Predict Roy Moore vs Doug Jones

I suggested that long before yesterday
But please keep on making **** up
I do concede the part about me not caring for McConnell is at least true

 

I was wrong.

Roy Moore was a creepy old bastard. 51% of Alabama voters believed the sex stuff was true. I heard on the radio that 93% of blacks, 55% of women, and 60+% of young people voted for Jones. Moore's support consisted mostly of white, working males.

Trump shot himself in the a@@ when he took Sessions out of Alabama. He and Sessions have been at each other's throats the whole time and now Alabama has a Democratic Senator. Republican majority in now just 51.

 

I think the story of this election is more about how Rs did not turn out rather than how the Ds did turn out. The Moore allegations offended Rs by a bigger margin than they inspired Ds. The numbers on white female voters stand out, esp white college educated

Not only would it have kept a reliable vote in the Senate but would have kept him out of DOJ. If he knew he was going to recuse himself before he took that job then he should not have taken it.

 

Probably the best outcome. Would have been a huge distraction having Moore in the Senate. Moore has only himself to blame as he did a really lousy job refuting the accusations.

 

I agree about the distraction but losing the seat is still worse.

It will be interesting to see what conclusion the Dems draw from their victory.
Will they say "Woohoo, look at Jones go! We need to run hard-left candidates everywhere now, even in red states."

Or, will they conclude "We got lucky this time that our opponent was an accused kid diddler?"

 

The Federalist (by Jordan Gehrke) now has a story online that lays out the background of how McConnell blew it in Alabama

"Mitch McConnell Is The Reason Doug Jones Is A Senator"

"While Mitch McConnell and his allies will try to blame conservatives for nominating Roy Moore, it’s important to remember that McConnell is the main reason Roy Moore was nominated.

The moment it was clear there would be a Special Election to replace Jeff Sessions, McConnell and his PAC, Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) declared they would back Luther Strange and vowed to spend millions on his behalf.

Strange was a flawed candidate from the jump. The circumstances around his appointment by scandal-ridden Governor Robert Bentley were sketchy at best, and rightly or wrongly, voters just never trusted him.

Looking back, an establishment candidate like Strange, beset by issues surrounding his appointment was never going to win a runoff in an anti-establishment state like Alabama–certainly not in the year after Donald Trump was elected.

Judge Roy Moore soon entered the race, followed by Mo Brooks, a conservative congressman from northern Alabama with a very solid voting record. A member of the House Freedom Caucus in the mold of Jeff Sessions, Brooks resonated with conservative grassroots. As I have outlined before, my firm was retained by Brooks and helped a pro-Moore superPAC in the runoff against Strange. (We did no work for Moore in the General Election.)

Determined to keep a Freedom Caucus member out of the Senate, McConnell and SLF swung into action with a little over a month to go, spending over four million dollars carpet-bombing Mo Brooks. They told everyone who would listen that they were going to destroy Brooks. They even hired consultants for a potential primary challenger in his house seat, just to intimidate him.

Why did they do all this?

Because they decided early that it would be easy to beat Roy Moore in a runoff. Unfortunately for them, Alabama voters didn’t really like the meddling by DC. This, coupled with the fact that Strange was so unpopular, meant that despite the attacks on Brooks, the race was tied in the closing days of the campaign with Brooks surging....."​

-- more at the link --
http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/12/mitch-mcconnell-is-the-reason-doug-jones-is-a-senator/

 

Some day, our little country needs to figure out a way to deal with this stuff

 

First I must say I'm glad Moore lost; not for party or political philosophy reasons. He's always been a clown and his removal as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court should have been the end of this guy's career. The sex allegations were superfluous and it should never have gotten to that point. His nomination as the Republican candidate was very disappointing.

As for the Left, they never learn. They will assume this was a complete repudiation of Trump, a green light to impeach, approval of more sanctuary cities and in general a signal that the nation has become Liberal.

My view of it is this: Roy Moore was a horrible candidate and he almost won. That's not a validation of the hard-left. It's a validation that they still have big problems. This was a huge mistake by somebody on the right (McConnell as the article above states?).

 

I think the message in this election is that in the Bible Belt a wacky right wing Republican will pretty much always win in the statewide general election, a but a lunatic fringe right winger at war with his own party can't overcome reported sexual improprieties/sexual weirdness.

 

Brooks was the right guy
Sadly, he just announced he has prostate cancer

 

When did you do this? Link?

However, even if you did (which I don't recall any such comments), do you think Bannon and his dumbass disciples would have tolerated or accepted such an approach without throwing a fit? Hell no.

And blame lies first and foremost with those who supported Moore over both Brooks and Strange. He was a crap candidate even without the molestation accusations. Should McConnell have promised to expel him? Maybe, but that would have carried massive political costs. The "anti-establishment" types would have demonized the hell out of him and any Republican who voted to expel Moore. They would have been labeled "cucks," RINOs, and every other idiotic characterization from the illiterate wing of the Party.

