A few more words: …is an adult and makes his own decisions. Gillibrand isn’t some all powerful junior Senator that can push out any Senator she chooses. Why was her call for his resignation any more potent than the other 34 members of the caucus that called for him to resign?
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Al Franken should have kept his hands to himself. He has no one to blame but Al Franken.
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This is a garbage response. Franken was credibly accused of sexual harassment by multiple women, and made the choice to resign on his own. Yes Gillibrand called for him to resign, but so did many other Senators, including Bernie Sanders, so why is she the only one getting heat for this. Values only mean something if you hold them when it is difficult.
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Garbage response.
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It was the way she did it. She beat the drum and led the band. I am sorry, but Franken deserved something short of political death. His offense, will reprehensible, wasn’t as bad as nearly any of the others. I for one hope he makes a comeback.
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It was not political death, it was political suicide. He quit before he had a hearing and they would have given him one.
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A year and a half ago, She was my prediction as the one to watch. I don’t fault her for representing her district in congress.
Every human contains contradictions and is responsible for them. She’s not to blame for Al Franken’s choices. He’s got it within himself to handle things. I hated to see that happen but hypocrisy increases apathy and shrinks the electorate.
We need to become the party that represents the working class, That’s going to take one hell of a paradigm shift. I love most of the Presidential candidates. Gillibrand may have what it takes to not only win, but affect the needed changes.
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Shouldn’t a politician’s view be consistent? Bedrock values? Here’s what bothers me about her (text within quotes are from her page on Wiki):
She chose to represent the Phillip Morris Tobacco company in private practice as a lawyer,: “Gillibrand defended the company’s executives against a criminal investigation into whether they had committed perjury in their testimony before Congress when they claimed that they had no knowledge of a connection between tobacco smoking and cancer. Gillibrand worked closely on the case and became a key part of the defense team.”
During her campaign for the House seat: “she campaigned against amnesty for illegal immigrants, promised to restore fiscal responsibility to Washington, and pledged to protect gun rights.”
Once in the House: "She opposed a 2007 state-level proposal to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and voted in favor of legislation that would withhold federal funds from immigrant sanctuary cities.
Gillibrand also “voted for a bill that limited information-sharing between federal agencies about firearm purchasers and received a 100 percent rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA).”
“While Gillibrand expressed personal support for same-sex marriage, she advocated for civil unions for same-sex couples and stated that the same-sex marriage issue should be decided at the state level.”
Yes, I’m cherry-picking the bad stuff from the Wiki page on her, and ignoring the positive stuff, much of which is more recent.
Personally, I don’t want anyone who previously held those views to be President. If she was capable of doing a political 180 degree switch after reaching the Senate, she could just as easily flip back, or at least partly back in that direction once reaching the ultimate seat of power. I don’t trust her. I want a candidate whose views have consistently matched my own.
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It’s a fantastic video, but if you’ve been following her over the years since her days in the House she has a careening, weather vane style of politics that is far from brave. She often comes across as overtly politically calculating in a similar way to Hillary Clinton or Al Gore - a trait that I think is particularly toxic with the electorate right now.
Her progressivism is definitely a recent phenomenon, and while I welcome her about faces on things like gun control it makes me worry she’ll do another about face if politically expedient. A very Clinton-esque quality (and I mean Bill, not Hillary).
I’m not saying someone has to be ideologically pure to be our nominee as I tend to be more centrist, but I think that someone who feels like a career politician in the way that she does will be an easy target for Trump, who despite his overall abject ignorance is a fairly skillful campaigner (whether we want to admit it or not).
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Indeed. She’s on my “nope, unless it’s the only viable vote in Nov 2020” list.
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I am puzzled why she was so willing to consign Franken to non-personhood but not serial sexual predator Bill Clinton and his enablers (Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, etc.).
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This always gets me - people hold lawyers’ clients against them. She likely chose to represent them because they could afford it. It was a job. A job. It was not a statement of personal philosophy or opinion. It was a job.
Her votes are fair game all day every day and twice on Sunday. But people should not hold lawyers’ clients against them - it’s a job.
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Not so - she said Bill Clinton should have resigned when she was asked.
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What did Bill Clinton ever have to do with Anita Hill?
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Hopefully we’ll have a robust vetting process that shows us how each candidate deals with their red flags. Those are valid points. I remain undecided on purpose.
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I am not a lawyer, but there are several lawyers in my extended family (corporate law and personal injury). So I know about the job aspects. I’ll uphold all day long the choice to defend someone on the basis that the system should be fair for everyone, even the guilty. But with something like the Phillip Morris gig, there are extenuating circumstances, like cancer deaths in the wider population.
Many lawyers do manage to maintain a personal standard of who they will or won’t work for, in a situation like that. When you defend a corporation causing harm like the Asbestos industry, the Coal industry, Phillip Morris, it’s a choice with wider consequences. Not just a job. If you don’t walk away (and she could have joined another firm), then in my opinion you’re complicit in the harm.
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That’s totally unfair.
That would make me complicit in every murder committed by one of my clients if someone decided that that was how it is.
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It’s just my opinion in the narrow context of corporate cases like Phillip Morris. I don’t extend that to something like a murder case. It’s a question of scale, for one thing.
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I understand what you’re saying it’s a commonly held opinion so you aren’t alone. And every presidential campaign where a lawyer runs, the question of clients generally comes up.