Kirsten Gillibrand Smiles In Your Face

What she does!

I've always loved Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, but I'm not so sure I like Kristen Gillibrand, Democratic presidential candidate.  It's not that she suddenly became a liberal only after it was safe for her to do so, when she went from a representing a center-right House district in upstate New York to representing the entire state in the Senate; lots of moderate Democrats suddenly get progressive religion only after it's politically safe.  It's that she's made as her pet issue an issue no one could possibly against - ending sexual harassment - and has still managed to make enemies.

People are still smarting over her pressure on Al Franken to resign his Senate seat in Minnesota rather than face an ethics inquiry over charges of groping or other forms of inappropriate behavior towards women, which Franken denied.  An ethics investigation would have likely reprimanded him and allowed him to remain a senator and allow the voters to offer their own verdict on him in 2020.  But Gillibrand demanded the same punishment for the sort of behavior that is much more serious than anything Franken ever did - like anything Trump has done.  She took what some people call a  courageous stand against Bill Clinton for his sex scandals and how he was able to have an affair with an intern form a position of power - but taking this stand after having become safely ensconced in a Senate seat from a state so Democratic and after you no longer need help from the Clintons to stay there does not count as courage.  Especially when the indiscretion she condemned had happened twenty years earlier.  There's nothing wrong with Gillibrand advocating for a better deal for women, but there is something wrong with her trying to own the exclusive rights to the issue.

But never mind all of that back-stabbing of potential rivals like Franken or political benefactors like the Clintons.  She's stabbed her own supporters in the back.  After promising not to take any PAC money or rely corporate donors, an exceutice drug company Pfizer announced plans to hold a fundraiser for Gillibrand.  And Gillibrand thinks that's okay because the Pfizer executive in question is a woman.

I once included Gillibrand on my sister blog, my beautiful-women picture blog.  Now, she's become a reason why I'm seriously considering no longer including female politicians on that blog.  Because female politicians are just as dismaying and disappointing as their male counterparts.

Day of Decision

Well, today's the big day in Alabama, and I honestly don't know who is going to win the special Senate election.  But the Republicans will have many headaches in the near - and far - future if Roy Moore wins.

As for Al Franken . . . what happens in Alabama may have an impact on what happens in Minnesota.  For now, Franken's Senate seat is safely in Democratic hands, and Mark Dayton, the Democratic governor, will appoint a Democratic caretaker senator in Franken's place until a special election is held.  But Republicans have gained so much support in mainly Democratic Minnesota over the years, and they've been so competitive in recent statewide elections, that a special Senate election isn't a gimme for the Democrats. Although the state has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972,  Republicans have done very well in Senate elections.  In 1976, the state was represented by two liberal icons in the Senate, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale; a little over two years later, with Humphrey dead and Mondale as Vice President (you will note that I did not take the obvious easy shot), both of Minnesota's senators were Republicans.  More recently, Franken won a close 2008 race for his seat against incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman that wasn't called for months.  And by the way, Hillary Clinton only won the state in the 2016 presidential election by 1.5 percentage points.

Michael Smerconish of CNN has suggested - not reported, only suggested - that Franken could rescind his resignation if Moore wins today's election in Alabama.  But Franken could also choose to run in a special election to clear his name and let the voters ultimately decide whether he should go back to the Senate.  I don't know of any precedent for such a ploy in the modern era, but in 1881, when U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures,  Republican senators Roscoe Conkling and Thomas Platt of New York resigned their seats to protest President James Garfield's civil service reform policy and offered themselves as candidates in the special election for the very seats they vacated, hoping for a win to demonstrate their political power.  Just one word of warning to Franken - Conkling's and Platt's strategy failed.  They were conservatives at a time when the New York state legislature was dominated by moderate Republicans, and so the two ex-senators were not re-elected.

As for Doug Jones, the Democrat opposing Roy Moore in Alabama and a former federal prosecutor, don't count him out.  He has been very competitive, he has a reputation for fairness and justice, and he is revered by black voters in Alabama for successfully prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing as U.S. Attorney in northern Alabama.  He also was instrumental in coordinating  state and federal resources against Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph for another bombing in  Birmingham - an abortion clinic in 1997.  Jones also advocated that Rudolph be tried first in Alabama for the clinic bombing before his trial in for the Olympic park bombing in Georgia.  If Jones loses, it won't be for lack of trying.  But even some conservatives, like radio host Hugh Hewitt, think he's going to win.

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be bumpy night . . ..

Franken Sense

He - Al Franken - just resigned from the Senate over charges of inappropriate behavior towards women.  

