Al’s a'Coming Back…Maybe
I see in the news that Al Franken may be considering a return to politics. And maybe even a run for the Senate. His exact words were “I’m keeping my options open…”
That’s not exactly a clear statement of intent, but, personally, I do wish he would run. There are a variety of reasons for that. The first is personal. Specifically, I feel like Franken got rather a raw deal. The evidence against him seemed … shall we say?…ambiguous at best, and, he didn’t exactly get anything like due process. There was no review of the evidence. No discussion of the accusations. They just kicked him out.
Which was sad, really. He may or may not have been a perfect gentleman, but it is clear that he was no Harvey Weinstein or Jeffrey Epstein. And whatever he did or didn’t do, he deserved a fair hearing, not a star chamber proceeding.
But there’s another reason I’d like to see him back in politics, and that’s because it would give the Democratic Party, and the Left, the chance to undo some things. As I say, Franken’s removal from office looks unfair in retrospect. In fact, it looks a bit like a public burning, in which a number of ambitious people used allegations of wrongdoing to aggressively virtue signal to the world, and, in the process, eliminate a potential rival.
More importantly, though, Franken did vote consistently in the way we want liberals to vote. And he was driven from office at precisely the time we needed all the liberals in Congress that we could get. It was the opening of the Trump years, and Franken’s absence was regretted. Yet, this was was done by liberals themselves.
There is a recognizable pattern here. The Left seems far too eager to engage in self-destructive, ideologically-driven crusades against those who do not live up to its own impossibly high standards. Moreover, the Left begins the aforesaid crusades precisely when it most needs the support and the help of the very people it targets.
Or, to put it another way, it never seems to miss a chance to shoot itself in the foot, at the worst possible time, and in a way calculated to cause us the maximum amount of pain and suffering along the way.
It would be nice if, just now and then, we could break that pattern of self-harm and public humiliation.
I, for one, could get used to it.
* “Al Franken on return to politics: ‘I’m keeping my options open’,” Noah Garfinkel, Axios, Sep 14, 2021. https://www.axios.com/al-franken-politics-options-cc6c1b4d-a871-4055-a415-5bb6b0de3442.html
Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker
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