their impending doom and McCain is blaming congressional Republicans. It's funny because there is no difference between any of them. And appalled Republicans from across the country are experiencing unparalleled waves of disgust for McCain, Palin and the whole party. Just this morning Arne Carlson a much-respected former governor of Minnesota-- and a lifelong Republican and a real maverick-- endorsed Obama.

Carlson said Thursday that the Illinois senator's stances on the Iraq war, the economy and green energy goals won him over. Carlson, who served from 1991 to 1998, also cited recent comments by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioning whether politicians have "pro-America or anti-America views."

"Regardless of our party, regardless of our partisan inclinations, there is no interest more compelling than the interest in the well-being of the United States," Carlson said at a gathering of Obama supporters at the state Capitol.

And, of course, it isn't just the rantings and ravings of far right lunatic extremists Michele Bachmann and Robin Hayes who are turning independents and moderate Republicans off. All across the country right-wing extremists and bigots are being forced to step down from the McCain campaign and from the Republican Party apparatus for... well, for basically following Palin crackpot themes, but just going a step or two over the line. One maniac GOP leader in California's Inland Empire, Diane Fedele, was forced to resign today after the viciously racist campaign she was leading against Obama was exposed to the public.

Earlier this week, Barbara Lorman, the first woman ever elected to the Wisconsin state Senate and another lifelong Republican, said that McCain's negative campaign had so disgusted her that she has decided to vote for Obama. No, she isn't eshewing McCain because of George Bush; she's endorsing Obama because he is clearly a better candidate and because McCain is running a disgraceful and dishonest campaign. Like all serious-minded Republicans, she is also horrified at the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming president. "I certainly would not put my trust in Sarah Palin. She is a terrible choice because she is not qualified, and the vice president is a heartbeat away. She may be a fast learner, but that is not enough to be president of the United States."