The Runoff

[alexava 6,973]

By Howard Koplowitz | hkoplowitz@al.com

Incumbent Democratic Sen. Doug Jones called his Republican opponent an “unprepared hyper-partisan that will add to the divide in Washington” after ex-Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville prevailed over former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary runoff.

Jones, who will face Tuberville in the November general election after the ex-Auburn coach soundly defeated Sessions, said he has sought common ground across the political aisle, pointing out that he passed 17 bipartisan bills in the Senate that were signed into law by President Trump.

 

“When I was elected, I promised the people of Alabama that I would put their interests first to find common ground and get things done for our state. Washington already has plenty of people who fight along partisan lines and nothing much seems to get done,” the senator said in a statement, adding that he secured relief for farmers in the Wiregrass impacted by storms and repealed the tax on Gold Star widows. “That’s the record I will present to the people of Alabama at a time when our country and our state face multiple crises. We are not out of the woods yet but every step of the way I will have your back and no one else’s. The choice before the voters is an unprepared hyper-partisan that will add to the divide in Washington, or my proven track-record to find common ground and get things done.”

 

Tuberville, a political neophyte who positioned himself in the campaign against Sessions as a Christian conservative who would back the president’s agenda in the Senate, was endorsed by Trump in March.

 

Trump, who did not have a great track record in making endorsements in Alabama -- he endorsed then-Sen. Luther Strange in the 2017 special election to fill the remainder of Sessions’ term and Strange lost to Roy Moore, who was then endorsed by Trump in the general election and lost to Jones -- basked in Tuberville’s victory on social media:

[TexasTiger 12,899]

Sessions got what he deserved. He aligned himself with man of zero character and it bit him in the ass as such things should. Tommy’s shown himself to be a man of little character once again. Guess the good folks of Alabama will show how much they have now.

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, Brad_ATX said:

OK, the Alabama Democratic party Twitter is going full on hilarious today.

 

These had me rolling. And a lot of truth in them, too. 

Is the ADP actually going to back Jones this time? 

[DKW 86 7,425]

48 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

These had me rolling. And a lot of truth in them, too. 

Is the ADP actually going to back Jones this time? 

They are actively engaged. The old guard, Worley and the other zombies are gone or disempowered.

 

[alexava 6,973]

Tuberville has called Jones a socialist. He collected millions from Auburn and Cincinnati to walk away and do nothing. If Taking public money and not working to the tune of millions is not socialism..... He’s a crook. Plain and simple. He has no business acumen, no legal experience, he is a very poor administrator of staff. The only thing he excelled at is motivating young men to play strong defense. That’s not what you need  to make laws. He claims trump “saved this country “. He needs to debate....

[homersapien 11,379]

31 minutes ago, alexava said:

Tuberville has called Jones a socialist. He collected millions from Auburn and Cincinnati to walk away and do nothing. If Taking public money and not working to the tune of millions is not socialism..... He’s a crook. Plain and simple. He has no business acumen, no legal experience, he is a very poor administrator of staff. The only thing he excelled at is motivating young men to play strong defense. That’s not what you need  to make laws. He claims trump “saved this country “. He needs to debate....

I don't think that will play come November - even in Alabama:

 

The wreckage is piling up

The mounting wreckage is now forcing us to come to terms with what this portends. An extraordinary New York Times report predicts that the “economy is headed for a tumultuous autumn” of “closed schools” and “renewed government lockdowns,” which is “clouding hopes for a rapid rebound.”

The too-rapid reopenings of many states — which were urged by Trump and reflected a denial of expert warnings — are now helping fuel a resurgence of cases that is forcing reversals.

The Times notes that all this is “threatening to choke the recovery and push the country back into a recessionary spiral,” potentially inflicting untold “long-term damage” on workers and businesses alike.

Worse, supplemental unemployment benefits are set to expire. While Trump has made noises about a deal with Democrats, there’s no telling whether they’ll be renewed — or whether Congress will offer other economic assistance — at any speed commensurate with the urgency of the moment.

