December 13, 2017

The write-ins wrote out Roy Moore.

Sad!



Add it up yourself:



The photo of Roy Moore is a screen grab I made from "LIVE NOW: Roy Moore's Election Night Headquarters...." (which you can watch non-live).

The graphic of the vote was grabbed from the NYT article "Alabama Election Results: Doug Jones Defeats Roy Moore in U.S. Senate Race."

50 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

To be clear: I am not personally sad about Roy Moore losing.

There's good and bad in the outcome. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. Just wish RM hadn't won the primary.

RMc said...

The fact that he lost because of the write-ins is funny as hell.

Right now, the GOP is consoling themselves with, "Well, at least Moore won't be an albatross around our necks in the Senate." But the Dems/media aren't going to forget that the Repubs nominated this guy in the first place...they're still going to talk about him incessantly.

Roy Moore = the new Willie Horton.

roesch/voltaire said...

Sykes has an insightful narration on the post moral state of the Republican Party in thr NYT this morning, and I am glad that G-D loving folks
Saw the light.

RMc said...

BTW, Ann, last night's election thread was pretty much unreadable, thanks to Inga and her enablers. Can't you do something?

Jersey Fled said...

Republicans needed to learn the same lesson that Democrats maybe/should have learned last November with Hillary. At the end of the day you still need to nominate a credible candidate. It's tough to drag all that baggage across the finish line.

Anonymous said...

r/V: Sykes has an insightful narration on the post moral state of the Republican Party...

One of the most entertaining aspects of current politics is the fulsome moral posturing of liberals and cucks. For full comic impact, the farce requires that the posers sincerely believe that the other guys (and not just their in-group) regard them as having not only some shred of moral credibility, but moral authority.

I believe they're so far gone that they really do believe that, and are not just cynically posturing to buy time, or fool some of the people some of the time. So the farce works wonderfully for me.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bay Area Guy said...

Trump's tweet:

"Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!"

GWash said...

Good riddance to bad rubbish..
Moore is now free to roam the malls once again with his 1 'Jew lawyer'..

How anyone could have mixed feelings about this is beyond me... but we will miss out on 6 years of outrageous 'Christian politics'..

Watch your wallets.. so much winning!

MadTownGuy said...

So the write-ins defeated the ride-in? Huh. Makes me wonder about the effect of open primaries. Is Roy Moore another Todd Akin?

JAORE said...

What? No car circling around Montgomery with a trunk full of Moore ballots?
No resistance? No claims of outside interference or even hacking?

What the hell, people, do you think elections have meaning?

Yeah, Moore was a crap candidate - as noted above there are similarities to HRC. Fanatical, but minority base. LOTS of history/baggage/scandals. Ran a poor campaign with lots of stupid soundbites. Lots of people found him distasteful (I certainly did) even before the allegations.

Congratulations Senator-elect Jones. I'd say you have about 20 months to go unless you shock the good people of Alabama.

Ray - SoCal said...

Randy Barnet’s tweet is applicable:

If GOP would only do what it promises its voters, they wouldn’t have to reach for demonstrable “outsiders” who might just be crazy enough to do what the voters want—or turn out to just be plain crazy.

Ray - SoCal said...

Why Moore lost:

1. Dems outspent Moore tremendously. GOP was mixed in support.
2. Under 18 issue. MSM bias.
3. Lack of GOP keeping promises in congress.
4. McConnel supporting bad candidate against Moore.
5. Moore ran poor campaign / baggage / performance. List of Moore’s worst comments would be interesting.
6. Gut feeling - Dem ground game was much better. Dem turnout was amazing. Why?

Ray - SoCal said...

I wonder how much of the high Dem turnout is due to Trump?

Hagar said...

McConnell and the Congress GOPe leadership provided the winning margin for Jones.
The voters - Republicans and Democrats who might have been thinking of crossing over - are goinng to remember that in 2018 and beyond. "If they are that hep on remaining the minority party, let's just give it to them!"

Dude1394 said...

i hope the write ins enjoy the democrat they elected.

Hagar said...

Unfortunately, so will we.

MadTownGuy said...

JAORE said... "Congratulations Senator-elect Jones. I'd say you have about 20 months to go unless you shock the good people of Alabama."

