Last Call For Kellyanne's Con Job

The DoJ wants to have a few words with White House mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway for violations of the Hatch Act for using her position at the White House to advocate for America's favorite child molester, failed Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act on two occasions, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) informed the Trump administration Tuesday. 

Appearing in her official capacity, Conway endorsed and advocated against political candidates, the watchdog said, referring its findings to President Trump "for appropriate disciplinary action." 

The violations occurred during two television appearances in 2017, one on Fox News's "Fox & Friends," and one on CNN's "New Day."

“While the Hatch Act allows federal employees to express their views about candidates and political issues as private citizens, it restricts employees from using their official government positions for partisan political purposes, including by trying to influence partisan elections,” OSC says in its report.

“Ms. Conway’s statements during the 'Fox & Friends' and 'New Day' interviews impermissibly mixed official government business with political views about candidates in the Alabama special election for U.S. Senate."

The report goes on to state that Conway received "significant training" on the Hatch Act and possible violations. OSC says it gave Conway, a former GOP pollster who served as Trump's campaign manager, the opportunity to respond as part of its report, but she did not.

If you think this particular White House gives a damn about the law, you'd be wrong.

The White House rejected the report’s findings, saying “Conway did not advocate for or against the election of any particular candidate” in a statement provided to reporters. 

“In fact, Kellyanne’s statements actually show her intention and desire to comply with the Hatch Act — as she twice declined to respond to the host’s specific invitation to encourage Alabamans to vote for the Republican,” deputy press secretary Hogan Gildley said.

And so no disciplinary action will be taken against Conway, and she will continue to represent the Oval Office.

Nothing will happen, because nobody cares.

Tales Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

What, you didn't think the Roy Moore Senate race saga was over, did you?  Alabama's Republican Secretary of State still hasn't certified Doug Jones's victory in the special election two weeks ago and Jones hasn't been sworn into the Senate yet.  And there's no reason to believe he will be as Moore is now suing the state claiming he has evidence of "systemic voter fraud" in a move that could prevent Jones from being seated at all.

Roy S. Moore, the first Republican to lose a United States Senate race in Alabama in 25 years, moved late Wednesday to block state officials from certifying the victory of his Democratic rival on Thursday afternoon because of “systematic voter fraud.” 

In a complaint filed in the circuit court here in Alabama’s capital, Mr. Moore’s campaign argued that such fraud had tainted the Dec. 12 special election, which Mr. Moore lost to Doug Jones by fewer than 22,000 votes, and that the Alabama authorities had inadequately investigated claims of misconduct. 

If the election is prematurely certified, Mr. Moore’s lawyers wrote, he will “suffer irreparable harm” and be “denied his full right as a candidate to a fair election.”
John H. Merrill, the Alabama secretary of state, has dismissed complaints, from Democratic and Republican critics, of election fraud. In an interview on Dec. 15, Mr. Merrill, a Republican who voted for Mr. Moore, flatly declared: “I have not seen any irregularities or any inconsistencies that are outside the norm.” 

In a text message early Thursday, Mr. Merrill said he did not intend to postpone the certification proceedings that would ultimately allow Mr. Jones to take office.

In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Jones’s transition team said the lawsuit was “a desperate attempt by Roy Moore to subvert the will of the people.”

“The election is over,” the statement added, “it’s time to move on.” 

Whether or not the litigation is successful, it is certain to infuse a strain of drama into a day that state officials had plainly hoped would be procedural and perfunctory. The lawsuit from Mr. Moore, who has been accused of bigotry and sexual misconduct against teenage girls, was certainly late in coming: His lawyers filed the complaint at 10:33 p.m. on Wednesday, and his campaign announced it less than an hour later. Alabama officials are scheduled to certify the results during a 1 p.m. meeting Thursday at the State Capitol.

All Moore has to do is find a friendly judge willing to buy his argument that the certification has to be delayed until his case is heard.

Don't be surprised if this happens later this afternoon.

[UPDATE] Moore's challenge was too much even for the GOP, which certified Doug Jones's victory this afternoon and ended Moore's hopes.

Haley And The Comments, Con't

Nobody should be surprised right now that the White House is trying to simply wish away Trump's documented sexual misconduct.  He doesn't understand why this is still "a thing" and why anybody cares, after all he was elected and he won, this goes away now, right?  Of course, the answer is that the accusations aren't going anywhere.

Donald Trump sailed past a raft of allegations of sexual misconduct in last year’s presidential election.

Now the national #MeToo spotlight is turning back to Trump and his past conduct. Several of his accusers are urging Congress to investigate his behavior, and a number of Democratic lawmakers are demanding his resignation.

With each day seeming to bring new headlines that force men from positions of power, the movement to expose sexual harassment has forced an unwelcome conversation on the White House. In a heated exchange with reporters in the White House briefing room on Monday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders steadfastly dismissed accusations against the Republican president and suggested the issue had already been litigated in Trump’s favor on Election Day.

But to Trump’s accusers, the rising #MeToo movement is an occasion to ensure he is at last held accountable.

“It was heartbreaking last year. We’re private citizens and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and how he views women, and for them to say, ‘Eh, we don’t care,’ it hurt,” Samantha Holvey said Monday. The former beauty queen claimed that Trump ogled her and other Miss USA pageant contestants in their dressing room in 2006.

“Let’s try round two,” she said. “The environment’s different. Let’s try again.”

Holvey was one of four women to make her case against Trump on Monday, both in an NBC interview and then in a news conference. Rachel Crooks, a former Trump Tower receptionist who said the celebrity businessman kissed her on the mouth in 2006 without consent, called for Congress to “put aside party affiliations and investigate Trump’s history of sexual misconduct.”

“If they were willing to investigate Sen. Franken, it’s only fair that they do the same for Trump,” Crooks said.

And as I said over the weekend, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley's comments that Trump's accusers should be heard has now put a target on her back, I would expect she isn't much longer with this regime.