All this traces back in part to Trump’s original inaction — the refusal to act for crucial lost weeks, the failure to mobilize private-sector manufacturing of needed equipment — and now to his insistence that the economy is roaring back to greatness (on his reelection schedule).

Trump continues urging speedy reopenings — downplaying social distancing and mask-wearing, and even insisting we herd as many children back into schools as possible — to bolster that narrative, which itself undercuts the likelihood of a sufficient economic package.........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/15/trump-disaster-gets-worse-new-political-theory-helps-explain-it/?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-e-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

[channonc 466]

22 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Yang: 

He has good ideas but no political experience. Not interested in doing that again.

[homersapien 11,379]

Jeff Sessions' downfall: The wages of loyalty to Donald Trump is public humiliation

Trump is a vampire who feeds off his own followers — and no one deserved to be drained more than Jeff Sessions

Former senator and disgraced former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has finally come, at age 73, to what is almost certainly the end of the road for his villainous political career. On Tuesday night, the right-wing Republican who served as a U.S. senator from 1997 to 2017 lost in his comeback attempt, defeated in the Republican primary for his old seat by Tommy Tuberville, a man whose cartoonish name better suited his previous career as head football coach at Auburn. The runoff election between the two wasn't even close, with the Riverboat Gambler (a silly and self-serious nickname for Tuberville, especially when "The Tubz" was right there for the taking) taking more than 60% of the vote. 

It's tempting, since we're talking about Alabama, to believe that the Tubz (I can't help it) won on a wave of goodwill from the famously football-fanatical voters of that state. That fails to take into account that Tuberville may well be regarded as one of history's greatest monsters in the parts of the state that Roll Tide.

No, the reason that Tuberville won is likely due to something far more sinister than inappropriate of confidence in the governing skills of college football coaches: Alabama Republicans are hyper-loyal to Donald Trump, and Trump told them to vote for Tuberville. 

"People in Alabama voted against Jeff Sessions because Donald Trump told them to," Angi Stalnaker, an Alabamian Republican strategist, told the New York Times. "If it had been Donald Trump saying, 'Go write in Mickey Mouse,' 50 percent of them would have gone to write in Mickey Mouse." 

But let us not shed tears for Sessions, for whom the phrase "hoisted by his own petard" may as well have been invented. In a world where so few evil people get any form of justice, we should allow ourselves the pleasure of laughing deeply, richly and at length at Sessions for this public humiliation. Sessions did this to himself. He, more than anyone else in power, invited Trump into our political system, and he knows exactly how Trump repays his loyalists: With a boot to the face and a laugh about what a simp you were to believe in him. 

Sessions, one of the most racist members of Congress (which is saying something!), spent all his political capital on Trump early on in the 2016 Republican primary, correctly perceiving the New York real estate huckster and TV host as a vehicle to make the rest of the nation's politics as toxic and racism-inflected as politics in Alabama. Sessions was the first Republican senator to endorse Trump and campaigned fiercely for him, seeing Trump as the best possible avenue for white grievance politics and anti-immigrant bigotry even more central to the Republican Party than they already were. 

There is no wiggle room here: Sessions, who was literally named after two Confederate leaders, fell madly in love with Trump because of racism. It's hard to imagine what else the two men have in common, but man, they both sure hate immigrants, black people and anyone else that David Duke wouldn't invite to a birthday party. 

Not to re-litigate the 2017 battle that resulted in a thousand "nevertheless, she persisted" tattoos, but it is important to remember that's exactly what Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was persisting over: Her belief that a blatant white supremacist shouldn't be confirmed as attorney general, even if another blatant white supremacist, in this case the president, had nominated him.

Warren was trying to read into the public record a letter that civil rights activist Coretta Scott King wrote in 1986 to protest Sessions' nomination to a federal judgeship, on the grounds that he was a big ol' racist. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stopped her, because it's kind of hard to pretend your big ol' racist Attorney General is not a big ol' racist when he was too racist 31 years earlier to get confirmed to the federal bench.

King accused Sessions of using "the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters," by launching frivolous criminal investigations aimed at preventing Black people from voting, or punishing them for doing so.

