Can Roy Moore survive the latest allegation?

I... don't even know where to start this morning. Jeff Sessions might appoint a special counsel for that Uranium One bullshit, and that's not my obvious choice for a morning post? (I guess Sessions wants to keep his job. More on that later.)

Ah, Roy ~~mother~~childfuckin' Moore. The latest, of course, is that a woman now says that she was violently attacked by him when she was 16. In response, Mitch McConnell has said that he believes the women, and thinks that Moore should withdraw from the race. There is now serious talk that even if Moore wins, the Senate will vote to expel him rather than seat him. Over at PredictIt, Jones has taken the betting lead over Moore. The inexperienced Democrat has an advantage over the celebrity Republican in fucking Alabama. That's how bad this is.

Now, let's take a step back and remember a few things.

1) Donald Trump is President. Donald Trump has not only been accused by a dozen women of sexual assault, he has bragged, on tape, of his ability to get away with it. When the tape was released, and the polls shifted so heavily towards Clinton (remember those incorrect polls), so certain were we that Trump would lose that there was a Saturday Night Live debate bit in which "Clinton" was asked what she thought of Trump's comments, and she said, "I think I'm going to be President." Or how about Greg Gianforte. This fucking piece of shit actually physically assaulted a journalist for asking a question he didn't like. Gianforte won his election. I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. These days, being a reprehensible, subhuman piece of fucking shit doesn't seem to disqualify one from public office.

2) Moore's name can't be taken off the ballot. It is too late for that. Voters will be able to vote for Roy Moore, Doug Jones, or write in another name. And this is Alabama. Ala-fucking-bama.

3) There is a famous but rarely-glimpsed effect sometimes called the "Bradley effect," in reference to Tom Bradley's 1982 California gubernatorial campaign (also sometimes made in reference to Doug Wilder's Virginia gubernatorial campaign). Bradley was black, and he underperformed on election day, given where people thought he stood in the polls. The common interpretation? People said they were going to vote for the black guy, even though they had no intention of doing so because they were racist, but didn't want to appear racist when asked by pollsters about their voting intentions. The evidence that the 1982 gubernatorial race was actually affected by this? Scant. In my opinion, the evidence was slightly better that the 2016 presidential election saw something like it, given that the Republican candidate was/is a serial sexual predator, but that leads me to Moore. Let's say you would rather vote for a serial sexual predator over a candidate of the other party. Would you admit it? Let's watch carefully.

4) The fact that the national GOP is coming out so strongly against Moore can actually help him. The GOP is in a bizarre state right now (I hereby nominate myself for understatement of the year). There is an old saying that you run for Congress by running against Congress, and Roy Moore can do that more convincingly than anyone else. Within the GOP, nothing is cooler than hating your own party leadership. Roy Moore can now say that he is more hated by Republican leadership than any Republican in the country. McConnell now hates him more than he hates Ted Cruz! McConnell is telling him to quit, and Moore has an obvious response.

Moore can tell his Alabama base that they're all out to get him! It must be because he is the one, true warrior for conservative values and McConnell is a sellout cuckservative! Don't believe the FAKE NEWS [insert German translation for "lying press" which I won't put on my damned blog]! Nobody is more susceptible to this kind of crap than Roy Moore's base of support in the Alabama Republican electorate.

5) Given the ballot right now, it's either Jones or Moore. The Senate Republicans can't accept either. Suppose Senate Republicans make the following promise to Alabama: vote for Moore, and we'll expel him, giving Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (Republican) the opportunity to appoint a Republican replacement. That way, the Republican electorate of Alabama gets to have someone who is neither a child-rapist nor a Democrat. I kind of wonder if that's where we're going. Just speculating... Of course, doing this properly requires a sort of a wink and a nod, because you can't just come out and say, "hey! Vote for the child rapist! I promise, it'll be awesome in the end!" There have been cases in which a candidate dies and the party tells the voters to vote for the dead guy so that the Governor can appoint a specific replacement (see Mel Carnahan versus John Ashcroft for the Missouri Senate seat in 2000), but this... is different. Still, that looks like the best game plan for the GOP right now. If the expulsion-followed-by-Ivey-appointed-replacement gets news coverage, I'd bet on Moore winning the election, and then never being seated. We'll see. Right now, though, the betting is favoring Jones.