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 . . .     

Moore, Moore, Moore

How do you like him?  How do you like him?

Yecch!  I don't!

I already endorsed Doug Jones, the opponent of the Alabama U.S. Senate Republican nominee, saying that Roy Moore was f--kin' nuts.  But he's also f--kin' sick.  It seems he had a sexual encounter with a 52-year-old woman . . . when she was fourteen.  Moore is 70.   

Senate Republicans were already resigned to Moore's election to the Senate, as the last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate from that state was 1992, and that Democratic senator, Richard Shelby, became a Republican two years after (and remains in office today).  They don't like Moore, but they need his vote to pass tax reform, which I promise I will comment on if these breaking stories and scandals ever stop happening.  But with women turning away from the GOP in droves and Moore becoming the latest poster boy for the party's outright misogyny and indecency, the last thing the congressional Republican caucuses on either side of the Capitol want is an association with a pedophile.  And to think this is the same Roy Moore who was the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, insisted in posting the Ten Commandments in front of the state Supreme Court building.

Alabama voters, many of whom are evangelicals, plan to vote for him anyway, because they don't believe the accusations. Which would be fine if there were a reason to give Moore the benefit of the doubt.  But there isn't.  Three other women have accused Moore of sexual impropriety, and there are thirty corroborators between them.  And the 52-year woman who made the first accusation, Leigh Corfman, has voted Republican regularly in recent presidential elections, undermining the argument that this is a coordinated Democratic smear campaign.   If you believe Moore's denials, you obviously believe Bill Cosby's denials of improper behavior with 59 different women (and you are, just as obviously, an idiot).           

Senate Republicans say that Moore should step down if these accusations are true, and that may sound like chickening out, but they've actually gone farther than many of Moore's supporters in Alabama, one of whom, a state legislator, said that Corfman, not Moore, should be prosecuted - for defamation, presumably.  But one Republican - Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon who knows a thing or two about decency per his religious upbringing, has looked at the evidence and come right and said that he believes Corfman.  Romney said that Moore must step aside - no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Too bad he doesn't currently hold office.

But John McCain does.  The senator from Arizona echoed Romney's sentiments. "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying," McCain said.  "He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."

Be that as it may, Moore will probably win the December 12 special election, because he can't be replaced on the ballot, he won't step down anyway, and a vote for Doug Jones is considered an even greater sin.  But Moore, who would be up for a full six-year-term in 2020, may not last that long.  Senate Republicans may soon come to the realization that Moore can't remain in office if he in fact does become Alabama's next U.S. Senator and, ultimately, expel him.

How soon would that be?  Right after tax reform gets passed.

Donald Trump - no stranger to sexual-harassment allegations - will probably be removed from office soon.

How soon?  See my answer to the previous question.