Alabama Megathread 2: Thou Shall Not Touch Teenage Girls

[Tartarus Sauce]

If Roy Moore actually loses this race, facilitating the election of a liberal Democratic senator in Alabama of all places will be the greatest public service of his entire career.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Why are so many people acting as if Jones has this in the bag? Everybody is thinking about their own decency and forgetting about Alabama's.

Anyway, I haven't seen much evidence of massive movement in aggregate polling where it counts, which is Jones' percentage of the vote. He was basically hovering between 42-44% prior to this; even if you include the garbage 1-day polls and polls from questionable pollsters (pretty much all we have), the past 7 or so polls put him at an average of 44%.

Moore's percentages have dropped; Jones have stayed the same. This is the classic recipe of a Southern election where supposedly-principled Republicans temporarily jump ship before flocking back by Election Day, along with all of the "independents" and "undecideds". If Jones isn't sitting at 50% in aggregate polling or ahead by 4-5 points consistently, he isn't going to win.

I don't think he has it in the bag as of right now, but I think most people are expecting this story to continue to unravel and that Moore will continue to misread the situation/defend his ego and gradually implode as he loses control of the narrative. It's likely still the early stages of the scandal and we haven't gotten any polling beyond the initial round right after the story first broke, so we don't know yet just how far the bottom can fall out for Moore.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I honestly do not see why Mitch wouldn't expel Moore if he won. He is a massive stain on the GOP brand and the kind of Senator who is prone to grandstanding and general disruption. He's just not reliable and is a drag on their party. More importantly though, booting him out of the Senate wouldn't be painful. Alabama is not going to rebel in any electorally significant way, if at all.

I don't know. You don't think those Moore supporters in Alabama would be pissed about the Senate telling them you know what, no thanks on your candidate? I think they would be. I'm not sure what they could do, but I guess they could make life difficult for the "establishment."

Well I do think a lot of diehard Moore supporters would be pissed, but Alabama is so polarized and deeply Republican that it can absorb a lot of temporary partisan rebellion. However for as mad as they might get, I just don't think most of them would try to take that out on the party by voting for a Democrat, because, well, Democrats are EVIL BABY KILLING SATAN WORSHIPPERS!

We're evil baby killing satan worshippers and proud of it!

[Tartarus Sauce]

Did someone say something about dog whistles?

Ben Jacobs‏ @Bencjacobs
Roy Moore mourns the end of school prayer and then adds "they started creating new rights in 1965"
6:33 PM - 14 Nov 2017

He should advocate for re-segregation, just to see how far he can take it.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Alabama Gov: Roy Moore May Be a Child Molester, But At Least He’s Not a Democrat

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey accidentally gave away the Religious Right’s secret yesterday when she was answering questions about fellow Republican Roy Moore. She said of his accusers, “I certainly have no reason to disbelieve any of them.” She added: “There’s never an excuse for or rationale for sexual misconduct or sexual abuse.”

“I’m going to cast my ballot on December the 12th, and I do believe the nominee of the party is the one I’ll vote for,” Ivey said. “I believe in the Republican Party, what we stand for, and most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions. So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/18/alabama-gov-roy-moore-may-be-a-child-molester-but-at-least-hes-not-a-democrat/

This comment from her perfectly describes modern conservatism.

It represents the very nihilistic moral backslide conservatives have been warning about for decades that would be the result of a secularizing culture. Instead, it is the response from conservatives to a secularizing and liberalizing society that has ushered in a new era of win-at-all-costs tribalism within our political culture. 

[Tartarus Sauce]

Alabama SoS says he is expecting lower turnout, revising his prediction from initially as high as 25% down to 18-20%.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/alabama-election-official-sees-lower-turnout-higher-write-vote-n822726

Hopefully turnout is lower because of demoralized GOP voters, but we'll have to wait and see.