White House aides have warily watched the movement sweep Capitol Hill, opting to repeat rote denials about allegations against the president. The president’s advisers were stunned Sunday when one of the highest-ranking women in the Trump administration broke with the White House line and said the accusers’ voices “should be heard.”

“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a CBS interview. “And I think we heard from them before the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”

Haley’s comments infuriated the president, according to two people who are familiar with his views but who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. Trump has grown increasingly angry in recent days that the accusations against him have resurfaced, telling associates that the charges are false and drawing parallels to the accusations facing Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Of course, Roy Moore's denials (did/did not) work for Roy Moore, yes?  They were working up until now for Trump. Whether they will keep working, we're going to find out.

Last Call For Tales Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

If Republicans can lose in Alabama, then no GOP seat in Congress in 2018 should be considered even remotely safe. Five Thirty Eight's Harry Enten:

Democrat Doug Jones’s stunning victory in Alabama on Tuesday should send a shiver down the spine of GOP elected officials everywhere. Yes, Jones likely would have lost the special election for a U.S. Senate seat had his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, not been an extremely flawed candidate. But Moore’s defeat is part of a larger pattern we’ve seen in special elections so far this year, one in which Democrats have greatly outperformed expectations. If history holds (and of course, it may not), the special election results portend a Democratic wave in 2018. 

There have been more than 70 special elections for state and federal legislative seats in 2017 so far.1 We’re interested in each of those contests, of course, but we’re also interested in what the races tell us about the national political environment. To measure that, we compared each special election result to that state or district’s partisan lean2 — how we’d expect the state or district to vote in a neutral environment (i.e. an environment in which a Democratic and Republican presidential candidate would tie 50-50 nationally). 

So, in a neutral environment, we’d expect each special election result to match that state or district’s partisan lean. Instead, Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean in 74 percent of these races.

Uh-oh.

The Democratic margin has been 12 percentage points better, on average, than the partisan lean in each race. Sometimes this has resulted in a seat flipping from Republican to Democratic (e.g. in the Alabama Senate face-off on Tuesday or Oklahoma’s 37th state Senate District contest last month). Sometimes it has meant the Democrat barely loses a seat you wouldn’t expect a Democrat to be competitive in (e.g. in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in June). Sometimes it’s merely been the case that the Democrat wins a district by an even wider margin than you’d expect (e.g. in Pennsylvania’s 133 House District last week). 

The point is that Democrats are doing better in all types of districts with all types of candidates. You don’t see this type of consistent outperformance unless there’s an overriding pro-Democratic national factor. 

And to be clear, although there have been more special elections on the state level, the pro-Democratic environment is quite clear if you look only at federal special elections. There have been seven special U.S. House and U.S. Senate elections so far this year. The Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean in all of them.

Gosh, what national factor boosting all types of Democrats in all types of races in all types of locations could be responsible for such over-performance?

It's a mystery, you guys.

Trump Cards, Con't

Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes the case that while 2017 has been an overall disaster for Trump and America, here in December Donald Trump is winning.

This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write and admit: Trump is winning. In the brief space of a week, he won a brief court fight to shove Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mulvaney wasted no time in unhinging a spate of consumer protection rulings, regulations, and personnel hires made during the Obama years.

His SCOTUS pick, Neil Gorsuch, eagerly cast a vote to impose the Muslim travel ban. His EPA head, Scott Pruitt, delivered a couple million acres of public monument land in the West to oil, gas, and coal industry developers. Trump busily continues to pack the federal judiciary with a parade of ultra-conservative, strict, constructionist Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia clones.

He switched gears and backed alleged pedophile Alabama judge Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, who almost certainly will win. The Republican National Committee, which had practically declared Moore a pariah, quickly jumped in and said it would back him. He got another sweet perk when Senate Democrats turned with a vengeance on Minnesota Senator Al Franken and virtually ordered him out of office. His subsequent resignation got rid of a pesky thorn for Trump. Franken had a big voice, lots of name recognition and popularity, and was not afraid to take shots at Trump.

He pooh-poohed the guilty plea of his former National Security Advisor Mike T. Flynn as no big deal while shouting “no collusion, no collusion” and got away with it.

He got his tax heist for the rich and corporations through the Senate, and as an extra bonus, brought his long-held dream of dumping the Affordable Care Act closer to reality when the Senate tacked on a provision to the bill wiping out the mandate requirement. When the markets took another tick up he crowed even louder that he was the man who brought the good times rolling to America. As always, he did all this with the sheepish connivance of much of the mainstream media, which is always off to the races in giving round-the-clock coverage to his self-serving, vapid tweets as if they were the word from the Mount.

And Roy Moore's coming victory Tuesday will only make this worse.  There should be ten million people on the National Mall screaming for Trump's resignation.  There should be nationwide strikes grinding entire regions of the country to a halt.  There should be a National Day of Rage every day until Trump and the GOP are gone for good.

But we lost that chance.  We're just trying to make it to the next day, now.  We've been beaten down for so long and with such stunning force that any brief period where we're not being directly kicked in the crotch looks like a victory to us, and as Hutchinson points out, even if Trump resigned tomorrow, in less than eleven months he has done generational, if not lifetime damage to the country that we may never be able to fix.

We are now led by an "addled couch potato" who chain-slams a dozen Diet Cokes and 4-8 hours of FOX News daily and golfs all the time. 

We have no future but destruction.  It's just a question now of how awful the damage will be.

And 2018?  It will be worse.  Far worse.

Tales Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

VICE News and HBO sent Republican pollster Frank Luntz to Alabama this week to talk to Moore voters, and to a person they believe the women that came forward to accuse Roy Moore of decades of sexual misconduct are all paid liars.

Nine women came forward with sexual misconduct accusations against Roy Moore. These Alabama voters think they were paid to lie. @FrankLuntz​ spoke to them on VICE News Tonight.

