The “One Decision” Heidi Heitkamp Would Take Back Isn’t Outing Sexual Assault Survivors but Calling on Al Franken to Resign

I’m certain that former Senator Heidi Heitkamp has a lot to regret these days. Not winning her re-election campaign last year is no doubt one of them, but you’d think she’d be regretful about things less self-serving than that too.

Like her campaign’s outing of sexual assault survivors, perhaps. Or her state political party’s efforts to suppress the hunter vote.

Yet when asked by New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, Heitkamp said the “one decision” she’d take back was calling on former Minnesota Senator Al Franken to resign amid accusations that he’d been creepy and gropey toward women:

Heidi Heitkamp, the former senator from North Dakota, told me, “If there’s one decision I’ve made that I would take back, it’s the decision to call for his resignation. It was made in the heat of the moment, without concern for exactly what this was.”

That is some unfortunate phrasing for Heitkamp, given the aforementioned wrongs she perpetrated in pursuit of her political ambition, though her position on Franken isn’t exactly new. She backtracked on her call for Franken to resign just a month or so after originally making it.

Though Heitkamp has been a rank hypocrite on #MeToo issues from the beginning. She talked about “zero tolerance” when she originally called for Franken to resign…

…but then, as I just mentioned, was backtracking just a month later.

Franken was accused of inappropriate conduct by eight women, and apparently Heitkamp doesn’t feel their accusations are credible since she no longer feels Franken should have resigned, yet she decided to believe the accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She voted against his nomination, ultimately saying that it was his “body language” which convicted him in her mind.

There is literally a photograph, of undisputed provenance, showing Franken groping a sleeping woman.

Righteous indignation has always been one of Heitkamp’s favorite political tools, but always been a cover. A means to an end for Heitkamp’s relentless political ambition.