Let the oppo research begin.

Hagar said...

and Chuck Schumer, the new Senate majority leader.

Ann Althouse said...

"BTW, Ann, last night's election thread was pretty much unreadable, thanks to Inga and her enablers. Can't you do something?"

It's hard for me to police that dynamic (unless I start early and get all disciplinarian, but I can't live like that).

The problem is not Inga, but the people who respond to her, naming her in their posts, and taking shot after shot at her. She always responds to a shot, so you see what happens.

I put FULL blame on the people who put her name in their comments, and they often do it even before she comments. I say in my comments instructions "don't make personal attacks on other commenters, bring some substance or humor to the conversation...."

Stick with substance if you don't like what she's said and want to fight it.

These commenters are bad, and I would take them out, but I don't have time to tend to the comments continually, so I will just try to give some extra pushback by saying to that to me, they look like men who are starved for attention from a woman, and they've learned they can always get it from Inga because she has what looks to me like a policy of responding to everything that is directed at her.

That's not what my mother taught me, which was to ignore people like that because you'll only encourage them. But I don't think Inga needs to stop responding when people attack her. They need to switch to arguing substance and not naming her and making it personal. And, as I said, I believe reason they won't switch to substance is that they want a woman to pay attention to them, even a woman who is giving them a negative reaction.

It's pathetic, and I'm hitting them over the head with this opinion in the hope of embarrassing them into cutting it out.

Meade said...

Hey! Blogger wife! I could use a little attention over here. (If you get a minute.)

MadTownGuy said...

Ann Althouse said... "There's good and bad in the outcome. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. Just wish RM hadn't won the primary."

Claire McCaskill said, some time ago, "Running for reelection to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Missouri, I had successfully manipulated the Republican primary so that in the general election I would face the candidate I was most likely to beat."

Link to article.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Thank you Althouse for seeing the situation for what it is.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Isn't Claire McCatkill up in 2018?

I suppose the lame ass GOP is waiting for the democrats to select her opponent again.

I'm Full of Soup said...

I wanted the Repubs to win this seat but also felt Alabamans would do the right thing and not elect the weird Roy Moore. And they did do the right thing. I have my doubts that New Jerseysans would do the right thing if it were sleazebag Bob Menendez vs an unknown Repub.

Michael said...

How then do progressives hold the view that people from Alabama are cousin marrying red neck women abusing racist homophobes?

MadisonMan said...

So what you're saying is that Jones didn't win the Popular Vote?

Qwinn said...

Most of the comments I see directed at Inga ARE substantive. When she denies that an admitted forgery is a forgery, and in fact lambasts anyone who calls it a forgery, that SHOULD be accompanied by insults because it is 1984 and Animal Farm taken as instruction manual, but the insults don't mean the response lack substance.

Saint Croix said...

So what you're saying is that Jones didn't win the Popular Vote?

Both Jones and Moore are unpopular in Alabama.

n.n said...

Both Jones and Moore are unpopular in Alabama.

We'll never know. The press was the decisive vote. This is how democracy...

JAORE said...

So what you're saying is that Jones didn't win the Popular Vote?
Another connection to the Hillary campaign!

AMDG said...

GOP dodged a bullet.

The difference is not Dem turnout but the failure of Republicans to come out and support a freak.

If this is a positive step in removing Bannon’s political influence it is a small price to play.

Professional lady said...

I also have mixed feelings about this. There's a good chance the man was smeared for political purposes and an election was manipulated. But, maybe Moore did what his accusers say - who knows? But, the evidence is not very credible. What's to stop someone from making wild accusations against Jones for the same purposes for something that he allegedly did years ago? Some of the accusations in the "Reckoning" are credible (such as the ones against Weinstein, Lauer, and Franken - honestly, Franken was stupid enough to take a photo!)but some not so much. I hate to see people being accused and ruined unjustly or when the accusation amounts to a temporary lapse of judgment or vulgarity.

Anonymous said...

Qwinn: Most of the comments I see directed at Inga ARE substantive.

So what? The point is that Inga's are not. If you have something substantive to say, do you need to have Inga around to say it?

