First of all, let me be clear that I think all forms of abuse, including sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape, molestation, and other types of abuse are terrible, and I believe we should do everything possible to help people who have been preyed upon. That said, I think think many of us are in danger of automatically assuming that every allegation is automatically credible. The reason that mankind developed a system of justice including the courts was so that we could have an organized way of finding the truth. Before the court systems, communities lived with accusations and endless retaliation.
Al Franken asked for an ethics investigation. I think whenever possible, we should give people their day in court. However, if you think Al Franken should resign because seven women have made allegations against him, I will ask you where you draw the line. Is it seven accusers, or five accusers, three accusers, or one? This is important, because you know that sometime in the upcoming months, this kind of thing will happen again. Is there a magic number that we are going for? Also, if we are going to act as if allegations are the same as convictions, are we going to just stop at sexual harassment? What about allegations of bribery, or theft, or conspiracy? Is an allegation alone going to be enough, or are we only going to reserve that for sexual harassment?
Please keep in mind who our opposition is. These are people who acted as if after four people died in Benghazi, that it AUTOMATICALLY meant that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had done something wrong. In addition, even after SEVEN investigations had been conducted on Benghazi, and none of them indicated that Hillary Clinton had done anything wrong, the Republicans were STILL insisting that she had done something wrong. Once Republicans had alleged she had done something wrong, most Republicans thought that was the same as a conviction.
In Republican land, every allegation against any Democrat means the Democrat is guilty, and every allegation against every Republican is just fake news. We have a method of finding the truth, and that method is the full, complete, and unbiased investigation, or, alternately, someone’s day in court. We should try for that whenever possible. If we don’t, we will only encourage the Republicans to make false allegations against Democrats because it will be so effective—because we Democrats—ourselves—will demand the resignations of our own people in an endless effort to put the accusations behind us.
You watch what happens. We will get rid of Al Franken and Conyers, and Republicans will keep Trump and Moore. We Democrats will pat ourselves on the back about how we are looking out for women when those nasty Republicans are not. And surprise, in a month or two, more allegations will come out against Democrats, and then it will happen again, and again and again. We will keep getting rid of our own people, just based on allegations, and maybe one day, in the future, we will figure out that maybe, just maybe, allegations alone are not automatically the same as a conviction.