And if Moore had any decency, he would have stepped aside and (if necessary) backed a write-in candidate once he was ratted out. (Of course, if he had any decency, he wouldn't have been trying to fondle a 14-year-old girl's crotch, but sadly, that's beside the point.) The guy was a self-centered ***-wrinkle throughout this entire process.

 

Roy Moore refuting the accusations is like OJ looking for the real killers.

 

I'm pretty quick to slam Trump most of the time, but I can't bust his balls on this. At the time he appointed Sessions, nobody thought he wouldn't be easy to replace with a Republican. It's one of the reddest states in the country. Trump had just carried the state by a massive margin, and the state hadn't elected a Democrat to the Senate in 25 years and has never elected anybody as liberal as Doug Jones. This was about as low risk as it gets. You have to screw it up really, really badly to lose an election like this. It's a little like the Ted Kennedy seat going GOP in 2010, but in a lot of ways, it's even worse.

 

Actually, with Session appointed as DA and subsequently recused from the Russian investigation, we got the current **** show by Mueller and company. Trump and the GOP would have never known about the Obama and Clinton goons in the DOJ and FBI. In the end, it might end up better for Trump to see what he is up against in DC.

 

Much of that, arguably all of it, is on McConnell. See the link above for a first hand account of this written by someone on the Brooks team.

Maybe my memory has faded but I do not recall that Bannon was involved in this election until after the primary. My memory is that you Never Trumpers actually criticized him at the time for "after-the-fact grandstanding" when he showed up to support Moore after he beat Strange. So it looks an awful lot like historical revisionism for you to now blame Moore being the candidate on him.

The way I see it is that, whatever your opinion on Bannon, this election was not about him. Yes it is hard to miss the gloating victory laps today from the Never Trumpers. They love that a guy Bannon campaigned for lost. They are as happy as they can be. But when they do this, they always reveal more about themselves than they intend to do -- that they care more about being proven right than what is best for the country. The pathology here is disturbing.

This obsession you guys have with being proven correct on Bannon/Trump have you missing the big picture. Bannon could disappear tomorrow and we will still have a brain dead party lacking any positive narrative or alternative vision to what the Establishment Globalists are offering. It has been this way since the end of the Reagan Era. From my perspective, it always looks like modern Establishment Rs prefer to be the minority. They like playing defense and revel in being bitchy backbenchers. They take pride in "minimizing the damage." They love compromise. They wrap themselves in "putting up the good fight." But they do not want to lead. They dont know how. When they have the rare chance, they trip all over themselves, then do nothing. Why? They have no vision. They dont even know what they actually want, other than impeding Dems.

What is it exactly that Establishment Republicans, whether in power or out, have actually done since the Reagan Era? What are the big things? The two that come to mind immediately are --
1. Gone to War, and
2. Increased Entitlements
I do not understand why you work for more of this lameness.

Lastly, as to Alabama, I wanted to retain the seat. I did not care as much who the candidate was as I did winning the election. There is a long thread with many posts about this for you to go back and look at if that's you r deal.

 

Bannon was definitely involved during the primary pushing Moore. It was always odd that he and Trump were pushing different candidates.

 

What in this tweet needs to be dealt with? She's a partisan. As far as partisan twitter goes this is like a C-.

 

The assumption here is that Bannon is representing what is best for this country. Does anyone think he represents greater than 50% of our voter views? 30%? 20%? We know he doesn't represent liberals and I'd argue this is at least a small rebuke of the extremist element of the conservative movement which Bannon is a clear leader.

 

What makes Jones "far left"? He's a Methodist former federal prosecutor.

 

Bubba, read it again and see what you catch.

 

The logic that brought us such gems as "they're professionals and work for the government, so their biases won't have an impact on their investigation."

 

Look at it again
Its standard Sheila Jackson Lee

 

I'm a slow soaker. It reads "Sweet home Alabama. Thank you Alabamians. Good has prevailed and our country is on the way to a new day #ikneel"

She may have screwed up Alabamians - I don't really know. I think good did prevail. That's truly a difference of opinion. Is it the ikneel thing? I really don't know. I don't have my Limbaugh/Jones antennae tuned properly.

 

It's not your fault. You're a Sooner so it's to be expected. I'll give you a hint. Look at the name on the second line.

 

If mistakes in Tweets by public officials is the standard than I'm on board with trying to fix this egregious problem. Let's start at the top. Out with SJL AND DJT for inferior intellectual faculties.

 

It's funny because she has a history of insane statements(400 year old Constitution, Man on Mars, etc.).

 

And Trump doesn't? Even most rational conservatives would say he has an equal history of insane statements. Entire websites are devote to his outrageous tweets. The difference is, nobody listens to SJL.

 

Thanks! I get it now. Not sure how that needs to be "dealt with".