Yeah, this makes a good point.

First, the cavaet: I still think Franken is wisely following his own understanding of his constituents rather than trying to fight back. I trust his judgment on that, how he thinks it would have affected his ability to operate to stay vs. leaving and doing something else with his skills. Life is short.

Second, the point: article makes strikingly clear how nightmarish personal attack/smear politics will be now that anyone can do it. Before social media/internet power we were already complaining that nobody wanted to run for office as personal attack politics became a norm because you had to have a squeaky clean history to get elected to national office. Might as well just let the robots be our elected officials, too, who else is going to be good enough to have the personal behavior record to continually satisfy the crowd? I envision having to publish a full 1,000-page biography by an independent researcher before you run and then yelling: please read and vote accordingly: WYSIWYG and do note I was in detention 6 times in high school, grabbed Mary Lou Smith's breast in the movie theater in 9th grade,  plaigirized a term paper as a freshman in college, got a DWI as a sophomore on St. Patrick's Day, snorted some coke in a disco 35 years ago, shook Donald Trump's hand before he was president, went to lunch with ****, appeared on TV with ****....