Doubtless, an embraceable ewe…
Speaking of which, does anyone know the national anthem of New Zealand (according to folks from Australia)?
Also, I think another big reason they don’t like Doug Jones is that he successfully prosecuted 2 KKK members for bombing a church and killing 4 little girls. It seems that this horrible prosecution of 2 good old boys was antithetical to Alabama Republican morality.
Looking at this strictly from party politics, the GOP would be best served by Moore losing. If he wins, the party is going to have deal with him for 6 years, at least. They still keep their majority in the Senate even if he loses, but life will be much, much simpler for anyone else running in the next few elections without that millstone around his neck. It’s bad enough they have Trump…
Plus, since Moore is so old for a freshman senator, he can feel free to be a complete pain in the ass to the Republicans. He’s not running for president, he’s not building seniority in the Senate to get a power base. He’ll be all over the Sunday news shows and cable news he’s elected. Every Republican running for reelection will see ads that say, “Senator xxxx voted with Roy Moore 998% of the time…” The Republicans love to nationalize races by tying every Democrat to Nancy Pelosi and this will give the Democrats the same ammunition.
The smart move would be to encourage a write-in campaign. As I understand it, it’s too late to take Moore’s name off the ballot, so worst case, the vote is split and the Dem wins, which is an overall better deal for the GOP. He’ll get booted in the next election, unless Moore wins the nomination again.
Nitpick: just 3 years. The winner next month will be filling the remainder of Sessions’ term, which ends in January 2021.
It’ll seem like >6 years, though, especially if you’re Mitch McConnell. 
Thanks for the correction. It still takes us through the next 2 elections, though.
NM
Your percentages are the best. Everyone says so.
McConnell is going all-in to try to get Trump to push for a delayed election.
And so the US’s sad, sad descent into becoming a banana republic picks up more steam. I can’t imagine how anybody would approve of this, except the Republicans who are desperately trying to rig this seat now that there’s a non-zero chance that Doug Jones might win.
Hey, it worked last year when they screwed Merrick Garland out of a Supreme Court seat, and there was little fuss over it. McConnell would just be going back to the same playbook.
Exactly. Don’t think for a moment that Repubs are taking some sort of stand on virtue; they still have utter contempt for democracy.
If the Republicans start to and get away with openly altering elections whenever their favored candidate isn’t winning… then I actually won’t be surprised. A year of Trump headlines has really desensitized me to hearing the ever escalating insanity. Enjoy the bananas America.
Does anyone have any insight to what’s happening over at Predictit? Despite polls showing Jones out ahead, Predictit has Moore : Jones at 62 : 41
I don’t know how Predictit’s track record is, but that seems awfully lopsided for someone who should be fighting for survival
That’s pretty close to a coin flip (50-50). It’s fluctuated from a slight advantage to Jones (55-45) to around 60-40 for Moore. I don’t think bettors are confident either way – history says Alabama goes red no matter what, but bettors don’t know how turnout will go, so they’re going either way.
Trump can pressure Mitch all he wants but the decision is solely Kay Ivey’s, and she has been rather emphatic that the election is going ahead on December 12 come hell or high water.
Just to be clear, Trump has no actual authority to change the election date, right? He can pressure the state officials, but I just can’t imagine the president having authority over what is entirely a state decision (unless there is some national emergency or something).
Correct. Even having a Democrat with a realistic shot at winning a seat in a deep red state doesn’t constitute a national emergency.
Seems good for a statewide outbreak of the vapours, though. The fainting couch business must be booming down there.