I think people can “come back” from almost anything in the right circumstances. But while he did this as a child, worst of it happened just five years ago since he's only 19 now. I wouldn't cancel him, but I'd have urged him to focus on organizing for a bit longer before running

That said, he did run, and won! That complicates the moral accounting in a way people can be disingenuous about when it comes to MeToo and elected officials - there's an insistence that doing right by women requires us to ignore a person's politics, which strikes me as wrong

Back when allegations about Al Franken came out, people got mad at me bc I said I wouldn't have wanted him to step down if he were going to be replaced by a Republican. I stand by it, bc having ACA repealed would have been infinitely worse for women than having Franken in office

Similarly, while I initially believed Tara Reade I never called for him to step down or vowed not to vote for him over it. As bleak as it seemed, Trump and GOP were still too harmful not to place these things in broader political context, and consider who'd be harmed in fallout

During the Kavanaugh hearings, I admired and believed Ford, and didn't want him to be confirmed. I have nothing but contempt for him, and believe he's one of the most intensely vile and harmful figures in the country - I'd feel only slightly less so had he never been accused

To be clear, I don't know enough about Coleman/incumbent to comment on moral stakes of this election specifically. While I'm disturbed by precedent set by a Party-backed write-in campaign to overturn election results, write-in campaigns are democratically valid in themselves

To be clearer, sexual assault is heinous. I also think that elected officials shape, vote for and block initiatives that have massive impact on people's lives. I'm confused by any ethic that insists we consider the former in isolation from the latter

And while Coleman has admitted to having done something undeniably horrific, I do think that the impulse to frame many stripes of misconduct as deal-breakers that wholly invalidate a person makes political hatchet jobs like the one attempted against Alex Morse more possible.

At the same time, I realize how painful it is for those who have experienced sexual violence to see perpetrators in power, and understand potential for it to erode movements. I don't have an answer to any of this, except that none of it is as straightforward as either side claims