Dems get the message

Make no mistake, U.S. Sen. Al Franken’s resignation isn’t about making amends to women who clearly feel aggrieved. No, it’s about politics pure and simple. It’s about his Democratic colleagues, especially his female colleagues, shoving him out the door in a way that will allow them to quite rightfully claim the moral high ground over their Republican counterparts. And good for them!

The fact that Minnesota’s Democratic governor will get to name another Democrat to the seat until a November 2018 special election made it an easy call and gives the party a better shot at keeping the seat in the (D) column.

A less-than contrite Franken made his announcement yesterday on the floor of the Senate, still insisting, “Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember quite differently.”

Well, whatever allows Al to look himself in the mirror every morning.

But his colleagues had pretty much had it with what was rapidly emerging as a pattern of misbehavior — not of the pantsdropping Matt Lauer variety or the towel-dropping Harvey Weinstein variety, but gross and inappropriate nevertheless.

And as long as Franken remained in the Senate, Democrats would have difficulty pressing the case against Alabama Republican Roy Moore, should he be elected next Tuesday. It was a point alluded to by Franken himself.

“I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party,” he said.

The tsunami of sexual assault and harassment allegations that spawned the #MeToo movement is causing a sea-change in the media, entertainment, arts and now the political world. The Democratic Party on Capitol Hill showed this week it gets that. Republicans willing to overlook the many transgressions of Roy Moore still don’t.