Althouse is correct. If you're tired of seeing Inga shit up every thread with her brainless comments, stop responding to them. You know perfectly well that you aren't going to get her to engage in anything remotely resembling a rational argument, and that she is incapable of not responding to everything and anything, so why do you do it? Inga suffers from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger. What's your excuse?

Don't respond to her. Problem solved. It really is that simple.

RMc said...

The problem is not Inga, but the people who respond to her, naming her in their posts, and taking shot after shot at her.

No Inga, no responses. Simple.

Anonymous said...

Professional lady: I hate to see people being accused and ruined unjustly or when the accusation amounts to a temporary lapse of judgment or vulgarity.

True, but I think people are making are reading too much into this. Unproved allegations are a problem, but the fundamental problem here is that Moore was a rotten candidate. The opposition is going to pull that stuff on every candidate. A candidate that doesn't suck as bad as Moore can withstand those inevitable shenanigans.

Same for the GOPe-ers still insisting that this proves that the only salvation is running swamp-approved uniparty candidates, or the Dems so touchingly convinced that this means that the dawn of the glorious "resistance" has finally arrived. Tomorrow the GOPe-ers will still be deluded and the Dems will be back to excoriating the red-staters they're patting on the back today. Moore sucked, end of story.

Howard said...

WTF is it about Inga that put's you cucks into such an uncontrollable flat spin?

Howard said...

AMDG: I agree. Moore would have been the rallying cry of 2018 Democrat fundraising and electioneering. The bomb went off, it wasn't a dud, but no one was killed... just a minor flesh wound. You can also discern this in Trump's tweets. A sense of relief that the embarrassment is quickly becoming a forgotten footnote.

Static Ping said...

Is Roy Moore another Todd Akin?

Pretty much, except worse. Akin said something stupid that ruined his chances in a state that was favorable to him, though not by an overwhelming margin. In his defense, what he said was well-intentioned and innocently believed. Most likely the "rape does not result in pregnancy" belief was a fairly common belief 50 years prior. However, he could have dropped out once it became clear that he was going to lose, but he refused to do so.

Moore has an entire career of saying and doing stupid things, albeit at least some of it well-meaning though always incendiary, in a state where any Republican not in prison should win easily. He also has a history of losing elections. This was, of course, compounded by allegations of sexual assaults on minors in a climate very sensitive to sexual assaults of far less magnitude. It is arguable that Moore is the worst Senate candidate in living memory, assuming we only consider candidates that had a legitimate chance at winning. However, once the allegations came out, Moore did not really have an option to drop out other than a Hail Mary write-in campaign, though most likely he would have refused to drop out regardless.

Yancey Ward said...

The write-ins didn't cost Moore the election- is improbable that more than 80% of them would have otherwise picked Moore over Jones.

The result surprised me- I thought Moore would win easily even with the allegations against him.

There is, however, no way this can be spun as a good result for the Republicans. This was a colossal defeat, the effect of which largely comes from the leadership's fecklessness in the face of 40 year old allegations. The Democrats will replay this strategy on an epic scale next Fall, and the Republicans will find themselves on the defense the entire way since there is now no counter to such allegations.

FullMoon said...



I admit that is the reason I respond to Inga,
Now, these men who respond to Chuck and Ritmo may have some sort of latent homosexual reasons for seeking the attention of a man.
Oh, wait, nevermind.

Rosalyn C. said...

Moore is probably on the autism spectrum, that's my theory on why he was too shy to date age appropriate women back in his thirties, and why he come across as stupid when he speaks. Obviously he's accomplished a lot professionally, so he's not stupid.

I think the mainstream media is in a state of shock over Moore losing, they were hoping he would provide an easy target for all Republicans and especially for Trump. So they lost, too. Now they have to go back to snipping at Trump's heels and trying to make the case for Trump's accusers. But Jones's win validates Sarah Sanders's remark the other day that the voters in the 2016 election decided that the accusations against Trump weren't credible or substantive, while the voters in Alabama decided that the accusations against Moore were credible, apparently. I guess we'll see what happens next with the "women have to be believed" Gillibrand team.

