Alabama Megathread 2: Thou Shall Not Touch Teenage Girls

[junior chįmp]

New Education ad from Doug Jones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oploBpOfQdA

The genius of this ad is that Roy Moore can't even respond due to his "views" on children.

[Dr. Arch]

New Education ad from Doug Jones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oploBpOfQdA

The genius of this ad is that Roy Moore can't even respond due to his "views" on children.

YEP, LOL

[Greedo punched first]

Independent Lee Busby is in.

[junior chįmp]

Independent Lee Busby is in.

"General Lee"

[Holmes]

Independent Lee Busby is in.

Literally some guy.

[ursulahx]

Independent Lee Busby is in.

Have seen it suggested he’ll take more votes from Jones, but that could be wishful thinking/pessimism.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

Independent Lee Busby is in.

Have seen it suggested he’ll take more votes from Jones, but that could be wishful thinking/pessimism.

I doubt he gets more than 1-2% of the vote. He should have no impact on the race.

[Devout Centrist]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What even is this

[Arkansas Yankee]

Nancy Pelosi just gave Alabama Republicans permission to vote for Moore:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/morality-will-to-power-pelosi/

Read and cry.  Congers can stay and actually pay his accusers and she wants a Democrat Senate seat from

Does Moore not at least get a chance to pay off his accusers.

Hypocrite Pelosi.

Double Standards everywhere.

[Greedo punched first]

There are now 6 write-in candidates:
Chanda Mills Crutcher (I)
Ron Bishop (L)
Eulas Kirtdoll (I)
Mac Watson (R)
Lee Busby (R)
Mack McBride (I)

[Holmes]

Alabama Republicans always had permission to vote for Moore. It's just that doing so would mean they're voting for a man that had preyed on young girls.

[Tartarus Sauce]

We saw with Trump that major allegations / missteps hurt him for like a week and then Republicans privately forgave him and rallied around his candidacy again. With Moore, there's a risk that when the allegations go out of the news for several days, Republicans let them slip out of their minds as well and start to rationalize supporting him again.

Several key differences between the two scenarios:
 
-The national media shaped a horse race narrative where scandals on both sides were treated equally even when the substance and severity of the scandals were highly disparate. Trump had a ton of scandals that should have sunk any other candidate, but there were so many that each one had a lesser impact by themselves than the gargantuan "email" scandal of Clinton's which was made into a monolith. When Comey's letter was released, the media basically dropped the Access Hollywood tape from the headlines. There is no comparable or even non-comparable scandal engulfing Doug Jones, and no big media outlet clamoring to equivocate the two. It's been non-stop negative coverage at the local and national level of Roy Moore's child molestation allegations, and Jones has utterly dominated the local airwaves, keeping the scandal fresh in voters' minds. Moore is also not nearly as savvy at deflection as Trump is, mostly attacking the media and the accusers while letting Jones less Alabama-representative views (like being pro-choice) fly under the radar for most voters.

-The national Republican party created a permission structure for reluctant rank and file party voters to coalesce around Trump. After the initial round of defections in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, the RNC circled the wagons and brought everybody back on board out of necessity; they couldn't afford to go into the election leaderless. The GOP leadership despises Moore and feels no similar commitment to helping him win. The national party is no longer fundraising or supporting him and have cut ties, meaning no outside cavalry is coming in to prop him up like they did with Trump at the 11th hour. Those Strange primary voters don't have the same permission structure to embrace Moore set in place the way it was for Trump in 2016, and while most Moore voters don't give a crap what the party leadership does, the ones whose support has been most shaken by the allegations tend to fit the profile of those that are more establishment friendly, and they aren't receiving the necessary cues from GOP leadership to hold their nose and vote Moore.

-As we've seen with the litany of special elections throughout the year, Democrats are energized and turning out in greater numbers than they did during the Obama years. Even in red territory like KS-4, SC-5, Oklahoma legislature, etc., Democrats have significantly outperformed their usual margins and flipped red seats or made the races closer than they had any right to. Demoralization of the incumbent party is a well-attested to phenomenon, and having your party's candidate for the Senate race of your state get slammed with multiple allegations of child molestation isn't exactly the type of thing that helps less enthused voters turn out to the polls. Moore's enthusiastic base might turn out, but given how utterly dependent he was on a smooth turnout operation to win, it's not surprising that the latest round of polls showed a deep drop in his support, which was already underperforming the usual Alabama Republican.

I think people are just overly cynical and keep viewing things from the lens of the last series of elections and are slow to readjust their expectations when the political environment shifts. Moore might very well manage to pull out a victory in the end, but we haven't had any more credible pollsters out in the field in the past week, yet that hasn't stopped people from falling back on a doom and gloom prediction of Jones' inevitable failure because of Alabama's Republican default or because Trump managed to survive his scandal.
 
Jones isn't guaranteed a win, it's an extremely tight race as the most recent polls demonstrated, but I think people are using the wrong roadmaps to try and prognosticate the outcome.

