https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-joke-why-al-franken-should-replace-joe-biden
As calls for Biden to exit the race grow, who could take his place on the Democratic ticket? A Minnesota man may be the antidote to Florida Man.
He'd get my vote....
Unfortunately Al Franken was sacrificed by leading democratic women on the wave of me too, on accusations staged by the Republicans.
Because Al Franken was one of the absolute most effective voices against the Republican madness.
Hello Gillibrand. Are you happy now? Did this boost your career like you hoped it would?
That was ridiculous though, and media pressure shouldnt have forces his resignation.
I 100% agree, Al Franken was amazing at framing things and putting them into perspective. The sacrifice of him was a huge misunderstanding and completely undeserved.
Well, a staged photo with the subject in full knowledge is far, far worse than anything done since then, right? Right?? (this was what got him booted iirc)
The drumbeat from so-called feminists and the "liberal media" would have just kept on going until he did.
Nope, Kirsten Gillibrand was a senator from NY who led the charge in calling for Franken's resignation
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/26/al-franken-kirsten-gillibrand-2020-1014697
If we're going with a comedian, I'd sooner pick Jon Stewart. That is assuming he'd even want to do it.
For what it's worth, as it's not clear if you're already aware, but Al Franken was actually a pretty decent senator for ~9 years.
Jon has stuck his oar into political matters, but not at that level.
Yeah and Al was good at it too before he got sac'ed for a dumb gag photo!
Jon is probably a bit more eloquent and has an impeccable moral compass. I've got a good feeling he's smart enough to know he doesn't know shit about most things but would during himself with people that do and would listen to them on those matters.
Also, he doesn't want to do it which makes me think he'd actually be good at it. He'd recognize it as a mostly shit job that needs to be done well and not as some sort of self-aggrandizing accomplishment after decades in politics. Something about true leaders not seeking power but having it thrust upon them I guess :>
Jon / Al ticket would be amazing they are both smarter and kinder than any politican out there.
Bernie and AOC are very good too. There are probably others, USA has a lot of politicians. It's impossible to know but a fraction of them.
I like Bernie but we'd be running into the same cryptkeeper problems before long too.
AOC while I agree with her on most things doesn't really come off as particularly charismatic.
Love how you're being downvoted for pointing out that Bernie is older than either of the other 2 candidates
I think the downvotes are aimed at the AOC commentary, which I too disagree with.
Politics doest work by picking your heros though, you have to pick people others outside your narrow group will support.
AOC has a lot of work to do before she's getting a decent share of the national vote
In that respect it makes it easy then that 95% of them stride on the party line with no conviction of their own and never waver from what daddy DNC tells them to do, making them generic, forgettable, and unimportant.
It is the exact same for the right except with more outliers that try to be blatantly worse human beings than the others.
Al/Jon would work better. I think Franken would do better in the Oval Office while Jon would shine cracking the whip as President of the Senate. Might be able to get some work out of those bastards for a change.
Jon Stewart tearing into the Senate on a daily basis for four years would heal my soul
I like Jon too much to make him president. Trying to get health care for 9/11 first responders aged him a lot.
I mean if Al is going to take over this country anyway, might as well be this one. Or the weird one.
Me? I’d vote for him. Liked what I saw while he was in congress. Still think it was bs how he was pushed out before any actual investigation was done, if memory serves me correctly.
It was another case of Democrats following the rules, setting an example of decency only for Republicans to go "Hm neat! Anyway, here's a rapist for president"
A comedian is perfect for today's sound bites and excerpts. Him clowning on trump up until the election would be perfect for the TV ratings these networks want. A witty, charismatic guy would win this
Not a huge fan of the "SOPA debacle" Al Franken, but I'd take Franken over Biden a million times over.
As a European, I never heard of this guy and it's probably not a perfect candidate either. But just based on what's written in the article it might indeed be a valid option to consider although personally I'd wish for a more progressive US leader.
Reading comments regarding the presidential election on social media, the thing you literally read the most is that people want someone younger that is neither Trump nor Biden. This guy is still old but apparantly around a decade younger. He's not Biden and not Trump and still somewhat popular across different generations. Might work out.
Al Franken was possibly the most effective voice against Republican extremism. But he was sacrificed on Republican staged offense on the height of the wave of the me too movement.
He was also the only senator who truly understood the perils of big tech and was willing to stand up to them
https://www.wired.com/story/al-franken-just-gave-the-speech-big-tech-has-been-dreading/
Ugh, I just got done listening to the portion in the audiobook for Maher's book where he goes over how the #metoo thing was only really a weapon used against Democrats and talks about Franken.
I'd love to see Franken run, but the depressing fact is that he was thrown under the bus for a ridiculous overreaction called the #metoo thing, and there will be many so-called feminists coming for him with guns blazing.
#metoo was a needed movement, but in certain cases it definitely went too far. I think the "believe women" rhetoric makes sense in the contact of "sexual assault happens more than you think, we should stop completely ignoring or actively disbelieving women on impulse when they share their stories". But some people just took it as "why would any woman ever lie about this, they must be telling the complete and full truth in all circumstances" which is unfortunately how the Al Franken allegations went.
Right, it's not like no woman would ever lie about such things and it's not like after 2017 women everywhere became somehow unable to lie about it. I think it's fair to believe it happens more than some believed before, and such claims deserve careful consideration. Moral panic is never good, however. Historically it's always led to bad outcomes and overreactions society as a whole tens to regret.
Ah yes, the me too movement went too far. I mean it's nice and all to bring attention to the fact that 1 in 3 women get SA'd, while only 3/100 perpetrators see prison. But tragically, in all the confusion, some millionaire celebrities faced consequences, perhaps even unfairly.
Yes, I think sacrificing innocent people is not good if that was misdirected anger because a slimy sex offender like donnie slid into office. It's not like something like #metoo cannot oversteer into a moral panic like so many other similar things have done. Do I think anyone deserves to be sexually assaulted (there are male victims as well) - of course not. And of course I think people that perpetuate such assaults need to be appropriately punished.
We should also recognize that women are capable of lying about such things, and these kind of things are obviously weaponized only against Democratic politicians for the most part. If a Republican gets all gropey and creepy, nothing seems to be done about it (at least in some very notable cases), even if verified in a court of law.
Replacing Biden with a white man and making it unlikely that Harris would end up as President is a recipe for breaking the Democratic coalition. Probably not a good move.
Harris was the first to drop out of the last Primary. Do people really think that she is what the majority of Democrats wanted?
Oh, she's pro locking up more people and making the Drug War even bigger by continuing to go after chronic pain patients and people who need medication after surgeries.
She ticked the correct policy boxes of big business and prison labor way before her superficial looks allowed an old racist like Biden tokenize her.
Nah, how about we put up the most likely to win that has policies that are popular, regardless if they happen to be a white man or not. I'm sure most POC within the Democratic Party can recognize attempts at manipulation by ticking checkboxes and pandering.
Harris is a vile human. Biden is a senile corporate wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is the Weimar Republic all over again. Democracy has failed. Hopefully whatever we rebuild from the smoldering ashes is more resilient to fascism and oligopolies.
"Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration"."
Yeah and only people that have never looked at a history book are accelerations.
Many times a society that was destroyed doesn't get rebuilt. And when they do, they usually rebuild themselves to the way it was before it's downfall (minus the specific cause), not according to the angsty ideals of teenagers. West Germany went back to being a capitalist democracy after fascism destroyed their country. East Germany only went communist because they were forced to by the Russians. And that didn't last.