Lower turnout, higher write-ins sounds exactly like the type of situation where establishment Republicans in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Mobile are either going to stay home or vote third candidate. Not looking good for Moore.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Moore's communications director resigns.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/11/22/john-rogers-roy-moore-communications-director-spokesman-resigns/

This certainly seems like a campaign undergoing a free-fall.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I never said all Alabamans or West Virginians are racists. Just the majority.

Yep you’re definitely a social justice warrior who hates white Christian conservatives.

How exactly did you get "white Christian conservatives" from "racists"? Guilty conscience?

Again this is why you’re a social justice warrior you actually think Alabama and West Virginia is all racist white Christians,yet you fail to mention how West Virginia just 20 years ago was one of the most democrat states in the whole country.

I mean, obviously there's a lot of overlap in those two groups. But no, not every white Christian conservative is a racist.

And that was before a black guy was president. Once he was re-elected that was the last straw for Racist WV Hicks, who now see the entire Democratic Party as an anti-white hate group. That's why their 2016 gubernatorial election was between two Republicans and why Manchin is going to get Blanched.

So did you just admit the democrat party is racist? Or did you admit thanks to obama you lost coal mining vote for ever?

By the way there are millions of Kerry-obama-obama-trump voters.

Also no whites are not racist but I’m telling you this right now the two most racist people in America are David Duke and Colin kaepernick. They both hate America and what America stands for.

More people are employed by Arby's in America than the entire coal industry, so I don't know what makes losing their votes such a big deal.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I never said all Alabamans or West Virginians are racists. Just the majority.

Yep you’re definitely a social justice warrior who hates white Christian conservatives.

How exactly did you get "white Christian conservatives" from "racists"? Guilty conscience?

Again this is why you’re a social justice warrior you actually think Alabama and West Virginia is all racist white Christians,yet you fail to mention how West Virginia just 20 years ago was one of the most democrat states in the whole country.

I mean, obviously there's a lot of overlap in those two groups. But no, not every white Christian conservative is a racist.

And that was before a black guy was president. Once he was re-elected that was the last straw for Racist WV Hicks, who now see the entire Democratic Party as an anti-white hate group. That's why their 2016 gubernatorial election was between two Republicans and why Manchin is going to get Blanched.

So did you just admit the democrat party is racist? Or did you admit thanks to obama you lost coal mining vote for ever?

By the way there are millions of Kerry-obama-obama-trump voters.

Also no whites are not racist but I’m telling you this right now the two most racist people in America are David Duke and Colin kaepernick. They both hate America and what America stands for.

More people are employed by Arby's in America than the entire coal industry, so I don't know what makes losing their votes such a big deal.

Well by losing the coal mining vote it makes it way harder for Virginia to go solid democrat.
It makes West Virginia gone for ever.
It makes Ohio go from a toss up swing state to a leaning republican battleground.
It makes Pennsylvania go from lean democrat to pure toss up
It also turned Kentucky possibly permanently republican
So tell me does that sound worth it to you?

You're confused, they didn't lose ground in those states due to coal mining voters, there aren't enough coal mining voters to swing any election in those states, not even West Virginia. The decline of coal towns is an evocative symbol of the greater decline of blue-collar working class and middle class opportunities in manufacturing and resource extraction industries, and these voters feel left behind and certainly don't like the environmentalism that has been embraced by the Democratic Party. But that's a much larger group of people that has been lost than just "coal miners."

The real reasons the Democrats lost ground in those states is because of the high concentration of White Christians, of which a significant faction of the group have coalesced into a highly tribalistic identity that is deeply anxious about the demographic and economic shifts occurring in the country. The Democrats have embraced these shifts, while the Republicans have taken a bullhorn under Trump that projects the anxieties of White Christian America onto the national stage.

It's not because of "coal miners."

PS: Virginia won't have much trouble going solid Democrat.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I never said all Alabamans or West Virginians are racists. Just the majority.

Yep you’re definitely a social justice warrior who hates white Christian conservatives.

How exactly did you get "white Christian conservatives" from "racists"? Guilty conscience?

Again this is why you’re a social justice warrior you actually think Alabama and West Virginia is all racist white Christians,yet you fail to mention how West Virginia just 20 years ago was one of the most democrat states in the whole country.