Finally in that connection, while I don't like the tone of the badgering comments towards Inga, I don't see her as completely blameless. She may have started innocently, but this comment from her the other day on the election night thread was deliberately antagonistic: "Blogger Inga said... White suburban women either stayed home or voted for Jones. No one likes a child molester, except Trump and Bannon and a few of you folks." That's not healthy.


donald said...

Don’t know about autism. Dude went to West Point.

He’s just more Elmer Gantry/Lonesome Rhodes.

Bilwick said...

So was James ("The Face") Carville right about something? You know, maybe George Soros dragged some hundred dollar bills through Alabama trailer parks? Just wondering.

Night Owl said...

Professional lady @ 9:53 sums up some of my feelings.

My initial reaction to this campaign was indifference, because I'm not knowledgeable enough about Alabama politics to make an informed choice in their election. So I respect the opinion of the electorate in Alabama, as they certainly know more about Moore than I do.

But the media are turning every local election into an existential crisis and a national referendum on Trump, so it's hard to completely ignore these stories. I got sucked into the vortex over the doctored yearbook shenanigans. My feelings of distrust and loathing towards the media will always lean me towards voting against whoever they are in favor of. They created this bias in me due to years of listening to their hysterical Republican bashing, and they're continuing to feed my bias with their increasingly delusional coverage of the Trump administration.

But anyway, I'm ok with the outcome. Moore must've been an awful politician for a traditionally GOP state like Alabama to prefer a Democrat. And the silver lining is that Moore's loss means the media can no longer credibly run with the talking point that all southern Republicans are icky knuckle-dragging troglodytes. I bet more than a few of the talking-heads have mixed feelings as well, happy that the Dems get this seat, but disappointed that they lost this talking point.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Althouse, you can scold a dozen people who debate-->argue-->flamewar with Inga (not I), or you can act against Inga, who still owes you contrition for the scurrilous behavior that led to her previous name change.

Whereas your former student (who I scarcely dare name except by initials, MEG, for fear of myself being censored or banned) will be quickly and efficiently deleted along with any replies.

For a law emerita, you seem shaky on the concept of justice. Or, you're good at protecting or defending you and yours, but not so much for others.

Hey, it's your blog, but try to see yourself.

Bad Lieutenant said...

On the topic at hand, how does this turn out and result compare to the election of 2016, the election of Shelby, the prior election of Sessions?

I also agree that it seems the Democrats may have found some new kind of tiger to put in their tank. This should be explored and not ignored.

Qwinn said...

Sorry, first time I've revisited this thread since my last post.

"You know perfectly well that you aren't going to get her to engage in anything remotely resembling a rational argument, and that she is incapable of not responding to everything and anything, so why do you do it? Inga suffers from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger. What's your excuse?"

I don't just respond to Inga. I respond to Ritmo as well, and R/V, and ARM, and I call Chuck out all the time. I have aversion to bullshit, and when they spread it, it needs to be countered. Other people read this blog and read their droppings, and if it's not countered with facts and substance, people will believe them. You think if I don't post that Inga and Ritmo will stop? Please.

You acknowledge that my posts are substantive, and hers aren't. Why is it therefore my obligation to shut up, and not Inga's? How does that improve the blog?

Qwinn said...

I mention Inga by name in my posts because I'm rebutting her lies. My substance to noise ratio is pretty damn high, I think. If Ann was counting me among people who are "pathetic" and just want attention from a woman, she really should let me know, as I'm happy to take my free content elsewhere.

John Clifford said...

Write-ins are a joke, a voter's lame excuse for not deciding and thus deciding to support the other guy. If you like the other guy's positions better then have the stones to cast your vote for him. If you don't but think it's wrong to vote for your party's candidate and thus do the write-ins, you ARE voting for the other guy. Moore lost because the Dems used unproven allegations amid a climate of hysteria to trick enough GOP voters to effectively vote for Jones.

The GOP leadership and its voters never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. That's why they're the Stupid Party... and why they keep succumbing to the machinations of the Mendacious Party. You know, the party that eill not condemn Senator Robert Menendez, that purveyor of teen prostitutes... and do you really think Al Franken is going to resign instead of just saying what he needed to to get the Drms past the AL Senate election? If so, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.

The Devil's greatest trick is to convince you he doesn't exist.