“I’m a warm person; I hug people.»
A gloss on Jazz’s post earlier about Franken’s latest non-apology. Becket Adams is right: The only misbehavior to which Franken has admitted is his pretend grope of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, and he only admitted that because there was photographic evidence of it. Even then, all he would cop to is that it was a joke he regretted in hindsight. At no point has he confessed to having done anything prurient despite the fact that now no fewer than four women have accused him of groping or an unwanted kiss. He’s not attacking his accusers as liars, as Roy Moore’s campaign is, but rather as sort of… stupid. He’s hugged a lot of people, he says. If sometimes incidental contact was made in those hugs that women interpreted as a grope, well, he feels awful about the misunderstanding. But his intentions were pure. If you thought Al Franken was grabbing your ass during a photo op ( “It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek”), maybe you just don’t know what it’s like to have your ass grabbed.
But never mind that. From a standpoint of raw political self-interest, it’s bananas that Democrats aren’t pushing Franken hard to resign right now. My hunch is that as accusations pile up against him, John Conyers, and other Democrats in Congress over the next two weeks, the more it looks like they’re all going to skate the more likely it is that Alabama Republicans who are on the fence about Moore will decide it’s okay to vote for him after all.
