Doug Jones Defeats Roy Moore In Alabama After Stunning Last Minute Comeback

Update

After a stunning last minute comeback, multiple outlets have called the Alabama special election for Democrat Doug Jones.

This is a truly devastating setback not only for Donald Trump, but for Steve Bannon, who effectively bet the house on Moore.

For Republicans, this was a lose-lose situation. Had Moore prevailed, they would have likely launched an ethics investigation, but now they face what is perhaps an even more dire predicament.

For those in need of a reminder, read below for the details on what America just avoided thanks to Alabama voters who have (narrowly) chosen country over party and delivered a red state to the Democrats.

Earlier

Obviously, the American political scene has devolved into a veritable circus since Donald Trump’s election.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a circus before a reality TV show host whose CV includes “WWE hall of fame inductee” swept into the Oval Office on a populist platform of grandiose promises, race-baiting, fearmongering, and outright lies, but what we’ve seen over the past year has been unprecedented.

Everyday the discourse gets more divisive, the scene more surreal, and in many ways, the Alabama special election is the culmination of it all. We’ve written voluminously about Republican candidate Roy Moore who for all the reasons listed here, has no place holding public office even if the recent allegations against him are completely false (full archive of posts here).

In the beginning, Donald Trump attempted to curry favor with the GOP establishment by backing Moore’s Republican opponent in the party primary. Steve Bannon, on the other hand, backed Moore.

When Moore won, it was widely seen as a testament to the idea that voters are still sympathetic to the populist message that got Trump elected — that would be the same message Steve Bannon is still pushing. So to Trump, there’s a sense in which Moore’s victory was “proof” that abandoning Bannon’s populism in favor of mainstream Republican politics is not a good idea.

Once the allegations against Moore starting piling up, it became clear that Bannon had made an egregious miscalculation. The Washington Post story about Moore came just a day after Bannon called for Mitch McConnell to step aside, and as the furor grew over Moore’s alleged misdeeds, so did the backlash against the Führer’s “war” to replace GOP incumbents with “outsiders.” Bannon stood by Moore, but people close to the Breitbart boss would later reveal that he has his misgivings.

McConnell has suggested that Moore, were he elected, would face an immediate ethics investigation.

For Trump, this is and has always been a lose-lose proposition. Backing Strange was a way to curry favor with the mainstream Republicans Trump needs to push his agenda forward, but not backing Moore was seen as a move away from the populism that helped win Trump the election.

You’d think, given the allegations against Moore, that this would be an easy call for the President. But it’s not. Because Trump has already thrown Roy under the bus once by endorsing Strange. To throw him under the bus again would be to effectively double down on the same kind of mainstream Republican politics that his base despises and that Bannon spends every waking hour railing against. So what did Trump do? Well, he decided to roll the dice with Moore starting earlier this month with a tweet and then continuing right up until Tuesday’s election.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon has continued to push the envelope on Moore because, as noted above, if Roy were to lose it would be a grievous blow to the Breitbart boss and his master plan to replace GOP incumbents with Bannon-ites in 2018.

Last night, Bannon and Moore put on a show at the last rally before the election with Steve going so far as to throw shade towards Ivanka Trump (“there’s a special place in hell“) and Roy’s wife suggesting that he can’t be a racist because “one of our attorneys is a Jew”:

 

So just to be clear, this is an election that had the potential to put a man who has been accused of preying on children, who was twice removed as state Supreme Court chief justice, who earlier this year said the U.S. deserved 9/11 because “we legitimize sodomy”, who likens the Quran to Mein Kampf, who refers to Native Americans and Asian Americans as “reds and yellows”, and who is just generally an outrageous piece of shit, into the U.S. Senate.

According to early exit polls, a majority of Republicans think the recent allegations against Moore are false (54% said they’re “probably” false, and an additional 28% said they’re “definitely” false). White evangelicals (of course) overwhelming think the women are lying:

ExitPoll

Let me just drive home the point with the following video which speaks for itself…

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4 thoughts on “Doug Jones Defeats Roy Moore In Alabama After Stunning Last Minute Comeback

    1. As much as I would like to see the tax bill go down in flames, they could still pass it before the election in Alabama is cerified and Doug Jones is seated. It’s also not beyond the realm of possibility that Moore could refuse to concede to buy the GOP some time to ram their agenda through Congress. They could potentially go even further and fund a recount to delay the process even further like they did with Al Franken who wasn’t seated until he was half a year into his term. It’ll be interesting to see things shake out over the next few days.

      In response to our hosts tweet, I’m glad the world now has more Walts and fewer Tylers. Thank you for what you do.

  1. Dear Mr President, here’s a kiss from USA Today:

    “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.

    Donald Trump, the man, on the other hand, is uniquely awful. His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed.”

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/12/trump-lows-ever-hit-rock-bottom-editorials-debates/945947001/

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