(via @HBO​) pic.twitter.com/dPcb1Ux652

— VICE News (@vicenews) December 9, 2017

Twelve conservative voters gathered inside a Birmingham coffee house Thursday for a candid discussion about the Alabama senate race.

During the frank discussion, some said they were voting for him primarily because he is not Doug Jones. But other participants dismissed the allegations against Moore and excusing others by reasoning that behavior now seen as unacceptable wasn’t a problem in Alabama decades ago.

The panel was compiled and moderated by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster well known for arranging focus groups with GOP voters.

“Forty years ago in Alabama, there’s a lotta mamas and daddies that would be thrilled that their 14-year-old was getting hit on by a district attorney,” one voter said. “The women’s reputations were questionable at the time,” another voter said.

“There was still clothes on,” she added, dismissing allegations made by a woman who said Moore molested her when she was 14 years old. “As soon as the girl said she wasn’t comfortable, he took her home.”

If you want to know why I think Roy Moore will win easily on Tuesday, it's because white Republican "Christian" assholes like this are 100% motivated to show up at the polls to elect him, and by doing so "prove" they are right and that the "the liberals" are the liars and criminals here. 2016 proved hate voting beats logic in America now.

Being Doug Jones, a Democrat, was worse than being Roy Moore, accused child molester. Period.  Full stop. 

How can you possibly reach people like that?

The one thing I hope Democrats learn from Tuesday, whether Doug Jones win by some miracle of turnout or not, is that there are tens of millions of American voters that will never, under any circumstances, vote for the Democrats.

They are lost to you.  Stop pursuing them.  Get the people who you can still reach and get them to the polls.

All The News That's Fit To Fake, Con't

So it turns out there's a lot more to the story of the bafflingly moronic attempt by James O'Keefe and Project Veritas to knowingly con the Washington Post into running a story using an obviously false Roy Moore accuser as part of a "sting operation" to discredit the paper.

Much more as it turns out, because Jamie Phillips, the woman recruited by O'Keefe as the false Moore accuser, has worked for Project Veritas for a while now and has been involved in a concerted months-long effort to try to discredit multiple major news outlets.

The failed effort by conservative activists to plant a false story about Senate candidate Roy Moore in The Washington Post was part of a months-long campaign to infiltrate The Post and other media outlets in Washington and New York, according to interviews, text messages and social media posts that have since been deleted.

Starting in July, Jaime Phillips, an operative with the organization Project Veritas, which purports to expose media bias, joined two dozen networking groups related to either journalism or left-leaning politics. She signed up to attend 15 related events, often accompanied by a male companion, and appeared at least twice at gatherings for departing Post staffers.

Phillips, 41, presented herself to journalists variously as the owner of a start-up looking to recruit writers, a graduate student studying national security or a contractor new to the area. This summer, she tweeted posts in support of gun control and critical of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants — a departure from the spring when, on accounts that have since been deleted, she used the #MAGA hashtag and mocked the Women’s March on Washington that followed Trump’s inauguration as the “Midol March.”

Her true identity and intentions were revealed only when The Post published a story on Monday, along with photos and video, about how she falsely told Post reporters that Moore had impregnated her when she was a teenager. The Post reported that Phillips appeared to work for Project Veritas, an organization that uses false cover stories and covert video recordings in an attempt to embarrass its targets.

Phillips’s sustained attempt to insinuate herself into the social circles of reporters makes clear that her deception — and the efforts to discredit The Post’s reporting — went much further than the attempt to plant one fabricated article.

Phillips’s encounters with dozens of journalists, which have not been previously reported, typically occurred at professional networking events or congratulatory send-offs for colleagues at bars and restaurants. She used three names and three phone numbers to follow up with Post employees, chatting about life in Washington and asking to be introduced to other journalists.

In one case, Phillips kept a conversation going for five weeks with a Post employee over text message, repeatedly asking whether she and her husband could meet Phillips for dinner. After the employee shared that she was experiencing a family tragedy, Phillips wrote: “Let me know if I can do anything to help, even if just to talk or something small. We’d like to send flowers or a donation… Thoughts & prayers.” 

In other words, Jamie Phillips used amateur spycraft techniques over several months in order to try to befriend and recruit reporters from more than one national newspaper.  When the time was right, she would "come forward" as a fraudulent "major source" to a reporter she had targeted in order to try to get them to run her false claims.  Then, Project Veritas would expose the newspaper's story as false.

And if any of the reporters and editors from the Washington Post or NY Times or any other major news outlet had fallen for Phillips's long con without checking out her story, they would have deserved to have been destroyed by O'Keefe's clowns.  Fortunately, they did not fall for it and realized they were being played.

To their credit, the Post staff turned the con around and got the real story: how activists like O'Keefe are trying to deliberately destroy the news media in order to help Republicans like Roy Moore. Even if they were bad at it, Project Veritas still takes in money from political donors in order to try to wreck the Fourth Estate.

And as I said earlier this week, all Project Veritas has to do in order to greatly damage, if not destroy, what's left of our barely functional media is get one fake story past the goalie and into the net.  Remember, these guys have spurred Congress to act before.  Imagine the huge outrage if the Moore story had gone live.  There would have been hearings in the Senate for sure, and possibly even legislation limiting the powers of the free press.

All so the Trump regime could set up de facto state-run right-wing media as the "only credible source".  Even without the legislation, the right would have been yelling about THE FAKE ROY MOORE ABORTION STORY for decades.

Believe that.

Keeping Up With The Jonses

A depressing story from the Washington Post finds that Doug Jones's biggest vulnerability is getting black voters to turn out for the special election in less than three weeks, but this is Alabama, a state where Republicans have done everything they can to ensure permanent GOP power through suppressing the black vote, and it continues to work.