I mean, obviously there's a lot of overlap in those two groups. But no, not every white Christian conservative is a racist.

And that was before a black guy was president. Once he was re-elected that was the last straw for Racist WV Hicks, who now see the entire Democratic Party as an anti-white hate group. That's why their 2016 gubernatorial election was between two Republicans and why Manchin is going to get Blanched.

So did you just admit the democrat party is racist? Or did you admit thanks to obama you lost coal mining vote for ever?

By the way there are millions of Kerry-obama-obama-trump voters.

Also no whites are not racist but I’m telling you this right now the two most racist people in America are David Duke and Colin kaepernick. They both hate America and what America stands for.

More people are employed by Arby's in America than the entire coal industry, so I don't know what makes losing their votes such a big deal.

Well by losing the coal mining vote it makes it way harder for Virginia to go solid democrat.
It makes West Virginia gone for ever.
It makes Ohio go from a toss up swing state to a leaning republican battleground.
It makes Pennsylvania go from lean democrat to pure toss up
It also turned Kentucky possibly permanently republican
So tell me does that sound worth it to you?

You're confused, they didn't lose those states due to coal mining voters, there aren't enough coal mining voters to swing any election in those states, not even West Virginia. The decline of coal towns is an evocative symbol of the greater decline of blue-collar working class and middle class opportunities in manufacturing and resource extraction industries, and these voters feel left behind and certainly don't like the environmentalism that has been embraced by the Democratic Party. But that's a much larger group of people that has been lost than just "coal miners."

The real reasons the Democrats lost ground in those states is because of the high concentration of White Christians, of which a significant faction of the group have coalesced into a highly tribalistic identity that is deeply anxious about the demographic and economic shifts occurring in the country. The Democrats have embraced these shifts, while the Republicans have taken a bullhorn under Trump that projects the anxieties of White Christian America onto the national stage.

It's not because of "coal miners."

You realize that 20 years ago all of Southwest Pennsylvania voted democrat right?
Also there are more then 50,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania who probably voted obama-trump if they had voted obama-hillary then she would have won Pennsylvania.

You do realize there were a lot more coal miners there 20 years ago right?

Coal mining is a dying industry because more effective means of energy can be refined more cheaply than coal. Yeah, current coal miners and former coal miners blame environmentalism for killing coal, but it was actually natural gas and oil that sealed its fate.

It doesn't matter either. Even if Democrats relabled themselves the coal party, these regions would still not vote Democrat because the Democrats have become the party that White Christian America hates because they represent the changes they fear. Advocating for coal will not bring these voters back into the fold for the Democrats, the political environment has shifted since the late 90s and early 2000s.

[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.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Make no mistake: Dems are likely losing in this race because they failed to force Franken into resignation. Moore supporters who wavered initially are now seeing that Dems only care about Moore allegations because Moore is a republican, and are saying "If Franken can be in Congress, Moore can too!".

From Harry Enten on Twitter:

“FWIW, the Google Trend data suggests that Alabamans really didn't search for Al Franken at anywhere near the levels they did for Moore. Plausible it had an effect. More convinced time elapsing on Moore allegations had far greater effect”

[Tartarus Sauce]

I'm waiting any day now for the cops to bust down his door for possession of child pornography and for him to still refuse to drop out while getting booked at the county jail.

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Brutal!

[Tartarus Sauce]

Really interesting article from SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/alabama-senate-race-a-poll-without-a-prediction/).  They polled the race but depending on which voter model they use, the results can be interpreted as anything from Jones+9 to Moore+10.

This was well known to anybody who understood that polling this race was extremely difficult due to the circumstances of it being a special election in December. All the more reason why the confident Jones predictions and even more numerous confident Moore predictions are putting the cart before the horse. We don't know what the electorate is going to look like. Moore is the favorite, but this is the definitely the most vulnerable this seat has been in decades.

Turnout will be the deciding factor in the race, as well as how the "Other" votes split and to what degree.