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On Sexual Misconduct, Gillibrand Keeps Herself at the Fore - The New York Times

posted onDecember 7, 2017
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Article snippet: When the floodgates opened on Wednesday to cast Senator Al Franken aside, following a half-dozen accusations of sexual misconduct, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had positioned herself at the crest of the wave. “Enough is enough,” she wrote on Facebook, becoming the first of Mr. Franken’s Democratic colleagues to call for his resignation on Wednesday morning. By lunchtime, more than a quarter of Democratic senators had concurred; by evening, a solid majority. Mr. Franken has now scheduled a public announcement about his future for Thursday. It was the second time in a month that Ms. Gillibrand, of New York, widely considered a possible presidential candidate in 2020, stepped to the forefront of the national debate about sexual harassment and powerful men. In mid-November, she told The New York Times that President Bill Clinton should have resigned after his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, emerged two decades ago. That remark set off an unwelcome round of backward-looking questions for a Democratic Party that has tried to focus on the multiple women who have publicly accused President Trump of sexual misconduct, and the current Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore, who is accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls as young as 14. “I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping you are having the wrong conversation,” Ms. Gillibrand said Wednesday at a C... Link to the full article to read more

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