Roy Moore Prediction

I know that I haven't been predictin' all that well of late, but I think I know how Roy Moore will deal with his child molestation problem.

He's going to admit he liked to date 16 and 17 year old girls when he was in his 30s. In fact, he will say it was common knowledge at the time. [There is some reporting to that effect]. But he will swear up and down he never dated any girl under 16, and that the woman who came out the other day is lying at the behest of the Democrats, the GOP Establishment, and the Fake News Media.

He'll say his enemies caught wind of the fact he liked to date 16-17 year old girls when he was younger -- "after all," he'll say, it was "common knowledge" -- and they are now using this fact to catapult a false accusation that he diddled a 14 year old. He may even praise his enemies for coming up with such a devious plot to derail his candidacy.

I think this will play well in Alabama.

Prediction for Virginia Governor's Race

It'll be close all evening in tonight's race for governor in Virginia -- and I know the polls show the Democrat currently ahead by a few points -- but I predict Republican Ed Gillespie will pull away near the end and squeak out a win, beating Ralph Northam by a little over one percentage point.

And I am not posting this merely to complain about all of the recent Democratic political malpractice. Low turnout will hurt the Dems just like it always does in these off-year elections, but -- as anyone who followed last year's General Election knows -- additional factors are at work here. Although national polling was solid in 2016, state polls underestimate the white racist turnout, which caused the numbers to be off by a few points in some of the blue and purple states.

I think that same factor will apply in the Virginia election, and hatred for Trump isn't enough to overcome this. The average person doesn't follow the disastrous Trump presidency like some of us do, at least not yet.

Add to all this the fact that no poll in Virginia has ever gotten a governor's race right, and it combines for a GOP victory tonight. State polls have always underestimated the GOP candidate's performance in Virginia, and those previous gubernatorial elections were in "normal" years when white racist voters weren't so motivated.

On the bright side, I agree with my friend Slic[k] that if the Democrats lose tonight, the defeat will finally light a fire under the party. If the 2016 loss knocked the Dems unconscious, then their loss today in Virginia will be the smelling salts because the party has no business losing a statewide election in a blue or purple state when a GOP president with historically low poll numbers is in office. 

The 2018 mid-term elections will therefore be different. A bigger turnout in 2018 -- plus a greater sense of Trump fatigue (propelled by an accelerating KremlinGate Scandal) -- will win the day for Dems next year.

UPDATE: Or not.

Are We Looking At "The End Times" For The Republican Party?

[I originally published this post over five years ago, and it seems appropriate to repost it now in the wake of Jeff Flake's historic speech today. At the time I wrote it, I believed that the 2016 Election would signal the beginning of the end of the GOP because of how badly Republicans would lose. It never occurred to me that Republican presidential and congressional wins in 2016 would cause the end of the GOP, but that's what appears to be happening right now.]

How did Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) -- a "former CIA officer, Air Force pilot, 14 years elected office in the state, and * * * a genuine conservative who once advocated executing juveniles" --  how did this guy not only lose the Texas GOP Senate Primary but lose it by big numbers? Well, that's easy -- the Baggers ran someone who was actually to the right of Dewhurst (as impossible as that might sound) and were therefore able to brand Dewhurst as ... wait for it ... a moderate:

When Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) launched his U.S. Senate campaign, he immediately became the man to beat. Indeed, it really wasn't supposed to be close. * * *  The deep-pocketed Dewhurst also enjoyed the backing of three-term Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the state GOP establishment.

When the primary was held in May, Dewhurst won by double digits, but came short of the 50% threshold, leading to a runoff against former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz. And last night, after the dust settled, Dewhurst had lost to Cruz by nearly 14 points.

How'd this happen? The short answer is that the race pitted the Republican establishment against the GOP's Tea Party base, and in a runoff election, highly-motivated ideologues are the ones who turn out in greater numbers. Though Cruz lacked Dewhurst's flush bank account, he also thrived thanks to outside investments from right-wing groups like the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks.

But a closer look shows a dynamic that's arguably more important. Just as in Indiana, where Sen. Dick Lugar lost a Republican primary, despite a very conservative voting record, because he demonstrated a willingness to compromise, Cruz labeled Dewhurst as a "moderate" because the lieutenant governor was willing to talk to those he disagrees with.

The phrase death throes is defined as "the final stages of something before it comes to an end or fails completely" or "uncontrolled shaking and twisting movements of someone who is dying in pain." I think that is what we are witnessing here -- the death throes of the Republican Party.

