If he's confident the tale is exaggerated or he didn't do what she accused him of: politely and professionally say he didn't do it
If he's not sure / can't remember: live by his stated principles and believe the woman. And resign.
If he did it: resign.

"I'm not sure, investigate" is basically saying it's in your range. Add it to the photo and I don't think there's much to discuss, really.

The problem is that an investigation in this case is pretty farcical. #3 is pleasant enough, better than calling her a lying tramp, but the combination of #3 + #4 means he's pivoting to "he said / she said." In almost all scenarios, no one is ever going to be able to investigate that. It's his memory versus hers. There's nothing to investigate. There will be no evidence to clarify. There will be no renewed memory. It will just sit in space as a he said / she said, which is the space where metric ****tons of harassment and abuse stake out, which is what the hole "believe women" norm is supposed to solve.

So don't tell me Franken is a champion of "believe women" and then when women come forward with a story that is necessarily a matter of context, memory, interpretation, ambiguity to an outside observer -- it's complete bull**** to welcome an investigation. It's an insult to "believe women." I wasn't there. You weren't. No Congressional committee is going to be able to unlock the truth. There will not be empirical discoveries that provide clarify and finality. That's precisely how a lot of bad and clueless men get away with this ****. "Believe women" is the norm we foster so men can't do this whole "I need my day in court" bull****.

You conveniently left out the other rara post. They were also pointing out that your logic can be applied to either case, and not whataboutism like you said they were. While you're making direct comparisons of the cases to present a case where 1 accuser is less reliable to the amount of Moore accusers.

But please continue on with your quest of shaming people who believe women.

Also, I get this. I really do. I've been using this a lot -- but I have a deep critical empathy here. I understand fully the emotion and I have to work myself to overcome it. But critical of the mentality because it's so important to solve. Strategically AND morally, having Franken resign is the correct thing to do. The right is absolutely gaming us into bad strategy and worse morality trying to find the basement with them.

THIS IS NOT A PLEA to lecture voters, to be nicer to racists, or send Hillary Clinton to a gulag for Uranium One. All of these are understandable points that "have principles" gets confused with, also partly because unscrupulous right-wingers have leveraged those same talking points to basically gaslight normal people with them.

This case is clear that the right-wingers and staunch defenders of patriarchy have been trying to claw back the "lying sneaky ladies will harm a guy just for fun" norm so they re-institute perpetual and permanent "he said / she said" palls over every one of these cases, they can take control of the office, of the culture, of their family lives, of their social circles, whatever -- of norms, basically, and turn society back into the veritable Playboy Mansions they dream it should be where men are cads and slap asses and swing their dick around and put women in their place and women just deal with it.

It's a goal of the left to roll this back. Letting the right win on this so Al Franken is spared some personal embarrassment or because we can't imagine where the slippery slope stops (how about ones where the guy isn't in a damaging photo and already falling all over himself to apologize?) is bad politics, and in isolation, on the moral case, we should believe Leeann Tweeden as a matter of course since Franken is offering precisely 0 competing explanation and there's really no reason not to believe Leeann. An investigation at its heart implies Tweeden might be lying, gives Franken time to circle the wagons, try to embarrass her, hope the public forgets, tires her into taking it back or downplaying it so she can go on with her life.

In sum, "believe women" isn't or shouldn't just be pretense. It's not a slogan. It's not ephemeral. It's supposed to meaningfully influence how we behave and respond. We're failing the test when we let Hannity et al get our jimmiest rustled and fail the test just to spite them. That's what the meta, implicit goal is: then the right-wingers will tut-tut about how we agree that yep, lying women ARE prevalent, just jealous of our political power, now let's move onto next to all the false accusations of racism and oligarchical regulatory capture you guys keep laying on us now that we've proven how often the powerful are wronged with these lies.

I realize the above includes a super-vague we. I meant that "we" to denote reasonable, moral people on the left who are using this thread to think through/process/whatever their feelings/response before (I assume) eventually settling on what other reasonable, moral people on the left (also in this thread) were more easily able to get to right away. I think the moral clarity of the latter group is admirable, but I'm OK with (and mostly a part of) the former group as well.

This. I didn’t realize so many had him as a potential savior in 2020. In light of that I’m kind of glad this came out now. I would not have been enthused by his run for nomination at all.

I appreciate your many responses on this topic, and I think your response #430 sealed the deal for me in terms of my own reluctance to just, well, be principled.