Jones’s campaign believes he can win only if he pieces together an unusually delicate coalition built on intense support from core Democrats and some crossover votes from Republicans disgusted with Moore. Crucial to that formula is a massive mobilization of African Americans, who make up about a quarter of Alabama’s electorate and tend to vote heavily Democratic.

Yet, in interviews in recent days, African American elected officials, community leaders and voters expressed concern that the Jones campaign’s turnout plan was at risk of falling short.

“Right now, many African Americans do not know there is an election on December 12,” said state Sen. Hank Sanders (D), who is black and supports Jones.

The challenge for Jones is clear. According to Democrats working on the race, Jones, who is white, must secure more than 90 percent of the black vote while boosting black turnout to account for between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate — similar to the levels that turned out for Barack Obama, the country’s first black president.

As a result, Jones and his allies are waging an aggressive outreach campaign. It includes targeted radio and online advertisements, billboards and phone calls. Campaign aides are debating whether to ask former first lady Michelle Obama to record a phone message for black voters.

The message emphasizes that Jones prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a black church in Birmingham in 1963.

The Jones campaign expects to intensify its black outreach in the final stretch. Among the messages under consideration for radio ads and already included in mailers that have been produced, according to campaign officials, are reminders that Moore once opposed removing segregationist language from the state constitution and expressed doubt that Obama was born in the United States.

The Moore campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The real problem remains though that in Alabama, Jones will still need some white voters to win.

A key question for Jones’s campaign is how to balance a more partisan campaign message aimed at energizing core Democrats, particularly blacks, with the need to appeal to GOP voters with a more middle-of-the-road approach. Not only must Jones come close to matching Obama’s performance among blacks, but also he must far surpass the former president’s tallies among whites. Exit polls show that Obama won 15 percent of the white vote in Alabama in 2012 — and Jones, according to Democratic strategists working on the race, may have to win more than a third of white voters to beat Moore.

So it's not black voters who will be at fault if Jones loses.  The real issue is whether more than two-thirds of white voters in Alabama will still turn out for the racist pedophile thrown off the state's Supreme Court twice, and there's every indication that in the Trump era, they'll do just that.

Bottom O' The Evenin', GOP Guvna

It's not just the House and Senate that are in play for the Democrats in 2018, but several state legislatures and of equal import, the two-thirds of governor's races across the country.

Democrats got mauled in 2014 and saw Republicans pick up state chief executive seats in deep blue states like Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont three years ago.  That's been a particular problem in Illinois, where Republican Bruce Rauner has vetoed several progressive bills and has been in a three-year long budget fight with Democrats.

But now these same governors are in real trouble as the Trump/Roy Moore millstone is threatening to drown them, and Democrats are waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces, and after 2017 losses, the GOP is scrambling to try to run from their own party.

Republican governors and their donors -- still reeling from GOP losses last week in New Jersey and Virginia -- are trying to distance themselves from their party’s problems and plot a 2018 strategy to protect their state-level dominance.

At the annual Republican Governors Association meeting in Austin, Texas, party officeholders downplayed those defeats and dismissed the political fallout of President Donald Trump’s historically low approval ratings and lack of legislative accomplishments. They brushed aside questions about the potential long-term consequences from growing sexual misconduct allegations that have engulfed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore in Alabama.

"I think we’ll see Republican governors walking a tightrope in 2018 as they navigate a difficult election year," said Steve Grubbs, an Iowa-based Republican strategist and former state party chairman.

Thirty-six states will hold gubernatorial elections in 2018, with 26 of those now controlled by Republicans. In those races, which often have trickle-down effects on legislative and local elections, Republican candidates will have to decide just how closely to embrace Trump and distance themselves from an unpopular Washington.

"The Trump base is very strong, and alienating that base by pushing Trump away could cost a governor two to five points on election day," Grubbs said. "But there are also suburban voters who are bothered by the positioning of the White House and risk being lost on the other side."

I'm out of tears to shed for "Never Trump" Republicans.  They gladly played into racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and sexism when it benefited them in 2014 and 2016.  Now the bill for that is coming due and it's time to make them pay up.

Even if Trump’s popularity wasn’t an issue, Republicans are likely to face headwinds next year based on past trends. Midterm elections for a new president generally result in losses, sometimes big ones, and Trump currently has the lowest approval ratings of any president at this point in a first term. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the association’s chairman, is seeking a third term next November. He downplayed the role Trump will play and said he’s encouraging his colleagues to run their "own race." 

Walker and Florida Governor Rick Scott, while meeting with reporters, called for Moore to exit the race before the Dec. 12 special election. Scott called his alleged actions "disgusting," while Walker dismissed suggestions that Moore might hurt the Republican brand. 

“No more so than Democrats had to answer for Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer," he said, pointing to other politicians who have had sex scandals.

The problem of course is that both Spitzer and Weiner resigned and Weiner is in prison.  Trump is still in the White House, and Moore is still running for Senate.  I have a feeling voters are going to care a lot more about Trump than Anthony Weiner in 2018, even New Yorkers.

The Tale Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

Senate Republicans really, really, really want to get rid of Roy Moore for two reasons: first, he's not Donald Trump so he's problematic, second, they remember Todd Akin in 2014 (the whole "he's a repugnant chancre on the ass of humanity" doesn't seem to matter as the guy is a solid 98% vote for the GOP agenda.)

It's gotten so morbidly funny because Moore absolutely refuses to drop out, Republicans are trying to rig the election to keep their 52-48 majority in 2018, and they want to get placeholder GOP Sen. Luther Strange to resign ASAP, which would somehow trigger a brand new special election process and allow Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to appoint someone else.

Can you guess who that might be?

Republican leaders are exploring a dramatic remedy to salvage the Alabama Senate seat as fresh polling shows Roy Moore's prospects fading fast. 

With less than four weeks until the special election and no sign that the party’s besieged nominee will exit the race, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his top advisers are discussing the legal feasibility of asking appointed Sen. Luther Strange to resign from his seat in order to trigger a new special election.

