MSNBC host Chris Matthews on air during the final day of the 2016 Republican National Convention. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When Al Franken announced on Thursday that he would resign his Senate seat, the Minnesota Democrat remarked 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.”
Franken was, of course, referring to President Trump, who boasted on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape about kissing and groping women without consent, and Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused by eight women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. The Alabama Republican could very well win Jeff Sessions's old Senate seat on Tuesday. And while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said Moore would likely face an ethics investigation if he's elected, there is no guarantee that it would result in his expulsion.
Franken's implication was that Democrats might be unilaterally disarming by purging men accused of sexual misconduct while Republicans who face similar allegations remain in power.
On MSNBC later in the day, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews said, “The worst you can say about Democrats is they are too pure” on sexual misconduct. “And that’s a stupid thing to say.” Matthews, a former chief of staff for the late Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill, added: “But that’s the worst thing you can say about them. These guys set too high a standard for public office. How’s that for an argument?”
Matthews noted the same apparent imbalance between the major political parties that Franken raised. “If the president admits publicly, as he has done on tape, that he assaulted women as a manner of habit because of his celebrity, saying he could get away with doing it and had done so, why shouldn't he resign today like Franken did, if you are being consistent?” he asked.
Trump is not resigning.
“Look, the president addressed the comments back during the campaign,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during a media briefing Thursday. “We feel strongly that the people of this country also addressed that when they elected Donald Trump to be president.”
Politico's Matthew Nussbaum then asked, “Can you say anything more broadly about the differences in the way the two parties are handling these accusations of sexual misconduct?”
Sanders replied, “I think that some of that would be left to some of the party leadership.”
Trump, the head of the Republican Party, certainly isn't calling for the GOP to apply the same standard to its members that Democrats applied to Franken and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.). The natural question is whether Democrats will soon conclude that to be “too pure” on the issue of sexual misconduct is to cede an advantage to Republicans.
On “Hardball,” Jason Johnson, politics editor at the Root, suggested to Matthews that Democrats' position “increases enthusiasm. It makes people much more happy about the party. It may not bring any Republicans over, but it will certainly make Democrats much happier.”
“I was thinking of that, too,” Matthews said.
That's the optimistic view. The alternative is that Democratic voters decide they can't afford to hold their politicians to a higher standard than their Republican counterparts and that they quickly lose their resolve.