Think about it -- in 2008, the GOP was trounced in the General Election, mostly because its fucked-up policies caused the Great Recession. Many expected that the party would moderate in response to this defeat and move away from espousing the far right policies of the Bush/Cheney era.  After all, that is how a political party survives a crushing defeat.

But not this time. Instead, the party decided that death was preferable to moderation and chose instead to become even more radicalized than it was during Bush II, so much so that it oftentimes became a race to the right for many of its "moderate" members.  A good example of this was when Mitt Romney -- who at one time in his political career supported gay rights and a woman's right to choose -- adopted a position on immigration that was clearly to the right of Rick Freaking Santorum's position.

I think the GOP as a whole knows that its days are numbered demographically and is doing its best to delay the inevitable.  That is why you are seeing stuff like the Citizens United case and the voter suppression tactics being employed on a massive scale across the country by Republican lawmakers.  It's all designed to keep this dying party on life support as long as possible.  In the meantime, we get to watch the GOP throw off its moderates as it spasms to hang on to life for just a little while longer.  Of course, this death process was clearly helped along by the election of not only a Democrat as President, but a Black Democrat.

One of these days, America will go full Schiavo and finally pull the plug on the GOP.  And that day cannot happen soon enough.  Let's just hope that this dying party doesn't pull the whole country down with it.

The Idiot Trump Keeps Stepping On His Own Narratives

There is definitely something seriously wrong with Donald Trump. He settles on a story that he fired Comey because Rosenstein said he should, then abandons it during the interview with Lester Holt by saying he fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation, probably because he knew no one would believe he fired Comey over how "Poor Hillary" was treated during the email investigation (incredibly, he later tells Russian operatives the same thing when he met with them in the Oval Office).

Now Trump claims that his threat to Comey about "tapes" was merely an effort to make Comey testify truthfully about their conversations; and he now claims that this strategy worked, meaning that Donald has effectively verified all of Comey's testimony, much of which was profoundly damaging to Trump.

Trump actually had a beer party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the mere act of the House passing a health care bill, then turns around and calls that very same bill "mean" (then criticized Obama for stealing his "mean" branding!).

And more recently, he reverses himself on Russian election interference being a hoax perpetrated by some 400-pound dude laying on a bed and now claims it is true and is all Obama's fault so there is nothing he can do about it (that would be akin to FDR saying in 1933 that the Great Depression is all Hoover's fault so he [FDR] has no responsibility to do anything about it).

I do have some "20-20 hindsight" criticism over how Obama handled the Russia election interference deal, but the bottom line is that people were made aware of what was going on (we forget that HRC actually accused Trump of being a "Russian Puppet" during one of the debates, so the issue of Russian interference to favor Trump was out there for all to see, although not all the details of the attack had been released at that point). I liked this point from Steve Benen:

"If Trump is going to blame Obama and his team for not responding aggressively enough, he might also want to have a chat with congressional Republican leaders – who were notified and who refused to take the matter seriously."

But it was more than merely the GOP not taking it seriously. The Washington Post reported last December that Obama wanted to put out a bipartisan warning to the American people as to what was going on, but McConnell flat out refused to participate in that and then threatened Obama that if he put out a more forceful statement unilaterally, then McConnell would treat such an announcement as a purely partisan political maneuver. That's why you don't see any Republican House or Senate members coming out and blaming Obama for not doing enough about Russia -- such a position would be too hypocritical even for the GOP. Trump is the only Republican in office criticizing Obama this way because he doesn't care that it completely defecates upon his previous statement that the Russia hack is fake news.

But I think that Obama's main reason for not putting out a more forceful warning to the American people was because he (and everyone else except for Michael Moore and Bill Maher) was certain that HRC was going to win anyway, so why fuel Trump's inevitable claim that the election was rigged. Even Trump and his campaign were sure Donald would lose, as were the Russians (Putin reportedly gave up all hope of Trump winning when Donald went after the Gold Star Family in August).

As I said, hindsight is 20/20.  But if I was in Obama's shoes, I still would have put something more forceful about Russian interference out there in mid-October despite McConnell's threat. In fact, I would have mentioned that I wanted it to be a bipartisan announcement, but that McConnell wouldn't go along with that and I would detail to the American people the threat McConnell made and perhaps even suggest that McConnell may be aiding and abetting Russia (innocently or perhaps not-so innocently) by refusing to challenge Putin more forcefully. That's how Democrats need to deal with Republicans -- if the GOP pulls a knife, then the Dems need to respond by pulling a gun, politically speaking.

If the shoe were on the other foot, you know that a Republican president serving his last term would have put something more forceful out there if it looked like the Russians were trying to help Hillary. Obama's failure to do so is the typical Democrat pussiness that I've been complaining of for over a decade.