McConnell aides express caution, saying they're uncertain whether such a move, one of several options being discussed, is even possible. Yet the talks underscore the despair among top Republicans over relinquishing a seat in deep-red Alabama, further diminishing their slim Senate majority. 

New GOP polling obtained by POLITICO suggests that Moore is cratering. A survey conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee after allegations emerged that Moore had engaged in sexual misconduct with teenagers showed him trailing Democratic candidate Doug Jones by 12 points. Other recent polling has the race closer. 

McConnell’s team had been high on the idea of asking Jeff Sessions, who held the Alabama seat for two decades prior to becoming Attorney General, to run as a write-in candidate. But the committee polled the prospect of Sessions waging a write-in bid and the outcome was unfavorable, said three people familiar with the results. Party officials worry that a write-in candidacy would serve only to split the Republican vote and seal a Jones victory. 

Plus, Sessions isn't interested, according to several people who've spoken about it with him. He has received overtures from Republican lawmakers, including Richard Shelby, Alabama’s longtime Republican senator, who spoke with Sessions this week.

I believe that Sessions might not want to do this, but I damn sure bet that Sessions will do it if Trump tells him to resign.  Of course in this scenario, Alabama would need another interim senator between whenever Strange resigned and whenever Ivey decides to hold the special election, and I'm guessing Sessions would be convinced to do it.

My theory then goes that Trump would need an interim Attorney General, and Trump would just play Saturday Night Massacre and keep firing people until he found somebody who would get rid of Mueller.

Of course, the combination of staking out Roy Moore in the desert and firing Robert Mueller would be that Constitutional Crisis™ moment that we've been expecting for some time now, with the results being who knows what.  It's going to be a political supervolcano going off under the country and I think things would get demonstrably worse around these parts very quickly.

Personally, I keep forgetting that the DoJ official that Nixon found to be his bag man to shitcan special prosecutor Archie Cox was the now infamous Robert Bork.  I wonder who Trump will find to pull the trigger should this go down.

And before you say "Trump won't do that" consider that we're at the point where the GOP is so completely morally bankrupt and fundamentally opposed to open democracy that they party leaders are now openly having a serious talk of voiding an election just to get rid of a guy whom they can't convince to step aside.

So yes, I absolutely think the GOP is 100% capable of doing this.  Whether Trump will or not I don't know, but it would be the best way to get rid of both Mueller and Sessions.  Both have slighted Trump in the past, and we all know how much Trump loves to gain vengeance.

If we're at this point in the game, where Strange is being pressured to resign now, then the rest of this is absolutely possible.  If it happens things are going to move extremely quickly.

Stay tuned.

What About Bill Whataboutism

Given a known vile Republican sexual predator currently in the White House and another one trying to win a Senate seat in a special election next month, only Democrats would be stupid enough to go after Bill Clinton at a time like this, but there you are.

How vitiated Bill Clinton seemed at the 2016 Democratic convention. Some of his appetites, at least, had waned; his wandering, “Norwegian Wood” speech about his wife struck the nostalgic notes of a husband’s 50th-anniversary toast, and the crowd—for the most part—indulged it in that spirit. Clearly, he was no longer thinking about tomorrow. With a pencil neck and a sagging jacket he clambered gamely onto the stage after Hillary’s acceptance speech and played happily with the red balloons that fell from the ceiling.

When the couple repeatedly reminded the crowd of their new status as grandparents it was to suggest very different associations in voters’ minds. Hillary’s grandmotherhood was evoked to suggest the next phase in her lifelong work on behalf of women and children—in this case forging a bond with the millions of American grandmothers who are doing the hard work of raising the next generation, while their own adult children muddle through life. But Bill’s being a grandfather was intended to send a different message: Don’t worry about him anymore; he’s old now. He won’t get into those messes again.

Yet let us not forget the sex crimes of which the younger, stronger Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s. Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said that she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied. At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones said, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his penis to her and told her to kiss it. Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.

It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. Rather, he was rescued by a surprising force: machine feminism. The movement had by then ossified into a partisan operation, and it was willing—eager—to let this friend of the sisterhood enjoy a little droit de seigneur.

The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.

And Michele Goldberg isn't the only one dealing in hair shirts and horsehide whips this week, over at Vox Matthew Yglesias comes to the conclusion Clinton should have resigned 20 years ago in order to prove his wokeness.

In the midst of the very same public statement in which he confessed the error, Clinton also mounted the defense that would see him through to victory — portraying the issue as fundamentally a private family matter rather than a topic of urgent public concern.

"I intend to reclaim my family life for my family," he said. "It's nobody's business but ours. Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.”

To this line of argument, Republicans offered what was fundamentally the wrong countercharge. They argued that in the effort to spare himself from the personal and marital embarrassment entailed by having the affair exposed, Clinton committed perjury when testifying about the matter in a deposition related to Paula Jones’s lawsuit against him.

What they should have argued was something simpler: A president who uses the power of the Oval Office to seduce a 20-something subordinate is morally bankrupt and contributing, in a meaningful way, to a serious social problem that disadvantages millions of women throughout their lives.

But by and large, they didn’t. So Clinton countered with the now-famous defense: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Ultimately, most Americans embraced the larger argument that perjury in a civil lawsuit unrelated to the president’s official duties did not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.

But looking back through today’s lens, this whole argument was miscast. The wrongdoing at issue was never just a private matter for the Clinton family; it was a high-profile exemplar of a widespread social problem: men’s abuse of workplace power for sexual gain. It was and is a striking example of a genre of misconduct that society has a strong interest in stamping out. That alone should have been enough to have pressured Clinton out of office.

I'm going to say this once: Bill Clinton indeed needs to be reckoned with, but right now is about the worst possible time for the Democrats to be having this argument.  It's great to say that Clinton should have been pressured to resign two decades ago, but Clinton isn't in the White House right now.

