I'll go with that. Franken never would have run for POTUS. And if he did,

[PatrickforB]

I doubt he'd have gone 'deep' in the primaries.

He was not a potential opponent removed through baseless accusations, rather he was a stepping stone for a few ambitious people, Gillibrand included, who misread the situation and underestimated the blowback. It was a horror to see it play out, courtesy of that jerk with the Nixon tattoo on his back.

You know, I can remember when I read a lengthy piece - not sure where it was, maybe Rolling Stone - about how a young woman who was one of Franken's constituents, Jamie Leigh Jones, went overseas to work for Haliburton, and ended up getting gang-raped and then locked in one of those freight containers, seriously injured, under armed guard. It was horrible.

Franken acted immediately upon hearing of the situation, got her out of there, helped her and her family all he could, and later guided a law through Congress that got rid of binding arbitration clauses with employees alleging sexual assault for companies that have military contracts. In 2010, Jones got her day in court. She lost, but Franken made it possible for her to press her case in civil court instead of with some industry-paid arbitrator.

Bottom line, Franken is a stand up guy, and was a really good, caring Senator. I wish this would not have happened to him, because whether those accusations were credible or not, he did not get due process.

The whole thing smacked of a right-wing hit job. That is why, Brooklynite, I agree this was not dirty Dem politics nearly as much as the right wing using baseless Rovian smear tactics to get rid of a too-formidable opponent in the Senate.