Moore is Less

It was pretty clear that the Alabama senate race was not only going to be close, but near-impossible to figure out.  And I liked that most pundits -- who almost never say "I don't know" (since they're not paid to say "I don't know") said they didn't have a clue.  And I didn't have a clue.  Nothing to write publicly most-especially which could stand on its foundation.  However, in the afternoon yesterday, I was talking to a friend and said (in private) that, this being Alabama, although I expected Roy Moore to win, "If someone gave me odds -- any odds, even just two-to-one -- on Doug Jones, I'd take them.  And I wouldn't take the same bet with odds on Roy Moore."

It was just a total gut guess, but one based on a few things.  The first is that all the polls which showed Roy Moore winning were robocalls that only went to landlines, not mobile phones.  Polls that showed Doug Jones winning used humans and included mobile phones.  Second, the Jones campaign had raised more money and that seemed to me would allow for a stronger "get out the vote" ground game, which I thought would be critical.  And third, though I expected there were people who told polls they'd be for Jones because they didn't want to say they were really voting for Moore, I felt that -- in the end -- there would be a lot of people who, when standing in a voting booth, just wouldn't be able to cast their vote for an accused serious child molester.

It was just a pure, unadulterated, on-a-whim, "Who knows???" guess, and not one I felt remotely strong enough to make in public, and would only do so in private, and even then only make "with odds," but my guess did at least have reasons behind it.

Glad it was right.

The strange thing is that I know it would have been better for Democrats in 2018 if Roy Moore had won and Republicans had him around their neck in every race.  But it was much better for America if he lost.  So, that's what I was pulling for.  And very glad he lost.  And ultimately, this will still be an albatross for Republicans.  After all, their party leader Trump campaigned heavily for him and repeatedly endorsed him.  And the other hero of the far right, Steve Bannon, campaigned heavily for him.  And the Republican National Committee gave financing to him.  And evangelicals supported him.  The public knows that, and will remember -- even if it's not specifically brought up (which it may be).  Alleged serial child molester Roy Moore as the official Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate just tarnished the Republican Party.  And evangelicals, too.  The Party of Family Values smeared itself.  This race covered the GOP with a layer of scum that will be hard to wash off in 2018 -- and maybe longer.

For all the massive attention on this race, there was something incredibly notable about it (other than the obvious...), that surprised me greatly I didn't hear the media make a point of during the entire campaign. I heard it briefly referenced once or twice, but that's it during the month-long barrage of verbiage and analysis.  Mostly it was ignored.  And the point is that it's not just that a Democrat  won in Alabama, but that the very reason for this significant victory occurred specifically because Trump opened up the seat it by appointing Jeff Sessions to be the Attorney -- who then (and this is the additionally important part) had to recuse himself from the Russia investigations that opened the door for Robert Mueller being appointed Special Prosecutor!

So, Trump lost twice.  He lost the incredibly safe Alabama seat in the U.S. Senate, and he lost the ability to keep a lid on the Russia investigation.

It probably seemed a safe decision to make at the time.  This was Alabama, for goodness sake.  And this would be a loyal Attorney General.  But however it "seemed" doesn't matter.  Because it all turned out wrong for Trump.  In every way imaginable. And now the Senate margin for Republicans will drop to 51-49.

(That said, I don't think people should expect this to impact the vote on the reconciled tax bill.  First, it will probably take a while for Alabama to certify the results, and being a Republican state they will be in no rush to.  And second, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that, whoever won, the Senate wouldn't seat that person until next year.  So, unless Democrats can figure out a way to delay the process, the House and Senate votes will likely go forward as is.)

In my conversation yesterday afternoon, I also made another prediction.  I said that I thought most analysts would get the result wrong, whatever the result was.  And I was right about that.

After the results came in, almost all analysts talked about what a huge, important change this marked for Alabama.  How it showed that Democrats could compete today in even the most Red of Red states.  How it showed that Alabama was changing.  And while some of that is true, and certainly valuable for Democrats to build on...for the most part it has absolutely next to nothing to do with Doug Jones winning.

A Democrat won in Alabama because he was running against an accused serial child molester who said that a good period in America was during slavery and that all the constitutional amendments after the first 10 (like outlawing slavery and giving women the right to vote) were terrible and unnecessary, and who had twice been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court.  That's why Democrats won in Alabama.  And even for all that, as monumentally toxic as Roy Moore was -- he only lost by two percentage points.

Two percentage points!  This isn't a "new Alabama."  Good heavens, the man was an accused serial pedophile who had likely been banned from a mall -- and who liked slavery.  He should have lost by 50 points at a minimum.  But the Democrat -- a noble man who had prosecuted Ku Klux Klansmen for bombing a church that killed four little girls -- sneaked in by just a mere two points.  So, while Democrats should celebrate, they shouldn't take comfort that this win was about "issues."  It wasn't.  It was about arguably the worst U.S. Senate candidate in history.

But...the Democrat won.  And it was an important win.  Because Doug Jones does change the make-up of the Senate, even if only for two years.  And he did show that Democrats could win a Red state, even if the reason was a monumentally-horrific candidate.  And it tarnished Trump, Bannon and evangelicals.  And (most critically) tarnished and helped re-define the Republican Party as a whole, as a party without morals and values which will support an accused child molester for a vote.

And mainly because seating Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate was too unacceptable a reality to imagine.  And in the end, though Republicans probably, maybe, possibly wouldn't have seated him, given today's craven Republican Party still standing strongly in defense of a Trump I don't think we could unequivocally count on that.

So -- good.  Roy Moore lost.  Doug Jones, a good man, won.  And Trump got humiliated.