More racist stuff about Sessions, much of it revealed in 1986, resurfaced when Trump nominated him as attorney general: He called the NAACP "un-American." He said he was "okay" with the Ku Klux Klan "until I learned they smoked pot." (The context here was that Sessions was investigating what looked quite like a Klan lynching of a Black man he acknowledged had done nothing but "go to the 7-Eleven.") He said that the NAACP "hates white people" and is "a pinko organization." 

He was also accused of calling a Black colleague "boy" and telling him, "You ought to be careful as to what you say to white folks."

But like most love affairs gone wrong, after Sessions and Trump consummated their white supremacist passions, they began to realize that they disagreed on other critical issues where everyone needs to be on the same page for the relationship to continue.

In this case, the conflict point was over how best to cover up the shady dealings Trump's campaign had with Russian intelligence figures who conspired to interfere with the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. Trump felt that the cover-ups should be flagrant and shameless, and wanted Sessions to do whatever he could, right out in public, to shut down the investigation into potential criminal conspiracy. (He wanted Sessions to "un-recuse" himself from the Russia investigation and fire special counsel Robert Mueller, since Trump was too chicken to do that himself.) Sessions preferred a more subtle method, publicly backing away from the Russia question and claiming to have clean hands, even as the administration's obstruction of justice successfully rendered the Mueller the investigation incomplete.

The irony is that Sessions' instincts on how to use power to get away with crimes and corruption were proved correct. By observing legalistic norms and recusing himself, Sessions was able to put a stamp of legitimacy on the investigation, and lulled the public into believing it was less of a damning indictment of Trump than it actually was. It wasn't until the next big crime involving a former Soviet nation, this time Ukraine, that Trump was impeached. 

But Trump, ever a black hole for personal validation, cares less about what's actually best for him and far more for making his monkeys dance as hard as they can to prove they love him. The fact Sessions had self-interested reasons for playing his cards as he did — recusal allowed him to maintain an image of lawyerly respectability and professionalism — offended Trump greatly. He needs his underlings to sacrifice everything for him, including and especially any remaining dignity or reputational goodwill. Nothing but total self-immolation will be considered a good enough demonstration of your loyalty to Donald Trump. 

No matter how much butt-licking and self-effacement Sessions performed after the recusal, Trump never got over the fact that, for one brief moment, Sessions was willing to put pragmatic concerns and his own reputation over Trump's yawning need to see people debase themselves before him. So he hounded Sessions out of the Justice Department — firing him shortly after the Democrats' sweeping victory in the 2018 midterms — and has talked trash about him ever since. He enthusiastically endorsed Tuberville, not because he's some huge Auburn fan or particularly cares about whatever differences exist between the two Alabama Republicans, but because he was fixated on letting Sessions know that there's no such thing as walking away from Trump with your dignity intact. 

There should be a lesson for this in everyone who thinks it might be good for their career to work for Donald Trump. Anone who would think that can't be appealed to on moral grounds, as they don't have any of those. But they need to understand that Trump expects — nay, demands — their total humiliation. He needs their destruction, craves it, and will not stop until he is satisfied. He is a predator who lives on consuming the professional careers of those he comes in contact with, a vampire whose life is sustained by sucking dry the reputations of the people around him. Trump's ego demands that any contact with him will result in your total destruction, for that is the only way he can feel alive. The only people who survive contact are those, like Roger Stone or current Attorney General Bill Barr, who are themselves undead and therefore have no remaining soul or substance for Trump to feast upon. 

The fate of Jeff Sessions should be a warning to anyone who thinks there's such thing as working with Trump and walking away with any part of you undemolished. It doesn't work that way. He will drain you and leave a desiccated corpse where your reputation used to be. As puny a reputation as Sessions had before he made his deal with the devil, now he's got nothing. 

Amanda Marcotte

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/15/jeff-sessions-downfall-the-wages-of-loyalty-to-donald-trump-is-public-humiliation/

[Grumps 3,704]

I don't see how someone who calls themselves a conservative or a republican could vote for Tuberville over Sessions. This election outcome certainly makes it look like the masses just voted for whomever Trump told them to.