Donald Trump is.

Can we pressure him to resign first since he's the imminent danger?  Can we do that?  Can we get Roy Moore to drop out?  Can we take a look at both Democrats and Republicans who are in Congress now who have sexually assaulted people and need to be pressured into resigning before we tackle Big Dog's very real issues?

Yes, it's far past time to talk about Clinton, sexual predator.  I get that.  But he's not in office right now.  We have sexual predators who are, one of who may be Democratic Sen Al Franken.

Let's deal with them first, shall we?

The Revenge Sessions

We've come to a nexus point on three things so far in the era of Trump, and they have produced one of the all-time bad decisions on the part of Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

First, the Mueller investigation is closing in on the Trump regime in general and specifically, Jeff Sessions himself.  He's been linked to the now-infamous March 2016 meeting of Trump's foreign policy team where George Papadopoulos floated arranging a meeting with Putin, while Sessions himself has stated multiple times under oath that he knew nothing of such attempts to arrange meetings with Russian nationals. He faces testimony today in front of the House Judiciary, at a time when a regular oversight meeting such as this is bound to be very bad for him.

Second, Republican patience with Sessions after his recusal from all things involving the 2016 campaign investigation has evaporated. Trump has been angry at Sessions for months for not protecting him from Mueller by firing him, and he's floated getting rid of Sessions several times. Refusal to prosecute Hillary Clinton has been a particular sticking point, we all remember the chants of "lock her up!" at Trump rallies both before and after the inauguration.

Third, the opportunity for Trump to rid himself of Sessions has now revealed itself through the disastrous mess that is Roy Moore's Senate campaign in Alabama's special election.  Multiple Senate Republicans have dropped their endorsements of Moore as now five women have come forward to accuse Moore of sexual assault when the victims were at the time ranging from ages 14 to 18.  The option of a write-in has come up, and while current placeholder Sen. Luther Strange is mentioned as the champion of that strategy since Alabama law precludes removing Moore from the ballot, or as the beneficiary of a move where Moore wins and then is pressured to resign and GOP Gov. Kay Ivey names a replacement (again), this used to be Jeff Sessions's Senate seat.  Ivey could name Sessions as the replacement and suddenly the post of AG is vacant.

It's a complicated and complex mess to be sure, but all three of these factors have combined to force Sessions to play his hand, and last night he did just that.

He's going after Clinton after all.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate a host of Republican concerns — including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia — and has directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of the matters and report back to him and his top deputy, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

The revelation came in a response by the Justice Department to an inquiry from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who in July and again in September called for Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate concerns he had related to the 2016 election and its aftermath.

The list of matters he wanted probed was wide ranging but included the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, various dealings of the Clinton Foundation and several matters connected to the purchase of the Canadian mining company Uranium One by Russia’s nuclear energy agency. Goodlatte took particular aim at former FBI director James B. Comey, asking for the second special counsel to evaluate the leaks he directed about his conversations with President Trump, among other things.

In response, Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote that Sessions had “directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues raised in your letters,” and that those prosecutors would “report directly to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, as appropriate, and will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

Trump has repeatedly criticized his Justice Department for not aggressively probing a variety of conservative concerns. He said recently that officials there “should be looking at the Democrats” and that it was “very discouraging” they were not “going after Hillary Clinton.” On the campaign trail, Trump’s supporters frequently chanted “Lock her up!” at the mention of Clinton’s name.

“Hopefully they are doing something, and at some point, maybe we are going to all have it out,” Trump said recently.

So in order to save his own ass, Sessions is destroying the last shred of his credibility to raise the possibility of prosecuting Trump's political enemies.  Frankly, I expected this earlier, but it seems that Sessions is now painfully aware of how precarious his position is.  For him to even consider this as he is, the hammer must be close to falling on him.  Whether that hammer is wielded by Trump or by Mueller, take your pick.

The larger problem is of course the end of the era of rule of law in the executive branch of the US federal government.  Should a second special counsel be appointed by somebody as compromised as Sessions is now, then the impartiality of the Justice Department will be forever ruined. We're deep in authoritarian regime territory on this one, folks.  Trump has only been in office ten months and we're facing the very real possibility of not making it out of this one as even a cursory democracy.

The notion that there's anything to investigate regarding the Clintons is ridiculous.  The Uranium One story is fully fabricated by the right and is a distraction, period.  No wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation has also been found, it's ethically lousy but legal.  To raise a special counsel over these issues is complete nonsense, and Sessions knows it.  This is an outright witch hunt, like Benghazi.

Still, at this stage I fully expect now for Robert Mueller to be fired.  The rest is timing.  If Sessions and the GOP are going this far, there's no reason for them not to dismiss Mueller and end his investigation into them. The indictments have got them terrified, and at this point it's all over but the justification.  There's still a chance that Mueller will be allowed to finish his investigation, but that probability just took a massive dip in the last 24 hours.  The one thing going in our favor right now is that the Mueller probe is robust enough to be self-sustaining if it's reached the "indictments and cooperating with the Feds" phase.  There's still much that will come out even if Mueller is dismissed.

Even with that information in hand as a hedge against lawlessness by Trump, this is still all kinds of bad, folks.  And I don't see a way out that doesn't involve extreme peril for the country.  America has certainly seen worse moments, but not in the last couple of generations. I don't honestly know how this ends, and anyone who tells you that they do is lying.  If Sessions does follow through with this (and if this is a bluff, it's a revolting one) all bets are off.

Stay tuned.

The Tale Of A Lesser More, Con't

One one hand, accused pedophile and GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore is suddenly starting to fall behind in the polls to Democrat Doug Jones for next month's special election.

Democrat Doug Jones is leading Republican Roy Moore in Alabama's Senate race in the wake of explosive accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore, according to a new poll released Sunday.

