Some part of this is the real process of reduced tolerance for sexual predators, and he is one. Some of the people calling for his resignation, though, probably just want some political cover for their attacks on the GOP regarding Roy Moore.
I'll leave it to others to comment on the precise level of importance of getting rid of people like Franken for its own sake, but "hostile work environment" is a real thing, and the Senate is a work environment.
As for practical consequences, I'll make a couple of observations about this. Franken, Conyers, and other Democrats being forced out will have no effect on either the Alabama Senate race, or how the GOP responds to Moore's likely victory. As of this morning, Moore's lead is down to 2.3 points in the RealClearPolitics average. That's not big, but it is real, and when in doubt, defer to party. Alabama is a hardcore Republican state, and I am skeptical that Alabama voters will put aside party in order to vote against a child rapist, particularly when that child rapist is a barely-literate, bible-thumping demagogue (they love that shit in Alabama). I just don't think Alabama voters care that much about child rape. I am willing to be shown evidence to the contrary.
I'm going to flip this around geographically. Massachusetts is a blue state. A Democratic child rapist would lose there. Maybe not if he were named "Kennedy," (Ted murdered a woman in a drunk driving incident!) but Republicans do occasionally win there. Remember Scott Brown? Remember Mitt Somethingorother? Alabama, though? No, they'll probably go with the child rapist over the Democrat. 3-1 right now, over at PredictIt.
At the electoral level, Alabama voters aren't paying attention to the internal workings of Congress. Most voters can recognize but not recall the names of their own representatives. If you are reading a weirdo political scientist's blog, you probably pay enough attention to the news to recognize the name, John Conyers, and then suppress a gag, but Alabama voters? (The ones who can read?) Nope. Not even now, with him in the news. I could make an Alabama-voters-are-racist joke here, but oh, why bother? A child rapist is leading in the polls. So, they don't know or care.
What about the internal workings of the Senate? Does Mitch McConnell care if Al Franken and John Conyers step down? Will that make him decide he has to expel Roy Moore?
'Cuz, you know, if he didn't, he wouldn't have moral standing, and Mitch McConnell cares about that...
...
Have I made my point now? Ex: Mitch McConnell used to say that every court nominee needed a straight up-or-down vote in the Senate (when Dubya was President). He supported using the nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster if the Democrats ever filibustered even a single nominee. Then, under Obama, he led unprecedented filibusters, including the entire DC circuit, saying that Obama alone in history should never be allowed to fill any vacancy, and the Republican minority would filibuster any nominee, no matter who they were. He decried Reid's use of the nuclear option as the worst thing ever, when Reid did exactly what McConnell wanted to do for far less. Then, McConnell refused to hold hearings on a Supreme Court vacancy, before even hearing who Obama's nominee was, with an invented rule never before used (lying, and saying it was Biden's idea, by omitting half the quote), and when Obama picked someone whom Hatch said would have been easily confirmed, McConnell said fuck you, we aren't confirming anyone. Trump won, and then McConnell confirmed Neil Plagiarist Gorsuch. Using the nuclear option that he said was the worst thing ever when Reid used it.
Then, after years of saying that the Senate needed a return to "regular order," McConnell has spent the last year bypassing committees and deliberation for everything in order to work out secret backroom deals at the last minute, never giving anyone time to study or think about any deal, much less have any real input on legislation...
I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. Does Mitch McConnell care about looking like a hypocritical fucking asshole?
No. Democrats could get rid of every sexual predator in their caucus, and then say to McConnell that it is time for him to clean his house, and it wouldn't move him. He doesn't care.
He shall not, he shall not be moved. He shall not, he shall not be moved.
And that leads me to my next point. The Democrats are cleaning house. The Republicans won't. One of the persistent issues in Congress is the partisan asymmetry. The parties are not the same. They aren't just ideological mirrors. One of the things that becomes mathematically clear when you look at voting scores, such as NOMINATE, developed by Keith Poole & Howard Rosenthal, is that the Republican Party has become far more ideologically extreme than the Democratic Party over the years.
But, this isn't ideology. And this isn't because one party is more concerned with ideological purity, the way Grossman & Hopkins argue, and this isn't about pressure from the electoral base, or anything like that.
There is a lot wrong with the Democratic Party. They don't think things through. They are too quick to say, "here's a problem. Give me a government program to solve this problem, and let's never think through whether or not it will work, or what the unintended consequences might be." I wrote a long series a while back on the necessity of "classical conservatism," and what we are missing as a country by the death of classical conservatism, which we need as a check on that impulse. But the Democratic Party isn't batshit fucking crazy. They just don't have enough skepticism about the capacity of government programs to solve all problems. I could go on about problems within the party, goo-gooism, Bernie Sanders and his coterie of morons, but the Democratic Party is not batshit fucking crazy. It is a normal, left-wing party, and what you think of it depends on what you think of left-wing policies.
The Republican Party right now is completely batshit fucking crazy. This is my diagnosis as a "Doctor." Ph.D. Phony doctor, if you what to be technical, but the party is fucking crazy, and it needs to be said. They have handed nuclear weapons to an idiot child, whom the entire leadership of the party knows has no business being in charge of nuclear weapons. He has been called a "fucking moron" by his own Secretary of State, and said to have "the intelligence of a kindergartner," by his National Security Advisor. Mitch McConnell himself can barely keep a straight face when asked whether or not Trump understands policy. He is way too cozy with Putin, clearly guilty of federal crimes, a serial rapist, an unreconstructed racist, and the entire White House is, as Bob Corker says, "adult day care."
And most of the Republican Party doesn't care. Roy Moore is a child rapist, and most of the party is just willing to let him take that Senate seat, even though they could expel him to let Kay Ivey appoint a Republican replacement. They don't fucking care. It is actual news that Jeff Flake decided to contribute to Doug Jones, writing "Country Over Party," on the check. When the candidate of his own party is a child rapist.
We see this affect policy. After years of screaming "repeal Obamacare!," the Republicans didn't have a fucking bill because they never bothered to think about it. Why? Meaningless sloganeering. So, in slapdash manner, they eventually nearly passed one of the dumbest bills I have ever seen: "skinny repeal." It failed because a few people had just barely enough sense to realize how stupid it was.
Then, all three of the Republicans who voted against "skinny repeal" in the Senate voted for a tax bill that included it as a provision. And remember that the individual mandate was the Republicans' idea in the first place, and as recently as 2009-10, they were arguing for it.
A system without the mandate is defensible. Absolutely. You can make a case that it is an infringement on liberty. Go for it. But, a system with the preexisting condition regulations and no mandate is not defensible. It is just fucking stupid. And they used to know it.
A party that repeals the mandate without repealing the preexisting condition regulations is not a sane party.
Um... I started this post ranting about Al Franken, didn't I? The post morphed into a rant about how it won't affect McConnell's treatment of Roy Moore because McConnell doesn't care. Because the GOP is messed up.
And McConnell doesn't care. The parties aren't the same. One party is left-wing. The other party is just batshit crazy.
I don't write this as an angry liberal. Angry, yes. This is another venting post. But, my politics are weird, as you may notice if you read this blog regularly and closely enough. I wrote that series on classical conservatism because I actually do think that there needs to be a real check on the worst impulses of modern liberalism. A batshit crazy party can't do that.
If the Democrats think that by getting rid of Al Franken, they are doing some intrinsic good, then fine. If they think they are putting pressure on Republicans, um... no.
