Think back to November, 2016.
Breathe. Breathe.
Anyway, remember how Trump wasn't going to concede if he lost? The polls all had him losing, and he refused to say that he would accept a loss. He said that he would accept the results, "if I win." Why? Voter fraud, of course.
Everybody needs a villain to explain when they lose. The left has several villains, but their favorite is MONEY!!! MORE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! 'Cuz money is EEEEEVIL! For the right, voter fraud. If the left loses, it's because of money. If the right loses, it's because of voter fraud. You see, if everything were on the up-and-up, my side would never lose! While the political science research on the effects of money never backs up the hyperbolic contentions of the left, I suppose money at least exists...
The irony is that if voter fraud did exist, it would lead to a candidate underperforming on election day. Trump overperformed compared to the polls. The polls underestimated his support. That's the opposite of what we would expect if voter fraud were a thing. That hasn't stopped him from telling batshit crazy lies about "voter fraud" because he needs to tell everyone he "won the popular vote," for the sake of his own massive-yet-fragile ego, though, so the batshit crazy lies continue. However, those lies aren't dramatically different from the lies his party has been telling about non-existent voter fraud for years. Those same lies led to George W. Bush purging US Attorneys who didn't prosecute non-existent voter fraud! If you want the real research on "voter fraud" and how common it is, Justin Levitt at Loyola Law has tracked every single accusation. It just ain't there.
But Roy Moore is really just the reductio ad absurdum of Donald Trump. I was going to write, "logical conclusion of," but there is nothing logical about Moore. And Trump is already absurd, but... Never mind. Anyway, Roy underperformed on election day. If voter fraud were a thing, at least the numbers were in the direction that one would have expected. Was it voter fraud? No. Roy Moore is just an idiot, grasping at straws, and he's probably dumb enough to believe all of the "voter fraud" nonsense that his party has been peddling for years.
However, the fact that he is making the voter fraud argument puts is party, once again, in a difficult position. Why aren't they backing him up? Really, we know the answer. They want him to shut up and go away, but he won't do that. He's just doing what Trump might have done in November, 2016 anyway had he lost! The party wants to dissociate itself from Moore, but they're hoping he just goes away on his own. That isn't likely to happen.
Pursuant that, I have a "modest proposal."
Prior to Alabama's special election, Senator Richard Shelby indicated that he couldn't vote for Roy Moore, and he claimed that he cast a write-in vote for a Republican. A write-in vote for a Republican was an abstention. There were a surprisingly high number of functional abstentions in that election. Those functional abstainers were cowards.
This country uses a plurality rule electoral system. Whoever gets the most votes wins. That creates a strong tendency towards two parties. We call this "Duverger's law," after Maurice Duverger, the political scientist who first elaborated on the principle. That, rather than any bullshit conspiracy about money or the media or collusion, is why we have two parties. If you don't vote for the Democrat or the Republican, you are abstaining. You want to abstain? Fine. Just be clear on what you are doing. Richard Shelby, and everyone else who cast write-in votes in that special election abstained, just like everyone who stayed home. Shelby decided that a child molester was only precisely as bad as a Democrat, making him indifferent between the two choices, and Moore won't go away because his party is still wishy-washy on this.
Roy Moore is a child molester. The lowest of the low. The bottom rung of carbon-based life. He is necrotizing fasciitis on the body politic. Despite that, I can understand the impulse of the social conservative to vote for him, and I wrote about that. Policy versus character. We can even elaborate on the political science models of that dilemma, building "valence" into spatial models. Anyone who truly cared about character, though, needed to vote for Doug Jones, though, not abstain.
Here, then, is a perhaps-not-so-modest proposal. We can call this "The Roy Moore Pledge."
I pledge that whenever my party nominates a child molester, rapist, or comparable individual, and that individual refuses to withdraw from the race, I will vote for the candidate of the opposing party.
None of this abstention crap. No write-ins. No weaselly bullshit. Either you care about character, integrity, and not molesting children, or you don't. No, Senator Shelby, you didn't show integrity. You are a weasel. Can you make this pledge? As I wrote in my earlier post, it's actually a really hard pledge to make.
But, if people aren't willing to make it, that helps explain why Roy Moore won't go away.
