My fantasy is that Al runs for congress in the special election in November 2018 after Mark Dayton appoints a placeholder in January. They’ve made it plain they’ll accept anything to keep the Trump show going and to indulge their delight in seeing America dissolved. It won’t hurt among Republicans and other Trump voters. When it became clear it was likely he would win anyway, then it was, you know, up to the voters of Alabama. I think Kirsten Gillibrand is sincere, but I think for Chuck Schumer it was all calculation about the-and I hate this word, but in this degraded context it’s accurate-Democratic brand, just as it’s clear that Republicans called on Moore to drop out-Ryan, McConnell, Cornyn, and even, at the start, Trump, in the “if these allegations are proved true” weasel out-only because they thought he’d lose. I agree with Lucien Truscott IV that this is a Democratic circular firing squad. But two state legislators in Minnesota, one Democratic and one Republican, had just been forced to resign, making the issue overwhelming at home (I was in Minnesota as the scandal unfolded, watching Franken’s resignation speech in the airport on my way home to California). Given what he did, and may have done, he could have fought it, with the tacit or explicit support of his party. He would not have been able to do his job, and his ability to function as the smartest, most persistent, and effective interlocutor of the Trump administration would have been destroyed. Given that he was abandoned and denounced by his own party, with at least 35 fellow Democratic senators in effect refusing to work with him, he was effectively forced out. What do you make of Al Franken’s intention to resign? Is this the right thing for him to do?

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