Alabama Megathread 2: Thou Shall Not Touch Teenage Girls

[Brittain33]

Someone is making fake robocalls in Alabama claiming to be a WaPo reporter seeking damaging info on Moore for money.  Details here

Named "Bernie Bernstein," just a little too on the nose I think

[Brittain33]

Jones is the Democrat Scott Brown. The Democrats will win.

I didn't think it was possible for me to feel worse for Martha Coakley than I do, but being compared to Roy Moore must suck.

[Brittain33]

Incredibly fun fact:

The executive director of the NRSC, which put out that poll to push Moore out of the race, is named Chris Hansen.

[Brittain33]

Is there a good explanation why Moore's campaign isn't on the air? Did he run ads in his past campaigns for judge or rely on free media? That seems like gross incompetence.

[Brittain33]

Is handwriting analysis actually an objective science? I assume that any expert hired by Moore would build a case that the writing is fake, while anyone hired by Allred would build a case finding it valid. Signatures waver in minor ways. Ultimately people will make up their own minds on the plausibility that someone would fake this particular inscription in the yearbook in these circumstances.

[Brittain33]

Why the mention of the restaurant.  Most yearbook entries do not set out the place.

He knew her as a waitress from the restaurant where he went to eat. This isn't hard unless you really, really don't want to believe he signed the yearbook.

[Brittain33]

Not a coincidence that the only two R groups to spurn Moore have "young" in their names.

[Brittain33]

I said this before, Jones coming out as pro-choice is his biggest mistake and it will probably cost him the election. Sadly abortion is probably a bigger hangup with AL voters than Moore's indiscretions.

Perhaps if Moore had any money to run an ad campaign recentering the race on abortion, he could have made it an issue. But he's silent.

[Brittain33]

I've deleted a bunch of recent posts that were off-topic.

Let's stick to discussing the Alabama senate race. The best way to avoid this thread getting derailed is to avoid engaging in unproductive back-and-forth. --Mod.

[Brittain33]

They've been running that ad for months. It's an old poll.

Just got this sponsored ad on Facebook:



I assume he is talking about the JMC poll from 11/9-11/11.

[Brittain33]

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.

[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.

[Brittain33]

Can we please stop hijacking the thread with "whataboutism"?

This thread is for discussion of the Alabama senate race.

[Brittain33]

GOP polls show Jones stagnating, McConnell still wants to expel him.

I find the choice of wording to be very peculiar. If polls showed Jones leading, and then polls are "stagnating", they are freezing with Jones in a narrow lead. It would take a very optimistic scenario to expect Jones to actively pull away in polls and this would still constitute good news for Jones.

I wonder if it was poor word choice and they meant to describe the polling as tied rather than not moving further.

[Brittain33]

I can confidently predict that Doug Jones will lose if the electorate is 75% white on December 12th.

I will also predict he will lose if 3% of voters are age 18-34 and 52% are 65 or older.

[Brittain33]

It's incredibly suspicious that the accuser's lawyer won't allow the yearbook to be verified by a neutral third party.

I disagree, based on what I've learned about expert witnesses from friends in law enforcement. I doubt there is an objective way to validate conclusively the yearbook inscription; it ain't the Shroud of Turin where you can carbon-date the cotton, nor is it DNA. Surely the yearbook is actually from the 1970s. There are probably a million ways to spread doubt and uncertainty and make it a "both sides disagree" thing. Moore's campaign will certainly find experts to say it has to be false.

TV has given people false expectations that there are scientific tests of evidence that can apply everywhere. As far as this yearbook, I don't think there's much more we can do than assess with our own eyes, with circumstantial evidence, and with context.

[Brittain33]

Alabama voters may not have gotten the message that Moore has already won. The latest WaPo poll has Jones up 3 with low undecideds.

I am getting that feeling I had a week before Virginia's election when everyone thought Northam had lost.

[Brittain33]

It has become quiet on this thread.

Lack of actual news + everyone focusing on the tax bill

[Brittain33]

Apologies if this was posted already, but Trump is hedging his bets about not campaigning for Moore by having a rally in Pensacola on Dec. 8, four days before the election.

The odds he doesn't ramble and say something nice about Moore and negative about Jones I'd say are close to 0.

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/2017/11/30/donald-trump-pensacola-campaign-alabama-special-election/911952001/

[Brittain33]

the south has some of the least segregated schools ironically enough. new york schools are far more segregated lol

While this was very much true in the 1980s and 1990s, the south has been resegregating rapidly as well.

[Brittain33]

The thing is, even if he hadn't dated and molested teenage girls which is what captured people's attention, Moore is nevertheless an unrepentant grifter in the mold of Donald Trump. Look at his private charitable foundation / slush fund. It's sad but he's truly a bad and dishonest guy.

[Brittain33]

The RNC has recommitted to Roy Moore most likely at Trump's direction, Ronna Romney McDaniel could have told him no but she most likely just rolled over on this on. Sick and more telling about her than about Moore or Trump. Mitt needs to get his niece in line, especially after he said this was a matter of honor and integrity the other day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEVOmFBM_xk

I wonder if Mitt's statement against Moore caused Trump to take this to Ronna as punishment.

It's not necessary for that to happen for the RNC to jump back in, and I don't know if Trump is capable of stringing those two thoughts together.

[Brittain33]

Looks like all that talk of "Moore momentum" in this race was basically just hot air, see also VA-GOV.

Different situation

-Moore has led in most recent polls and in most cases by somewhere between 3-6 points
whereas in Virginia Northam remained either in the lead or was tied in most late polls.

True, but no one expects Jones to win by 9 points like Northam did. We'd be ecstatic if we won by 200 votes.

[Brittain33]

Kaitlan Collins‏ @kaitlancollins 31 minutes ago
Requests for absentee ballots are way up in Alabama. Madison County, the third most populated, has sent out 2,900 & received 2,016 so far. That's much higher than the 650 they sent during the runoff & even surpasses the 1,900 they received during 2014 governor's race.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins 7 minutes ago
Replying to @kaitlancollins
Officials in Mobile County, the second most populated, tell me they have sent out nearly 2,000 absentee ballots.

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/938132179170873349

Madison County = Huntsville = highly educated. Good sign for Jones if it's disproportionately represented.

[Brittain33]

Kaitlan Collins‏ @kaitlancollins 31 minutes ago
Requests for absentee ballots are way up in Alabama. Madison County, the third most populated, has sent out 2,900 & received 2,016 so far. That's much higher than the 650 they sent during the runoff & even surpasses the 1,900 they received during 2014 governor's race.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins 7 minutes ago
Replying to @kaitlancollins
Officials in Mobile County, the second most populated, tell me they have sent out nearly 2,000 absentee ballots.

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/938132179170873349

Madison County = Huntsville = highly educated. Good sign for Jones if it's disproportionately represented.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing that Jones would need support from there to win, but this is a county that voted SOLIDLY for Donald Trump ... "educated county = Democratic county" is ridiculous.

Sure, and I'm not saying it's a "Democratic county" by most normal standards. It swung significantly away from Trump vs. Romney and it's an area where given the special circumstances of the Moore-Jones race I'd expect Jones to run especially strong. It's about the margins. Obviously higher turnout in largely Af-Am counties would be more unequivocally helpful for Jones.