Al Franken interview on The UpTake

Senator Al Franken answers questions from The UpTake, some serious, some frivolous.
Some highlights: on health care: private insurance needs competition from "a public option" (we know he is a strong advocate for accessible and affordable health care for all).He repeats that he favors gay marriage and thinks DOMA will be history soon. Specifically, he emarks that we just observed the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, and 42nd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, saying that 40 years from now, people will find it just as incredible that there was a ban on gay marriage as we do now that there was a ban on interracial marriage. Franken quotes his friend Paul Wellstone: "Politics is not about winning, it's not about power; it's about improving other people's lives."

Progress is too slow, but it is real, and we can't drop the ball because we are impatient with the pace. We need that 60th Senator. We needed those seven months of proving that the election was absolutely clean. We need to make sure that every vote is counted.

The swearing-in is tomorrow (see this Minnesota Independent story). He says it is surreal, after seven months, after watching the coverage on the UpTake; he's pinching himself. I'm elated that he will be in office and ready to work for us; it's about time we had our full representation in the Senate. Looking at the events in Iran and in Honduras makes me grateful, even when I'm feeling cynical about politics in the U.S., because it does make a difference that we have elections, that they can be legal and demonstrably free of corruption, that people can have trust that their voices will be heard by someone whose job it is to represent them.

With Sarah Palin's resignation in Alaska, we see that she and the people who support her are not interested in the actual work of governing, of the hard work of leadership; they are more interested in demagoguery and whipping up fear and resentment to frighten people. I hope that we keep our eye on the incremental changes that are slowly happening in Washington, and keep up the pressure to make those changes bigger and better. When I read the news from Iran and Honduras, I am reminded of a more shameful side of our government's history, when it does not obey its own laws. All the more reason to persist in the often tedious but absolutely necessary work of creating the infrastructure of civial society, such as citizen-journalism of the caliber of the UpTake. I'm going to be making a donation to them, because they need the money. Since our major news outlets can't do the job, we need to make sure it gets done.