Forty-six percent of likely voters polled said they would vote for Jones, while 42 percent said they would vote for Moore, according to the Louisiana-based JMC Analytics and Polling.

The survey was conducted on Nov. 9 and Nov. 11, after The Washington Post reported that a woman said Moore had initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when she was 14 years old and he was 32.

In RealClearPolitics's average of polls, Moore was leading by 6 points prior to the Post report. A Friday poll, the first following the scandal, found Moore and Jones tied.

On the other hand, enthusiasm for the special election among Moore supporters is on the rise.

On Friday, Moore called the allegations "false, false, [and] misleading" and at a Veterans' Day event on Saturday, the Republican candidate said, "Everybody on this room, every person watching on these cameras, should ask theirselves, 'Isn't it strange that after 40 years of constant investigation people have waited until four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints?'"

Moore finds his defenders back home while the climate is less hospitable in Washington, where GOP senators, as well as the White House, have called on the conservative firebrand to drop out of the race if the report is true.

Of more than 15 Republican voters in Alabama interviewed by NBC News, none said their support for Moore would change.
Most said they didn't believe the allegations and some said even if they are true, that wouldn't sway their vote for him next month because they think Moore is a good man, should be forgiven and they could never bring themselves to vote for a Democrat anyway. Several attacked the media.

On the gripping hand, as Jerry Pournelle used to write, Steve Bannon's odious crew is now doing everything they can to victimize the women who came forward to denounce Moore a second time. Jon Swan at Politico 2.0:

Steve Bannon has sent two of Breitbart News' top reporters, Matt Boyle and Aaron Klein, to Alabama. Their mission: to discredit the Washington Post's reporting on Roy Moore's alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers.

Bottom line: This story is about to get even uglier, if that's imaginable. I expect more counter-attacks will play out in Breitbart News and other outlets over the coming days.

A story that popped today — splashed over the Breitbart homepage — contains what the website claims is a major hole in the account of Leigh Corfman, who says Alabama Senate candidate, Moore, made sexual advances on her when she was 14 years old.

Klein reports from Birmingham, Alabama: "Speaking by phone to Breitbart News on Saturday, Corfman's mother, Nancy Wells, 71, says that her daughter did not have a phone in her bedroom during the period that Moore is reported to have allegedly called Corfman – purportedly on Corfman's bedroom phone – to arrange at least one encounter."

Why this matters: It's quite a head-scratcher as to why Breitbart thinks this bedroom phone detail matters. As Corfman's mother told Breitbart "the phone in the house could get through to her easily." Wells stands by her daughter's allegations. But the fact Breitbart is running stories like this shows the extremes to which it may go to discredit Moore's accusers.
Another hard truth: Many Alabama voters hold the mainstream media in such low regard that they've dismissed the Washington Post's reporting entirely.

I still remained convinced that Bannon will be able to rally enough anger and hatred to put Moore in office.  Moore may not win by double digits, but he'll win.  It doesn't matter what you and I think, it matter what Alabama voters think.  "All politics is local" is hoary old saw for a good reason, and Alabama Republicans will elect Moore just to piss off the rest of the country.

Watch.

The Tale Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

Alabama Republicans are scrambling to do something about accused pedophile Roy Moore being their state's next senator, with several (mostly male) state lawmakers weighing in to say Moore is fine and that he should run and win next month, no problem.  One Alabama Republican went as far to say that the women who brought up these allegations should be prosecuted and jailed.

Prominent Republicans are calling on Roy Moore to drop out of the Alabama Senate race after multiple women have come forward to accuse him of propositioning them when they were teens. But at least one conservative is in Moore’s corner: Alabama State Rep. Ed Henry.

Henry, who represents Hartselle in Cullen County, claims that if the allegations are true, his accusers deserve to be prosecuted for not reporting his actions sooner.

“If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years,” he told The Cullman Times on Thursday. “I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can’t be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.”

Republicans know this is another Todd Akin situation developing and they are willing to try anything in order to save themselves, and that means finding a way for current placeholder Sen. Luther Strange to win.

Some Senate Republicans have encouraged Mr. Strange — who lost to Mr. Moore in a bitterly contested Republican runoff election in September — to run as a write-in candidate, an option Mr. Strange is considering, according to Republicans who have spoken with him. But some Republicans believe he would do little more than play spoiler, ensuring either that Mr. Moore is elected by taking votes Mr. Jones would otherwise get or that the Democrat wins by siphoning support from Mr. Moore among Republicans seeking a palatable third option.

Mr. McConnell and Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, spoke with Mr. Strange about the prospect immediately after the Moore news broke on Thursday, according to Republicans familiar with the conversation. And Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who won re-election in 2010 as a write-in candidate, was planning to discuss logistics with Mr. Strange this weekend.

Asked Friday if he thought Mr. Strange should run as a write-in candidate, Mr. McConnell said only that “you’d have to ask Luther what his intentions are, given this development.”

Republicans in Washington and Alabama have also approached other potential candidates about a write-in effort, including Representative Robert B. Aderholt, a mainstream conservative from northern Alabama. But it is unclear that any prominent Republican will be willing to mount a wild-card campaign for the Senate unless Mr. Moore stands down first.

Absent Mr. Moore’s cooperation, Republicans in Washington have conferred with election lawyers to explore other long-shot options for replacing or marginalizing him, several of which would probably lead to a clash in court with Mr. Moore and his supporters.

But the manuevering is getting Byzantine for a reason.

One approach that Republicans are considering, according to people briefed on the deliberations, would involve asking Gov. Kay Ivey to order a new date for the election — sometime early next year — and giving the party time to ease Mr. Moore from the race.

Alabama election law requires candidates to withdraw at least 76 days before an election in order to be replaced on the ballot, a deadline Mr. Moore has already missed.