The junior Democratic senator from Minnesota was forced to step down after most of his female Democratic Senate colleagues called for his resignation.  His exit has divided the Democratic Party not over sexual misconduct itself but how to deal with it.  Many progressives are angry that a U.S. Senator with such a strong progressive record, particularly on women's issues, could be forced out for a few relatively harmless incidents of groping that had yet to go through the Senate Ethics Committee - many of which Franken has denied - when  there is clear evidence of far greater indiscretions against Donald Trump and Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore despite their own denials.  To them, this shows that Democratic lawmakers are unwilling to stand by their own colleagues when they are facing issues of sexual misconduct and let them fall because of Republican charges of double standards while the GOP brazenly stands by fellow Republicans who have done worse and are allowed to get away with it.  Like the Republicans say in regard to Moore,  these Democrats say that Franken's fate should be left up to the voters.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who was up front in getting Franken to quit, doesn't think so.  She says that there should be no distinction between groping and assault and that there should be zero tolerance for all forms of sexual impropriety, even an unwanted peck on the cheek.  She hopes that, by purging Democratic ranks of sex offenders of all sorts, Democrats will be able to claim a moral high ground and show that they will stand against any and all such behavior to shame the Republicans.

The pressure on Franken to resign couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time for congressional Democrats; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi stood by Michigan congressman John Conyers when he was found to have paid out a claim involving a sexual-harassment charge to avoid litigation, only to retreat from her support and urge his resignation once more charges arose.  Pelosi made herself look both insensitive to the women involved and noncommittal in her support of Conyers as a result, satisfying no one with her flip-flopping.  But by attempting to take the moral high ground and stay there once and for all, the Democrats don't appear to realize what a risk they're taking. Because the moral high ground doesn't matter to Republicans, who have won elections by going low and hitting below the belt.  And so far, the Democrats' high-ground game hasn't worked out as they might have liked.  Moore and Trump are shameless to the point that they now have each other's backs, even after Trump unsuccessfully supported Luther Strange in the Republican primary for Alabama's Senate seat.

Franken himself made a resignation speech that was so eerily reminiscent of Gary Hart's bitter presidential-campaign withdrawal speech of May 1987 that I half-expected Hart to write him a commendatory letter for it.  Franken took to the Senate floor defending himself against charges of impropriety with a defiant tone that gave every indication that he was prepared to fight it out, only to bow to peer pressure and step down.  He did so with the same contempt toward the Republicans for supporting Trump and Moore that Hart had displayed toward the press, inevitably earning criticism for his attitude - except that Franken has an actual case against the Republicans.  One could argue that he has a case against Gillibrand for forcing him out for purely political reasons, given that she hopes to use women's issues in a possible candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.  "Gillibrand's moves against leading figures in her own party," observed CNN's Eric Bradner, "have positioned her to turn her focus to Republicans and make an aggressive case against Trump."    

So what do the Democrats do now?  My advice to them - though I know they'll never listen, since they wouldn't listen when I told them to nominate Martin O'Malley for President - would be to pivot their focus to taxes, health care, Net neutrality, and other pressing issues even as they continue to call the Republicans on the sexual harassment issue.  Because the Republicans are in an even more precarious situation. If Democrat Doug Jones wins Tuesday's U.S. Senate special election in Alabama, the Democrats gain one Senate seat on top of the two Senate seats they picked up in 2016, and in a state in the Deep South at that.  If Roy Moore wins, the GOP becomes the party of sexual predators, which will stay on the back of the voters' minds going into the 2018 midterms.  And the Democrats' high-ground approach to sexual misconduct in their battles with the GOP may have already begun to bear fruit, albeit low-hanging fruit; Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona has resigned over charges that he tried to persuade a female staffer to serve as a surrogate mother when he and his wife wanted a child, and another Republican, Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas, is under a House ethics investigation for having used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim.  A black congresswoman has called on him to resign - Mia Love, the only black female member of the GOP House caucus, whom you already know about from a previous post.

Somewhere, he - Al Franken - is smiling.

And with allies like Gillibrand, who needs adversaries?  O'Malley in 2020.   

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

I gave up long ago on keeping track of all of the unscrupulous males who were caught making sexual advances and exhibiting other forms of improper behavior toward women, from assault to rape, but what caught my attention was Charlie Rose getting caught with his pants down . . . literally.  Rose always came off as the thinking person's talk show host, a gracious, mannered Southern gentleman . . . and it turns out that he has a dirtier mind than Howard Stern.  And Howard Stern, potty mouth that he is, is actually a family man and a nice guy. 

Al Franken, meanwhile, apologized for improper behavior toward a woman while on a USO tour before he was elected to the Senate, and many commentators were quick to note the difference between Franken, who admitted his deed and apologized, and Roy Moore, the Alabama U.S. Senate candidate who has been accused of pedophilia and whose accusers are credible despite his denials.  Then it turned out that Franken groped other women as a U.S. Senator.  Meanwhile, Detroit congressman John Conyers is facing charges of sexual harassment, which he denies, even though he paid a settlement to save everyone involved from going through a legal process.  This isn't a Democratic or Republican issue or white male or black male issue . . . it's a male American issue, and it makes American men look like bigger louts than the rest of the world thought they were.

