I posted a couple of weeks ago that I thought Franken should resign, and I got nothing but negative feedback (including accusations of being a RW troll, even though I’ve been an occasional DK diarist and commenter for almost 10 years, and a solid Democrat for 20): www.dailykos.com/…
I was so demoralized I took a break from DK. How could the suggestion that maybe we as a party, and as political advocates for progressivism and equal and fair treatment, shouldn’t tolerate abusers, receive such an intensely vitriolic and negative response?
But Kos’s recent diary (www.dailykos.com/...) really made me feel better, and since it was received so well, I thought I’d try again.
Franken should step down. So should Conyers. We have a chance to set a precedent that we don’t tolerate groping (or faux-groping) or other violations of consent, even “minor” violations. Going forward we could be the groper-free party — and stand in stark contrast to the groper and assaulter-tolerating party. We could point to the party “stars” that we showed the door because they violated the consent of women, even in small ways. We could bring it up every single time Trump speaks, or Moore speaks — that the Republican party is the party of sexual assault, and the Democratic party no longer tolerates it, even a little bit.
The thing is, in my opinion, society will get there. Eventually American society will not tolerate even the slightest bit of violation of consent in their public servants on either side. We’re in the midst of a big, sweeping sea-change in our society and culture, in that sexual assault and violations of consent from powerful men are finally starting to have consequences. We as a party should be at the head of that change, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Being better than the Republicans isn’t good enough. We actually need to be good and decent and right. Not just less bad and less indecent and less wrong.
I thank Franken and Conyers for their service to the party and to their country, but I think they should step down now. I think we have a chance to be at the forefront of this sweeping change to society, and I’m worried that we might be blowing it.
EDIT: Another way to put this — in the 70s and 80s the Democratic party made a conscious choice to lead the way on another utterly massive societal problem — racism. That quest isn’t over by any means, but we in the Democratic party decided we would no longer tolerate racism, even relatively minor instances of racism, in high offices in the party (this wasn’t a perfect and smooth process, obviously). That lead to short term political losses but was still the right thing to do. In my opinion, sexual assault and violations of consent are a similarly massive societal problem, and the right thing for the party to do is similar to what we did for racism — no longer tolerate abusers and violators of consent, not even a little bit.