Trump's Card

[ursus arctos]

The split between national and Alabama Republicans on Moore is telling.

Pence and a bunch of Senators are on the record that he must withdraw if the allegations are true. His homeboys, on the other hand, are all assuming that they are true, and insisting that there's nothing wrong with what he did.

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/928730814350811147

[Satchmo Distel]

Imagine their reaction if a black Democrat had done the same.

[Satchmo Distel]

But Trump has created this schism by making it seem OK to elect a sexual predator whilst still ostensibly being a Bible Belt favourable party. Cognitive dissonance is structured into the ruling bloc.

[Satchmo Distel]

Trump surprisingly is not saying Moore's accusers are liars, which begs the question as to why one group of accusers is being judged by a different standard.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Republicans look likely to have 51-49 in the Virginia house.

[Lang Spoon]

Ach.

[San Bernardhinault]

If that is true, remember that it's still an amazing turnaround considering the gerrymandering.

But it's also not what I understand the state of the race to be. We had a democrat concede yesterday leaving us 49D - 48R. The remaining 3 seats all have Republican leads right now but provisional votes might still come in until Monday; and then there will be recounts. Certainly in the seat that has a Republican lead of 12.

Seats rarely flip on recounts, but when the lead is only 12 there's a chance.

[Lang Spoon]

Would a similar narrow dem loss for the DC House in 2018 be catastrophic or the beginning of the end for the Repubs (especially if enough State legislatures flip that the bastards can experience a nice bit of salamander redistricting karma for the next election)?

[San Bernardhinault]

That's all a question of perspective. Nobody expected the Democrats to come close in Virginia. And the Virginia statehouse can't do stuff nearly as evil as Capitol Hill, nor act as a break on evil as much as Capitol Hill.

So, winning 20 seats and reducing the majority to 8 would be a massive achievement under the Gerrymandered system. But a symbolic success, a moral victory, only counts for so much on the big stage; the Democrats need a real victory to actually resist the worst of Trump and prevent more of Paul Ryan. And people are already talking about the possibility of a Democratic House, so failure to win will hit much harder than in Virginia where nobody thought it was possible.

I think they're all very optimistic - I think the Democrats probably have no better than a 20-30% chance of winning a majority.

A different school of thought will tell you that reducing the Republican majority to single digits is a massive deal, because the Republicans are so fractured that they'll really struggle to find any kind of agreement in their caucus to get a majority vote on anything. And also, every time you close the gap, and get more Democrat incumbents, the closer you get to winning next time. I disagree with this thinking. It certainly helps the Democrats the smaller the Republican majority, but it's not enough.

So, winning an actual majority is absolutely fucking vital, but also near impossible. Which means I don't know if you should be happy when the Democrats come up just short.

[Satchmo Distel]

A narrow GOP majority seems to create paralysis where nothing gets done.

[ursus arctos]

This is a good introduction to the facts that underlie my agreement with SB as to the probability of the Democrats taking the House.

There is a fundamental assumption (which I agree with) that any House with a Democratic majority would bring Articles of Impeachment. That of cou-thirrse doesn't mean that 45 would be gone, as conviction by two-thirds of the Senate (with or without a Democratic majority) remains a massive long shot.

That said, one of the many interesting second order questions here is whether a Democratic minority might be able to pick off enough Republicans (perhaps those who only barely survived their races) to get Articles out of the House. And peeling off Republicans for Impeachment is much more difficult than doing the same with respect to individual policy initiatives, which they struggling to pass with their current majority.

[San Bernardhinault]

All that said, I'm still not sure that I think impeachment's a good idea. Trump's certainly done impeachable things, but he remains utterly useless.

If articles of impeachment are brought, that will motivate the Trumpists to go to the polls for him. It will reinforce their feeling of victimisation, that the establishment connives against real America. I think it's politically dangerous, bordering on lethal. And even talk of impeachment brings people out to vote for Republicans to prevent it.

On top of which, the consequences of a successful impeachment (which won't happen because of that 66 vote thing) are that Mike Pence gets into power.

And finally, impeachment ought to be a deeply rare thing. The fact that the Republicans tried to impeach Clinton over, effectively, a sex scandal, should be a permanent mark of shame against them. I feel the same would be true for Trump if he was impeached under emoluments clause, or on his various attempts to subvert the judiciary. It needs to be Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra level stuff where the President is directly implicated. If the Muller investigation shows that Trump himself was aware of Russian involvement in the election, and then got all his staff to perjure themselves on this, that's when articles of impeachment could be bought up without it just looking like partisan sour grapes.

[ursus arctos]

All of those are valid concerns, though I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are.

Pence's viability is also an absolutely essential element to any impeachment calculus.

[Satchmo Distel]

Will he face a challenge in the 2020 primaries?

[ursus arctos]

I’m not at all sure he run again in 2020

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think Pence is a dud, who wont get away with bluster that Trump just about does.

[Satchmo Distel]

Pence has surely gambled on getting the Presidency midterm like Truman, LBJ and Ford did, rather than going into a primary as the outgoing VP, where he would have no chance.

OTOH he's only 58 so if he is playing a very long game, he might be thinking about a timeline of Trump 2017-2020, Dem Pres 2021-24, Pence Pres 2025-2028. Any GOP contender under 60 could I suppose have that perspective, because who the fuck would want to inherit the shit-pile and rabid party base that Trump will leave behind in 2020?

[ursus arctos]

The latest wrinkle in the Moore debacle are rumours that the Governor is considering delaying the special election until sometime in 2018, so as to give the GOP time to find and nominate a new candidate.

[anton pulisov]

Pence has surely gambled on getting the Presidency midterm like Truman, LBJ and Ford did

Ah right. I misread that sentence at first. Thought you had suggested that Truman, LBJ and Ford were gambling on taking over. JFK did die in Texas after all...

[San Bernardhinault]

The latest wrinkle in the Moore debacle are rumours that the Governor is considering delaying the special election until sometime in 2018, so as to give the GOP time to find and nominate a new candidate.

Holy crap! Could that possibly be legal?

[ursus arctos]

It's Alabama, and yes, Alabama law appears to grant the Governor a great deal of latitude in scheduling and re-scheduling special elections.

[San Bernardhinault]

So, if there's an election tomorrow and the polling goes against the governor's favourite, he can just delay the election? It's utterly bonkers. But, I suppose, it is Alabama so I should expect it to be insane and corrupt.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Can't the Republicans promise Moore money not to run?

[Tubby Isaacs]

So, if there's an election tomorrow and the polling goes against the governor's favourite, he can just delay the election? It's utterly bonkers. But, I suppose, it is Alabama so I should expect it to be insane and corrupt.

It's a she, I think.

[ursus arctos]

It is.

This is a good piece on all of the machinations.

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.

And just for Tubbs

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.