I believe that Franken and Conyers should resign from their seats in Congress.  And I believe so because of Roy Moore.  Alabama being Alabama, Moore, barring a major disaster, is likely to win the special election for the state's open Senate seat despite every Republican in Washington taking the side of Moore's accusers.  With Moore, who's backed by Trump, likely to be an embarrassment for the Republicans nationwide as a U.S. Senator, and with pressure to do something about him, Democrats should set an example by dissociating themselves from their letches to prevent charges of hypocrisy and take the lead against mistreatment of women.  Franken is inconsequential - he's an entertainer, for Pete's sake, and his home state of Minnesota isn't likely to put a Republican in his place - and Conyers is too old anyway.  Conyers is part of the Democratic gerontocracy that has hobbled the party for too long, and even though there's something cynical to get him to quit the House so that younger House Democrats can finally move up to higher positions of responsibility, that wouldn't be a bad thing.  The 88-year-old Conyers did quit his position as ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.  Not good enough - he should just leave the House, period.  Good grief, he was first elected to the House from Detroit in 1964, the same year the Supremes recorded their first big hits there.  Give it up, dude, you're through.

As for Charlie Rose, who lost his jobs at CBS, Bloomberg and PBS, I've heard that PBS is looking to replace his program with a new talk show.  Some, I have been led to understand, have suggested getting Oprah Winfrey to replace him.

Republican efforts to defund public television suddenly look attractive . . .     

King vs. King!

U.S. Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York, recently posted a video that's bound to make them the most unpopular man in America - even more unpopular than George Walker Bush or Dick Cheney. The Long Island lawmaker, considering a run for the Republican nomination for the special U.S. Senate election in New York next year, complained that society is glorifying a low-life like the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and not honoring the teachers, police officers, and firemen.

King called Jackson a pervert who was obviously a pedophile because he slept with young boys (Jackson insisted it wasn't sexual) and added his constituents were complaining about all the media coverage given to Jackson's death. He did admit, though, that he was a good singer and dancer.

While King's arguments about the media coverage have some merit, and even though many people have been suspicious of Jackson's claims, this video was the least tactful and most obnoxious way of getting his point across. But then, King is a Long Islander. Newsweek journalist Howard Fineman even suggested that King may have been trying to score points with white voters in suburban areas like Long Island by picking on a minority entertainer with a large black and Hispanic urban audience, but Jackson had a large white suburban following as well.

Jackson's fans are already calling for their own version of Jacksonian democracy. They want King to resign, and some of them are even collecting money for his primary election opponent, and, if nominated, his general election opponent.

King is lucky he didn't bash Madonna. He would have been forcibly removed from office by now. Her fans are even less tolerant of detractors.

Rodney Frelinghuysen, my own congressman, once got into similar trouble complaining about the 1995 Marilyn Monroe U.S. postage stamp, insisting that movie stars were inappropriate subjects for stamps. So I've seen this before - but never like this.

King claims to have been spurred by his constituents, and while he praises teachers, policemen (many New York Police Department officers live in Long Island), and other working class heroes, he, being a Republican, is hardly suited to drinking to the salt of the earth. (He probably thinks the Rolling Stones are animals. No, that would be Eric Burdon. :-D)

While King has yet to join the Senate, Al Franken joins it today. His sixtieth vote for the Democrats, while welcome for the party, is less important than the fact that Minnesota now has a second vote in the Senate.

In The News - June 30, 2009

Al Franken finally got certified to take his seat in the United States Senate when the Minnesota State Supreme Court voted unanimously to recognize his election victory by 312 votes. For once, Norm Coleman knew when to quit, and he graciously conceded. Now Democrats are under pressure to deliver with a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but on major legislative items like health care, where there's a bipartisan impetus to get something done, that shouldn't be a problem.

Sonia Sotomayor's bid to take a seat on the Supreme Court suddenly got easier as well, for not only are the Republicans unable to stop her with a filibuster, Franken will sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee - here, during the Sotomayor hearings, more comedy will be provided by Jeff Sessions than by Franken.

Meanwhile, acting on George Walker Bush's timetable, President Obama had the military hand over control of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities to the Iraqi army. U.S. troops will for now remain in the areas outside the cities but still get involved on the Baghdad and other urban areas in case of further trouble.

Typical of Americans to move to the suburbs and ignore the cities except for their own interests.

Burris In the Saddle

Why does the continuing saga of Roland Burris feel less like a Shakespearean tragedy than a second-rate Second City (double word usage not intended) repertory skit?

Burris, the newly appointed Democratic senator from Illinois, testified last month that he had no contacts with ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Now it turns out that Burris in fact talked with Robert Blagojevich, the governor's brother, about fundraising for the governor, but he said he never did anything of the sort. Then it turned out he tried to do fundraisers for Blagojevich but couldn't get any started.

Would we even be having this conversation if Blagojevich hadn't played the race card by making this appointment? Burris's enormous ego has been clashing with his utter cluelessness of late, embarrassing a state that thought it had put this latest wave of corruption behind it. I've concluded that Burris himself is innocent of wrongdoing, but his ability to get so thoroughly mixed up in the Blagojevich clan's sliminess makes him seem like a bewildered fool who doesn't know what he's doing.

The irony here is that Illinois almost seemed doomed to be deprived a senator due to scandal, then they ended up with this joker. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, where elections are run more cleanly than just about anywhere else, Al Franken - an intentionally funny guy - can't get seated because of an ongoing recount made possible by that same sense of ethics.

Al Franken wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and worked with Second City alumni. And even he couldn't have written a sketch like the one unfolding in Illinois.