Dear Senator Franken,
It has been brought to my attention that you might be considering resigning following the withdrawal of the support of several Democratic Senators.
I implore you not to do it. Do not resign. If you feel it necessary, maybe announce that you will not run for re-election, but even that is a bridge, if not too far, then a long way away.
You called for an Ethics Investigation into the allegations against you, and were widely applauded for doing so. What I fail to understand is why there is no sign of such an investigation happening, and why Democratic Senators are not demanding to know why the Majority Leader is not insisting on one. To my mind they should be demanding this of him, and then demanding to know what the reason is for the delay.
We live in a world where facts do matter. It is perfectly reasonable to withhold judgment pending the outcome of an investigation and the publication of a report. Absent this and calls for your departure are simply a sop to the Right which, at the moment, is doing its level best to elect a pedophile.
I read comments that suggest that we, as Democrats, need to occupy the high-ground in this matter, lest we simply become Republicans. To those people I simply say this … The Republican Party is currently mired in the sewer. To maintain the high-ground we only need to be on the pavement, or maybe the second floor of Trump Tower (any of them). What we do not need to do is climb to the highest mountain peak where we cannot even see the fucking playing field, let alone make rational decisions.
Despite the allegations, I think that you believe that the honorable thing to do is to resign having lost the confidence of some of your colleagues. The irony of that is not lost on me.
I have one question for you.
How will women’s issues, and no one is arguing that these matters should not be urgently addressed, but how will your resignation bring forward a position where women in our society are truly treated as equals?
Equality for women has always been considered as one of the strengths of your resume. I concede the possibility that those views might change following the investigation you yourself called for, but in the absence of that, how does losing one of our progressive Senators promote any social agenda at all?
We are currently suffering under GOP control of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court. Politics is a practical business. Real Politik is “the art of the possible”. We might want to be moral, to all people all of the time, but unless we start winning we are left simply tilting at windmills while the other side wins at all costs and punishes hard-working Americans at every opportunity.
I don’t suggest we ignore moral and ethical issues, but neither do I see any way in which your departure from the Senate does anything to advance them.