[The Other Castro]

Gabriel Debenedetti‏ @gdebenedetti
If Doug Jones loses, money won’t be the reason: he brought in $2.9m online in October — BEFORE the Roy Moore accusations began, @PoliticoScott finds > http://politico.pro/2AhKqrh

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/935223202174914560

[Blair]

We saw with Trump that major allegations / missteps hurt him for like a week and then Republicans privately forgave him and rallied around his candidacy again. With Moore, there's a risk that when the allegations go out of the news for several days, Republicans let them slip out of their minds as well and start to rationalize supporting him again.

Several key differences between the two scenarios:
 
-The national media shaped a horse race narrative where scandals on both sides were treated equally even when the substance and severity of the scandals were highly disparate. Trump had a ton of scandals that should have sunk any other candidate, but there were so many that each one had a lesser impact by themselves than the gargantuan "email" scandal of Clinton's which was made into a monolith. When Comey's letter was released, the media basically dropped the Access Hollywood tape from the headlines. There is no comparable or even non-comparable scandal engulfing Doug Jones, and no big media outlet clamoring to equivocate the two. It's been non-stop negative coverage at the local and national level of Roy Moore's child molestation allegations, and Jones has utterly dominated the local airwaves, keeping the scandal fresh in voters' minds. Moore is also not nearly as savvy at deflection as Trump is, mostly attacking the media and the accusers while letting Jones less Alabama-representative views (like being pro-choice) fly under the radar for most voters.

-The national Republican party created a permission structure for reluctant rank and file party voters to coalesce around Trump. After the initial round of defections in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, the RNC circled the wagons and brought everybody back on board out of necessity; they couldn't afford to go into the election leaderless. The GOP leadership despises Moore and feels no similar commitment to helping him win. The national party is no longer fundraising or supporting him and have cut ties, meaning no outside cavalry is coming in to prop him up like they did with Trump at the 11th hour. Those Strange primary voters don't have the same permission structure to embrace Moore set in place the way it was for Trump in 2016, and while most Moore voters don't give a crap what the party leadership does, the ones whose support has been most shaken by the allegations tend to fit the profile of those that are more establishment friendly, and they aren't receiving the necessary cues from GOP leadership to hold their nose and vote Moore.

-As we've seen with the litany of special elections throughout the year, Democrats are energized and turning out in greater numbers than they did during the Obama years. Even in red territory like KS-4, SC-5, Oklahoma legislature, etc., Democrats have significantly outperformed their usual margins and flipped red seats or made the races closer than they had any right to. Demoralization of the incumbent party is a well-attested to phenomenon, and having your party's candidate for the Senate race of your state get slammed with multiple allegations of child molestation isn't exactly the type of thing that helps less enthused voters turn out to the polls. Moore's enthusiastic base might turn out, but given how utterly dependent he was on a smooth turnout operation to win, it's not surprising that the latest round of polls showed a deep drop in his support, which was already underperforming the usual Alabama Republican.

I think people are just overly cynical and keep viewing things from the lens of the last series of elections and are slow to readjust their expectations when the political environment shifts. Moore might very well manage to pull out a victory in the end, but we haven't had any more credible pollsters out in the field in the past week, yet that hasn't stopped people from falling back on a doom and gloom prediction of Jones' inevitable failure because of Alabama's Republican default or because Trump managed to survive his scandal.
 
Jones isn't guaranteed a win, it's an extremely tight race as the most recent polls demonstrated, but I think people are using the wrong roadmaps to try and prognosticate the outcome.

I know it's lazy but this 1000 times.

People need to understand just how damaged the Moore campaign is; Trump's campaign at least brought in enough money to be relatively competitive, and used Trump to inspire a lot of voters, who where then brought in through the various republican infrastructure that had been built in states like Florida, Ohio etc.

I haven't seen any numbers but I can't imagine that Moore is raising enough money (based on his last release) to actually do much. He's got no support from outside Groups, the RNC has cut off money so he's relying solely on online fundraising based on 'Muh Liberal conspiracy'.

The guy almost lost a statewide race in 2012 when Obama was on the ballot. 

[The Other Castro]

Wow.

"A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation."

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-part-of-undercover-sting-operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?utm_term=.e7b607878b31

[Gass3268]

And people wonder why O'Keefe has no creditability.

[GlobeSoc]

I wonder what o Keefe will say now, assuming he responds to this at all.

[Hydera]

And people wonder why O'Keefe has no creditability.

You have to wonder how many republicans see the title and thinks it "proves these allegations are false" just because they didn't read the original wapo story.

[Brittain33]

Hahaha. I love that the WaPo got her because of her GoFundMe page about moving to NY to work for a conservative org fighting the lies of the MSM.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I wonder what o Keefe will say now, assuming he responds to this at all.

He already says that he has "explosive" videos and that the WP piece is a hit job ordered by Bezos.

[Dr. Arch]

I wonder what o Keefe will say now, assuming he responds to this at all.

He already says that he has "explosive" videos and that the WP piece is a hit job ordered by Bezos.

He's a pathetic loser.

[BundouYMB]

O'Keefe is a literal scam artist, and I have no idea how he keeps finding legal loopholes to defraud people. In any sane country he'd be in prison.

[KingSweden]

God O’Keefe is such a fraudulent hack

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

God O’Keefe is such a fraudulent hack

That's not news to anyone who isn't a brainwashed moron.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Richard Shelby just said to reporters that he voted and wrote-in a "respected Republican".