We begin today’s roundup with Callum Borchers at The Fix and his analysis of the latest scandal involving Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore:
Minutes before The Post published its report, Breitbart posted a preemptive response from Moore under one of its signature, all-caps headlines: “AFTER ENDORSING DEMOCRAT IN ALABAMA, WASHINGTON POST PLANS TO HIT ROY MOORE WITH ALLEGATIONS OF INAPPROPRIATE RELATIONS WITH TEENAGERS; JUDGE FIRES BACK DENIAL.” [...]
Breitbart's willingness to be used as a media-relations arm of Moore's campaign is a dive even deeper into the tank.
Here is Michael Scherer’s analysis at The Washington Post:
The state Republican Party has the power to disqualify Moore from the election, according to the Alabama secretary of state. If that happens, McConnell and other Republicans would face the challenge of figuring out which candidate would run in Moore’s place — and how to win an election in which it is too late to replace the former judge’s name on the Dec. 12 ballot. Under Alabama state law, the ballot cannot be changed within 76 days of an election. However, in the event of either disqualification or withdrawal, votes cast for Moore would not be certified. [...]
Several state Republicans suggested Thursday that the party is unlikely to disqualify Moore.
The Week’s Ryan Cooper:
The story is absolutely nauseating. The political question, of course, is whether die-hard partisanship is going to overwhelm basic human decency. Will Alabama elect someone accused of preying on a young girl in its Dec. 12 election? We'll find out soon.
Pat Garofalo at US News looks at the GOP tax bill:
The ideas the GOP is advocating are hideously unpopular and are being massively oversold as a remedy to the nation’s economic ills. That’s a toxic combination for the GOP and, more importantly, would be really lousy for the nation should the bill come to pass. Let’s take the second part first. Republicans have been promoting their tax “reform” plan – which is really more of a big tax cut with some modest reforms chucked in – as helping mostly the middle class. Per analyses from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the Tax Policy Center and former Treasury official Ernie Tedeschi, though, the benefits for the middle class from the bill are nonexistent to fleeting. They fade over time, eventually resulting in many middle-class and lower-income households experiencing a tax increase at the back end of the bill’s life-span, due to the phaseout of various bits Republicans are using to cover some of the costs of the whole thing.
Paul Krugman provides his insight:
[W]hen Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, says that the bill’s goal is “to deliver middle-class tax cuts to the hard-working families in this country,” he’s claiming that up is down and black is white. This bill does little or nothing for the middle class, and even among the affluent it’s biased against those who work hard in favor of the idle rich.
Also let’s not forget that tax increases on working Americans are only part of the story. This bill would also, according to the Congressional Budget Office, add $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. You know what that means: If this bill or anything like it passes, Republicans will immediately revert to their previous pretense of being deficit hawks and start demanding spending cuts.
Bloomberg takes on Secretary Tillerson’s weakening of the State Department:
There’s a difference between taming the bureaucracy and decimating it. What President Donald Trump and Secretary Rex Tillerson are doing to the State Department is the latter, making it far more difficult for the department to advance U.S. interests around the world.
The secretary of state’s plans to reorganize the department may well make sense. But the details have been kept from the public as well as the rank-and-file, raising unneeded suspicion. Meanwhile, the president has given every indication that he doesn’t believe in a cornerstone of democratic governance: the idea that a career diplomatic corps can be relied on to discharge its duties regardless of who’s in office.
David D. Haynes writes about why we need to end partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin:
In 2012, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, easily won the state and Democrats received 52% of all the votes in state Assembly races. Yet, due to the GOP gerrymander, they only claimed 39 of 99 seats. In 2016, there was a similar outcome: President Donald Trump won the state narrowly over Hillary Clinton but Republicans won 64 Assembly seats.
This is not democracy — not even close.
Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center told the court: “Politicians are never going to fix gerrymandering. They like gerrymandering.”Indeed they do, but some moderate Republicans are breaking ranks. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have sided with Democrats in this case.
Here is The New York Times on the tragic Trump administation incompetence in Puerto Rico:
Of all Puerto Rico’s continuing miseries seven weeks after Hurricane Maria’s devastation, the most blatantly unjust is that islanders have been denied the more generous and swifter food relief distributed to storm victims this year in Texas and Florida under the emergency food stamp program.
Yes, both the island and mainland victims are United States citizens. But not all citizens are created equal: A 35-year-old congressional budget cap on Puerto Rico’s food stamp program has limited the amount of disaster aid immediately available. Texas and Florida have no such federal restraints and were able to quickly increase food stamp help in the face of the hurricane damage last summer.
Edward B. Foley, professor of election law, makes the case for instant runoff voting:
States can return to the original plan [envisioned by the Founders] by adopting the same kind of runoff that New Hampshire had or, instead, a modern form of runoff that avoids the need for a second round of ballots. Known as instant-runoff voting, it enables voters to rank their preferences among multiple candidates. Had this been used last year, a voter could have ranked Stein first, Clinton second, and Johnson third (for example). These rankings make it possible to eliminate candidates with less support than others and then identify which remaining candidate is preferred by a majority of voters.
If just two states had adopted a runoff, it could have made the difference in which candidate became commander in chief. The highest reform priority between now and 2020 should be to convince battleground states — like Florida and Michigan, where voters can adopt reforms by initiative and thus bypass recalcitrant legislatures — to adopt whichever type of runoff they prefer.
The imperative is to prevent another president who wins the White House without really winning the support of the electorates in the states that determine the outcome. The Founding Fathers would see that as a subversion of the Electoral College system. So should we.
On a final note, Eugene Robinson reflects on the Democratic victories in Virginia:
What happened at the polls Tuesday was a good old-fashioned butt-kicking that exposed the cynical fraud called Trumpism. Hallelujah, people, and let’s do it again next year. [...]
I hope the message to the Republican Party is clear: If you embrace Trump’s angry, nativist, white-nationalist politics of division, you will pay a price.