But one thing I'm curious about (and I'm sorry if you addressed it already): what should a hypothetical politician on the left do if he (as it seems is almost inevitable at this point) is falsely accused of sexual harassment or worse? What is an appropriate response from someone who is a true supporter of #believeWomen, etc., but know the is being accused falsely?

Again, this is a hypothetical and doesn't pertain to Franken for reasons you've repeated several times.

He knows what happened. How long does it take to deny an outright fabrication or share the unvarnished truth?

If confident the tale is exaggerated or he didn't do what she accused him of: politely and professionally say he didn't do it
If not sure / can't remember / did a questionable thing: live by stated principles and believe the woman.
If guilty: go **** yourself and buzz off or go to prison or whatever the penalty is, commensurate with the seriousness of the accusation

Lol what other rara post? I mean, he's made tons of posts over the course of history, and I included the one I responded to.

The convo, as quoted above, was objectively:

Me: said thing about Franken case
rara/jsp: that argument also applies to the Moore case
Me: yes, I agree, but let's be clear, that doesn't mean the cases are equivalent. [provides reasons]
You: why are you whatabouting about Moore?

Will do.

Okay, I guess I left out this part:

Which happened in the bolded part of my post. Not really sure how it supports your argument though.

I'm also surprised we assume the direction of the slippery slope only goes one way. As in, if we believe Leeann Tweeden, the right is going falsely accuse every left wing male politician guy of some tawdry thing or another.

Instead of the actual slippery slope they're absolutely trying to manufacture: tut-tut, those smear artist leftists assume Leeann Tweeden might be lying because she was so opportune, so calculated, her timing just too perfect.

And so: time to re-litigate Donald Trump, Clarence Thomas, Bill O'Reilly, Roy Moore. THEY TOO WERE VICTIMIZED BY DISHONEST, LYING WOMEN and the left PILLORIED THEM in the court of public opinion WITHOUT A TRIAL, for shame, what a disgrace, so many good mens' careers ruined, perhaps the left has finally learned their lesson here.

That's the real get down to brass tacks slippery slope here.

He does, but I'll play. Since you seem desperate for an answer:

I am absolutely not joining up for a "Leeann Tweeden did this to herself." Hard no there.

I think the debate about the social value and ills of porn are intriguing.

The hyper sexualization of society is absolutely something worth considering and I have made a few "perhaps social and cultural libertarian norms are in fact deeply unhealthy even if they are temporarily and superficially pleasing, they are often in effect merely reinforce what powerful people want, can easily be gamed by hardcore capitalists, and it's worth considering if reactionary right-wingerism isn't a predictable outcome of this kind of stuff" but I would call them soft takes. I think it's debatable.

If that makes you feel better. You are off the rails slightly but introduce some larger questions worth considering.

Or maybe not.

I think there has to be a large social reckoning with how the 1960s liberalization of the society, projects we should cherish (civil rights, feminism, drug legalization, etc.) were hijacked even only subtly into "anything goes and you can't judge" collective norms that are potentially highly toxic.

"If nothing is sacred, nothing is sacred."

While I'm not comfortable with "I need my day in court" being some kind of archaic principle from another time (how else are we supposed to resolve person A saying something happened, person B saying it didn't?), i have no idea what an investigation is supposed to turn up here. Presumably this woman is going to be brought before a senate committee to elaborate on just how unwanted the kiss was and whether she was actually physically nauseous or if that was a turn of phrase?

Somebody's ninja-deleting posts chez style up in here.

I know you're really not taking a side on the authoritarian-left vs the libertarian-left answer to the problem you're diagnosing, but the answer imo is a humanist and individual interest and responsibility in the welfare of others as well as the rights of others, rather than granting more power to the powerful and foolishly hoping that it's wielded wisely.

Chez would've left HORUS posts up. LDO.

Okay it appears that there is a 2nd accusation.

https://mediaequalizer.com/brian-mal...arassed-me-too

It doesn't rise to the level of sexual assault just aggressive behavior toward women.

You should really read these things before posting them. This is the same thing posted earlier where Franken called someone 3 times at home to argue about the budget.

edit: I see your edit. This story doesn't just not rise to the level of sexual assault, it's nothing remotely like it.

You get your news from some quality sources.

yeah but women should be treated with kid gloves, not real people who should be engaged in serious debate about important things like numbers.