State law gives the governor broad authority to set the date of special elections, and Ms. Ivey, who is a Republican, already rescheduled the Senate election once, after inheriting the governor’s office in April when her predecessor, Robert Bentley, resigned in a sex and corruption scandal. Ms. Ivey’s advisers have not ruled out exercising that power again, according to Republicans in touch with her camp, but she has signaled that she would like reassurances of support from the White House before taking such an aggressive step.

Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist close to Mr. McConnell, said presidential intervention was needed to bring any order to the situation in Alabama. He suggested that President Trump could personally nudge Mr. Moore out of the race and back a write-in campaign by Mr. Strange, or perhaps Mr. Sessions, a popular figure with Alabama Republicans.

You catch that last part?

The part where Jeff Sessions runs a write-in campaign to get his old Senate seat back?

Now how many problems would THAT solve for Trump?  Sessions would no longer be Attorney General. Trump would have to appoint a new one.

One who would end the Mueller investigation and go after Clinton and the Democrats instead.

Stay tuned.  I think there's going to be some serious movement on this.

The Tale Of A Lesser Moore

Alabama's special election for Jeff Sessions's old seat is next month, and the candidates are two lawyers: Democrat Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted the two remaining KKK members who committed the infamous 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, and Roy Moore, a man removed from the Alabama Supreme Court not once but twice over failure to follow the law and who now faces allegations of sexual contact with 3 teenage girls in 1979.

Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.

It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.

“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.

Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.

The Post's story on Moore's odious conduct is extremely well-sourced.  Moore denies the allegations and literally calls the story "fake news", hoping to fundraise off the outrage factor of being attacked by the evil Democrats, but other Alabama Republicans are shrugging and saying that even if he did it, it shouldn't and doesn't actually matter and that the women are all liars anyway.

“I think it’s just a bunch of bull,” Perry Hooper Jr., President Trump’s Alabama state chairman, told TPM. “Mitch McConnell should know better to make a statement like he made unless he gets all the answers. We’re right in the political zone right now, the election’s December 12th. This is the same campaign issue the left ran against Donald Trump on, they’re doing the same thing against Roy Moore.”

Hooper, who’d backed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) over Moore in the primary, called the allegations “ludicrous” and “gutter politics” unless they could be proven.

“The same thing went on when President Trump ran for office, there was about 15 ladies who ran to the press and said the same thing,” he said.

When asked how the claims could be proven, he suggested the woman take a polygraph.

“Maybe she just needs to take a polygraph test. And the people who are pushing her, they need to take the same test too to see if they’re telling the truth,” he said.

Alabama State Rep. Ed Henry (R), Trump’s other Alabama campaign co-chairman, was even harsher.

“I believe it is very opportunistic and they are just looking for their chance to get on some liberal talk show. I’m sure they’ve probably been offered money by entities that surround the Clintons and that side of the world. We know they will pay to dirty anyone’s name that’s in their way. If you believe for a second that any of these are true then shame on these women for not coming forward in the last 30 years, it’s not like this guy hasn’t been in the limelight for decades. I call B.S. myself. I think it’s all lies and fabrication,” Henry told TPM.

When asked about McConnell’s comments, he erupted.

“Mitch McConnell, and you can quote me on this, is a dumbass, a coward, a liar himself and exactly what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. He would love for Roy Moore not to be in Washington, he’d much rather have a Democrat. Mitch McConnell is scum,” he said, putting the chances at “zero” that the state party would un-endorse Moore.

And he said he’d need photographic evidence to believe the women.

“They got some pictures? That’ll do,” he said. “You can’t sit on something like this for thirty-something years with a man as in the spotlight as Roy Moore and all of a sudden three weeks before a senatorial primary all of a sudden these three or four women are going to talk about something in 1979? I call bull. It’s as fabricated as the day is long.”

Indeed, Donald Trump has been accused by over a dozen women of sexual harassment, misconduct, and assault, and the official position of the White House and the Republican Party is that every single one of the claims is fabricated by lying women.

But at this point, the election is 32 days away and there's no chance Moore will drop out or be removed, so as with Trump, we're about to see if Republican voters believe allegations of sex crimes are a dealbreaker or not.  We know racism isn't, and we've got plenty of evidence that sex crimes aren't either, so my prediction that Moore wins easily next month remains.

We're dealing with voters in a state like this.

While dozens of Republicans in Washington are calling on Moore to step aside if the allegations are true, Republicans in Alabama don’t think the story will resonate the same way for voters. Instead, they focused on the timing of the allegations, which come just four weeks before the election.

Paul Reynolds, the Republican National Committeeman from Alabama, told The Hill that something about the timing of the accusation and the Post’s role breaking the story “doesn’t smell right.”

“My gosh, it's The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,” he said.

“This is going to make Roy Moore supporters step up to the plate and give more, work more and pray more."

They believe this is a good thing for Roy Moore.

Chuck Todd (yes, that Chuck Todd) argues that Doug Jones can win this race.

Now you might say that there’s no way (or little way) that a Republican could lose in Alabama, a state Trump won by a whopping 28 points in 2016. But consider:

• Before yesterday, Moore’s lead was just in the high single digits or low double digits, according to the polls. That isn’t a bulletproof lead;
• Moore has been a controversial figure in Alabama for more than a decade;
• Democratic opponent Doug Jones has owned the TV airwaves for an entire month, with ads like this: “I can work with Republicans better than Roy Moore can work with anyone”;
• And the race is a one-on-one special election that takes place two weeks before Christmas, so it will be a low-turnout affair. There is no other race on the ballot.

This isn’t to say that it’s a slam dunk that Moore loses after yesterday. But we’re not sure enough people realize how dangerous the political situation is for the GOP. 

Yes, Jones isn't facing a 28 point blowout.  But if loses by 5 points instead of 12, he still loses.  That's where I see things going.  The situation can change and I hope that I'm wrong and Jones wins.

I don't see that happening unless there's a major collapse of Moore's support and that collapse hasn't come yet.

We'll see.