Calling for resignation without investigation was dumb politics.

[Hortensis]

83. It would only have sown confusion, but every

newscast would have started with the various salacious allegations of tongues, butt-grabbing and so on, the picture of Franken's hands hoving over breasts, PLUS clips of new testimony from the 8 alleged victims, or would it have grown to 10, or 12 to drag it out?

As for an investigation, all questions into the women's own histories to suggest their characters were not credible would have been off the table, a dreadful mistake if made that would backfire ruinously. Republicans and sympathetic right wing and far left media would have cast Senate Democrats as "blaming the victims" for supposedly inviting attacks.

(This forum would have exploded with demands from anti-Democrat hostiles that senators resign for that reason, joined by some passionate ones who'd imagine they were fighting for women's rights.)

Note, though, that none of our senators were so stupid as to impune the integrity of any of the accusers. They knew.

Notably, the closest Franken himself came to suggesting anyone was lying was to specifically deny ever asking anyone, not that woman specifically, to meet him for sex in a toilet stall. He and the Republican plotters who set this up were all aware of this huge trap protecting his accusers, and he never obliged them by going anywhere near it.

And as more accusers came forward, an ethics investigation itself would have been a trap. They chose instead to deny the Republican plotters first several days of 24/7 coverage of investigation into Franken's tongue and then another 2 years of claiming the investigation itself "proved" the Democrats were just as bad as them.

Instead, although they managed to take out Senator Franken, we succeeded in drawing a line between our behavior and theirs. The best the disinformation forces on the right got out of it was helping along the dispiriting, weakening lies that it wasn't them but our own Democratic senators who did it. And, yes, they've been pushing that one big time.