Going to be?????

We are seeing why Democrats are losers. Pure, very pure, "high road" losers. 

Yet in the cut throat battles with anything goes, antidemocratic, pack the courts and disenfranchise the voters Republicans, never, ever pure enough for some.

A Party that doesn't fight for its own but does the opposition job for them is destined for impotence and irrelevance. Americans don't want purity, they want politicians who will fight for them against an opposition which would destroy them, their health care, their communities, their schools and their nation to win.

On Franken, recall, he asked the question that caused Sessions to recuse himself, that led to Mueller being appointed. So all the Democrat women, and now Schumer, want him to resign and not fight or wait out the ethics process and get to the facts.

Comments from NYT:

Bad behavior is equal to predation? There is no gray area, no rehabilitation, no apology suffices? This is extremism of the worst kind. I’m shocked that my senator and women I’ve long admired have revealed themselves to be either so simplistic or so politically craven.

Where is the line between a dumb prank like the USO tour photo -- wrong, offensive, not funny -- and child molestation and other forms of actual sexual assault?  To me, there's a world of difference between the behavior of Al Franken and the likes of Donald Trump, Roy Moore or even, not to be partisan, Anthony Wiener.

Repeated polls show about 70% of folks in his home state do not want him to resign. He should let that be his guide, not the desires of his colleagues trying to make a statement.

"In recent days, the Democratic women senators had spoken privately among themselves about the situation, agreeing that they could not tolerate Franken’s presence as allegations continued trickling out."

Guess what? I could tolerate him. So could millions of others. And least until the investigation was concluded. Whether these senators could manage to should not be the overriding factor here.

Franken has acknowledged, and apologized for, poor behavior and welcomed an Ethics Committee investigation. When he could not place himself in someone's account, he acknowledged the validity of an accuser's feelings. And he is being asked to leave.
People like Trump and Moore, who reject any responsibility for predatory conduct, grandstand about their own supposed character and disparage their accusers, face no consequences.

If the Democrats cave so easily on Franken, without even a thorough investigation and with anonymous accusers, they are a toothless opposition Party.

Meanwhile in a Trump hotel, Clarence Thomas's wife  gives an award for "Defending Liberty" to James O'Keefe, head of Koch funded Project Veritas, which was just caught hiring a woman to try to sting the Washington Post with lies about her "abortion after teenage sex with Roy Moore."

Unless they grow a spine Democrats will always be eaten alive by the GOP.  The break any rule, support any hideous candidate or policy, tell lies and more lies, refuse compromise, demonize and attack the opposition, and claim the high ground while standing neck deep in plutocrat $lime Party.

Uh, Minnesota voters aren't asking Franken to resign - I think he has 70% backing - it's other Congressfolk.

So it appears that one key part of the Democratic party's base does care, and cares a lot, to see D elected officials forced out over what Franken is known to have done.  On this analysis is "the problem" not with that abstraction or conglomeration aka "the Democratic party", coming in for a drubbing in this thread, but with parts of its base (activist women, especially, fed up over this sort of stuff?) which insist on what they view as higher standards of personal conduct?  

Gillebrand wouldn't have pitched without a catcher.  Are the Democrats the Democrats without that catcher?  

I try to imagine a FTF conversation between Josh and, say, Bob Kuttner (who also feels the Democrats are allowing themselves to be played over the Franken matter), on the one hand, and Sen. Gillebrand, on the other, and how that might go.  I suppose if you are someone for whom there is nothing more important than highly visible public shaming and consequences for powerful men who engage in acts which are disrespectful to women, the price may be worth paying.  Josh and Kuttner are among those with many other, what they view as bigger, fish to fry.  Is this an argument about anything other than differing priorities, rather than the merits and foolishness of purity, or commitment to certain causes, as you prefer?

Should the Democratic party during the 1960's have opted to cede the South to Republicans as a consequence of winning the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts?  It was no "purist" who made that call--it was Johnson.  One part of his constituency felt that civil rights for people of color was worth the price.  Other parts of the party's constituency strongly disagreed that it was a price worth paying.  I'm sure that many who felt passionately about other causes the Democrats might otherwise have been able to get wins on, were it not for the hits the party took over civil rights, felt that the party's purity on civil rights caused it to go off the ledge in a fit of misguided un-pragmatism. 

The above may be thought a poor analogy.  Yet for many women who have had to suffer harassment and worse and see it go unreported and unpunished for their entire lives, just now might understandably be viewed as an extremely rare and surely fleeting historical moment when this issue is on the public and media radar screen.  Cultural norms could be influenced, depending on choices that are made about how these matters will be handled.    

I am dismayed about the prospect of losing Franken.  But I also don't see this matter as an inexplicable case of off the rails purist Democrats once again making the obviously bad and dumb call, either.