The state and the country will be poorer for your absence from the senate, but there are many other platforms, and many people who will want to hear what you have to say.ĭo you believe that the best writer in America could write almost nothing but grocery lists? We hope you will, as you promised, continue to make your voice heard. But we were here in 2008 when you were elected, when I was teaching at the U, and I have often thought of seeing some of my students carrying a huge FRANKEN manner across the campus. We live most of the year in Oakland, and vote in California, so while we are in Minnesota part of the time, we have not voted for you. It is, these days, a very rare form of public speech. Your speech today was of a piece with your way of speaking throughout your political career: humble, calm, measured, direct, and without cutting corners, or making matters seem better or worse than they are. You have done this without self-aggrandizement, and with respect for the body of which you are a part. You have asked questions no one else has asked, and refused to accept obfuscation, lies, or evasions in response. We feel great sadness and loss in your resignation. They mentioned the times you had patronized their stand, and before you Paul Wellstone, and the conversations you and he had had together in the airport. We all spoke of our affection and respect for you. Today at the MSP airport my wife, Jenny, and I talked with the men working the shoeshine stand at Concourse E. Here is what I wrote Al Franken the day he announced he would resign: But I wouldn’t want him to experience the humiliation of Anthony Wiener, to whom he can hardly be compared, except instrumentally. My fantasy is that Al runs for congress in the special election in November 2018 after Mark Dayton appoints a placeholder in January. They’ve made it plain they’ll accept anything to keep the Trump show going and to indulge their delight in seeing America dissolved. It won’t hurt among Republicans and other Trump voters. When it became clear it was likely he would win anyway, then it was, you know, up to the voters of Alabama. I think Kirsten Gillibrand is sincere, but I think for Chuck Schumer it was all calculation about the-and I hate this word, but in this degraded context it’s accurate-Democratic brand, just as it’s clear that Republicans called on Moore to drop out-Ryan, McConnell, Cornyn, and even, at the start, Trump, in the “if these allegations are proved true” weasel out-only because they thought he’d lose.
I agree with Lucien Truscott IV that this is a Democratic circular firing squad.
But two state legislators in Minnesota, one Democratic and one Republican, had just been forced to resign, making the issue overwhelming at home (I was in Minnesota as the scandal unfolded, watching Franken’s resignation speech in the airport on my way home to California). Given what he did, and may have done, he could have fought it, with the tacit or explicit support of his party. He would not have been able to do his job, and his ability to function as the smartest, most persistent, and effective interlocutor of the Trump administration would have been destroyed. Given that he was abandoned and denounced by his own party, with at least 35 fellow Democratic senators in effect refusing to work with him, he was effectively forced out.
What do you make of Al Franken’s intention to resign? Is this the right thing for him to do?
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