And for the record, I liked Tuberville very much as AU's coach...but that has NOTHING to do with me wanting him to represent me in Washington.

[bigbird 60,534]

9 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Tuberville, while a nice guy is not a Senator. WTF is he gonna do if he gets to the Senate and DJT aint there? 

Hopefully be forced to compromise and actually work with others to get something, anything done

[AUDub 11,149]

Just now, Grumps said:

I don't see how someone who calls themselves a conservative or a republican could vote for Tuberville over Sessions. This election outcome certainly makes it look like the masses just voted for whomever Trump told them to.

And for the record, I liked Tuberville very much as AU's coach...but that has NOTHING to do with me wanting him to represent me in Washington.

There's very little "conservative" about the Republican party in the age of Trump. Or at least it's more of a secondary concern to Trump's cult of personality.

[homersapien 11,379]

5 minutes ago, bigbird said:

Hopefully be forced to compromise and actually work with others to get something, anything done

That sounds like Doug Jones.

[DKW 86 7,425]

1 hour ago, channonc said:

He has good ideas but no political experience. Not interested in doing that again.

Are you saying Trump had good ideas? 

[channonc 466]

Just now, DKW 86 said:

Are you saying Trump had good ideas? 

Hahaha. Nope. 🙂 Andrew Yang has some good ideas.

[DKW 86 7,425]

Just now, channonc said:

Hahaha. Nope. 🙂 Andrew Yang has some good ideas.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, Grumps said:

And for the record, I liked Tuberville very much as AU's coach

 

[Farmer Brown 2,391]

Ha ha.

[TexasTiger 12,899]

2 hours ago, bigbird said:

Hopefully be forced to compromise and actually work with others to get something, anything done

Just looking for another gubment job with a pension where he sets his own hours.

[alexava 6,973]

2 hours ago, bigbird said:

Hopefully be forced to compromise and actually work with others to get something, anything done

That’s not his platform. His platform is to suck trumps ass. To combat the evil socialists agenda of democrats like Doug Jones. A chicken or a monkey could be trained to do what Tuberville is promising. It’s painfully embarrassing. 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

2 hours ago, alexava said:

That’s not his platform. His platform is to suck trumps ass. To combat the evil socialists agenda of democrats like Doug Jones. A chicken or a monkey could be trained to do what Tuberville is promising. It’s painfully embarrassing. 

But can that chicken lay an egg on the football field against a mediocre opponent? 

[DKW 86 7,425]

11 hours ago, alexava said:

That’s not his platform. 1)  His platform is to suck trumps ass. To combat the evil socialists agenda of democrats like Doug Jones. 2) A chicken or a monkey could be trained to do what Tuberville is promising. 3) It’s painfully embarrassing. 

 

9 hours ago, wdefromtx said:

But can that chicken 4) lay an egg on the football field against a mediocre opponent? 

Proving once again, that it aint funny, if it aint true...

[bigbird 60,534]

12 hours ago, alexava said:

That’s not his platform. His platform is to suck trumps ass. To combat the evil socialists agenda of democrats like Doug Jones. A chicken or a monkey could be trained to do what Tuberville is promising. It’s painfully embarrassing. 

That's why I said forced. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, bigbird said:

That's why I said forced. 

You can't force some body to do something they're not equipped to do. And it's beyond idiotic for Alabamians to try to replace a guy who's been doing exactly what you're asking for with another dumbass know-nothing redneck just because he ran with an R next to his name. But that's what Alabama does and that's why Alabama earns its place as the butt of the rest of the country's jokes.  (Although Kemp is trying his best to to steal the spotlight.)

[bigbird 60,534]

1 hour ago, McLoofus said:

You can't force some body to do something they're not equipped to do

Maybe. However, you can put them in a situation or environment that forces the need to adapt or evolve. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

3 minutes ago, bigbird said:

Maybe. However, you can put them in a situation or environment that forces the need to adapt or evolve. 

What situation or environment do you have in mind? Why aren't all senators put in this situation or environment? Why all this effort an accommodation for an unqualified doofus when his opponent has already been doing the work at a high level?