But at least I understand why Obama did what he did. I am way more critical of Obama's handling of the Affordable Care Act after it passed. He did little if anything to promote this new law, and that allowed the Republicans to brand the ACA as socialism (which is hilarious because the individual health care mandate was a market-based solution initially proposed by Republicans). Obama's lack of post-enactment support for the ACA (and the Democrats general failure to forcefully get behind that law) is unforgivable, in my opinion.

But this is all water under the bridge.  The Russia turd is now squarely in President Trump's pocket, and I believe how he responds to it will be one of the defining moments of his hopefully-short presidency.

Will Trump's Attempt To Extort Democrats Actually Work?

In case you missed it, Donald Trump is threatening to cut off Affordable Care Act subsidies unless Democrats agree to fund his Border Wall. The concern, of course, is that Donald's attempt at extortion might result in the federal government shutting down this Friday.

I am actually hoping the government shuts down.  Yeah, I know -- none of the other shutdowns (or threats of shutdown) had much of a negative effect politically on the GOP. After all, Republicans still won everything in 2016 despite all their shutdown fuckery during the Obama years. 

But as Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, a shutdown in the current political climate would be different from any other: "[I]t simply never occurred to anyone before now that there would be a shutdown crisis when one party had unified control of the entire government still less that a President whose party controlled Congress would threaten to shut the government down to extort policy concessions from a party that controls nothing."

If I had to bet, I'd wager there would not be a shutdown.  First of all, allowing one to occur would demonstrate beyond all doubt that the Republican Party is unable to govern even when it controls everything. Second, this whole border wall idea is unpopular, and I think even the GOP understands that going to the mat in support of an unpopular president's unpopular idea is bad politics. But whether Congressional GOP leaders will be able to convince Trump that it is a bad idea to shut down government over the issue of the border wall -- well, that's another story. 

Trump seems to think the promise of a border wall was a big reason he won the election.  But he promised more than a border wall.  He also promised the Mexicans would pay for it, mainly because he knew it would be hard to convince American taxpayers -- even those who support him -- that they should pay for the wall. Granted, most Republicans are racists, but they are cheap racists who don't want to spend money on anything, even something that might hurt minorities.

So I guess whether the shutdown occurs depends almost entirely on how much Donald Trump bought into his own racist anti-Mexican bullshit.  We'll have an answer to that question in about five days.

Tapping In To The Border Wall

Rep. Steve King: This looks actually perfect. I mean it's, uh, the right proportions. It'll be the same color right?

Wall Guy:  Yeah. Yeah.

Rep. King: When we build the actual Wall, it'll follow exactly these specifications. I mean the razor wire and everything?

Wall Guy:  Um, I'm not understanding it. What do you mean "the actual Wall?"

Rep. King: Well I mean...I mean when you build the actual Wall.

Wall Guy:  But Congressman King – this is the actual Wall.

Some Major Shit Is Going Down Right Now

Harold here, back from exile to report that something significant is happening concerning the traitor Donald Trump, his relationship with Russia, and Putin's hack of the American Election.

Yesterday morning, House Democrats heard something during a briefing from FBI Director Comey that made them very angry. Given that the hearing was top secret, they couldn't give details as to why they were mad, but it reportedly had something to do with Comey's refusal to clarify whether the FBI is investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.

On top of all that, the GOP senator heading up the Intelligence Committee announced his committee "will investigate possible contacts between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, reversing himself one day after telling reporters that the issue would be outside of his panel’s ongoing probe into Moscow’s election-disruption efforts." I can't stress the importance of this development enough -- a Republican would never allow something like this to happen unless he was worried that not investigating it would cause him and the GOP profound political difficulty in the future.

Add to all this yesterday's revelation that the former MI6 agent who was investigating Trump was so concerned with what he was finding regarding Donald and Russia that he turned it all over to the FBI last July.  And today, the Independent is reporting this:

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who investigated Donald Trump’s alleged Kremlin links, was so worried by what he was discovering that at the end he was working without pay, The Independent has learned.

Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.

However, say security sources, Mr. Steele became increasingly frustrated that the FBI was failing to take action on the intelligence from others as well as him. He came to believe there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr. Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Additionally, the AP reported yesterday that Michael Flynn, Trump's incoming national security adviser, has met frequently in recent weeks with Russia's ambassador to the U.S, including "on the day the Obama administration hit Moscow with sanctions in retaliation for election-related hacking, a senior U.S. official said Friday."

So what's going on?  I believe the investigation will reveal collusion between the Trump Campaign, elements within the FBI, and the Russians to hack into Hillary Clinton's Campaign in order to destroy it.