WaPo:
Bitter Senate race tests Alabama’s image in the country — and at home
Supporters of Jones say with concern that a win Tuesday by the firebrand Moore would derail the state’s efforts to escape its painful history and rebrand as a forward-thinking place welcoming to Fortune 500 companies and a highly educated workforce. And they express a nagging feeling that a Moore victory would be a deflating sign that Alabama remains beholden to its past.
“You travel across the country and you say ‘Alabama,’ and something goes right across people’s eyes every time,” said retired actor Jonathan Fuller, a 61-year-old Democrat, as he shopped at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in the suburbs south of Birmingham. “I don’t want to apologize anymore for where I’m from because there is this pocket of stubbornness in my state.”
WaPo:
In Alabama, no good outcomes for the Republican Party
On this final weekend, the race in Alabama symbolizes a Republican Party in turmoil, with Trump and Bannon pitted against McConnell and others in the GOP establishment. Trump has continued to bend the party in his direction. A Moore victory on Tuesday would add to that record of success by the president, but at a potentially sizable cost to the Republican Party.
Here is the best thread I’ve seen on Alabama polling:
Vann Newkirk II/Atlantic:
What's Missing From Reports on Alabama's Black Turnout
Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones will have to get significant numbers of black voters to the polls in order to win, but the state’s voter suppression will make that a tough task.
Yet, as Alabama’s story today tells, the Voting Rights Act was not ironclad. As the cornerstone of the movement for the franchise, Alabama has also played the part of headquarters of resistance, a long legal and legislative guerrilla war against voting rights that culminated in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder case, one where officials in the Alabama county successfully sued for all of the former dominion of Jim Crow to be released from federal VRA oversight. That victory, and the structural barriers to voting erected in its aftermath, are a serious—and largely unacknowledged—impediment to Democrat Doug Jones’s chances in the special election for the state’s open Senate seat on Tuesday.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Journalists: Forget the Rust Belt diners. Head for the suburban yoga classes.
The stories generally overlooked the millions of comfortable, college-educated male Republicans, drenched in Fox News memes, who wanted tax cuts and hated Hillary Clinton. (They didn’t just dislike her; they viscerally despised her for reasons that defy rational analysis. I mean, she wasn’t the one who had business bankruptcies, assaulted less powerful people who would never complain or insulted prisoners of war.)
The assumption that this part of America was somehow more “real” or virtuous (recall “New York City values”?) than any other stemmed from a mix of liberal guilt and white grievance-mongering. (We’ve failed them! We should have let them keep the “Christmas” party!) The argument that they were not responsible for the rise of Trump — who was the fault of elites who did the working class wrong! — was illogical and insulting. Surely, these voters, like all voters, have agency and are accountable for their decisions, whether in their everyday lives or in their politics.
Now that Trump has been shown to be just as ignorant, unhinged, racist, incompetent, authoritarian and unfit as his critics said, the Trump voters (sporting an uncanny willingness to deny reality or just lie) don’t seem so interesting; they just sound wacky. Rather than the repositories of moral truth, they sound mean-spirited and selfish. They can’t see the real victims in society because they are convinced they’re the real victims.
Amy Davidson Sorkin/New Yorker:
Donald Trump, Roy Moore, and the Degradation of the G.O.P.
In less than a year, the President, with help from the Alabama Senate candidate, has so damaged the Party that it may never recover.
What would they tolerate in order to secure the fifty-first vote? Put another way, if the Party is willing to give its money and its credibility to protect a candidate accused of molesting teen-agers, what might it talk itself into doing to protect the President? Robert Mueller may be interested in the answer.
Bloomberg:
Gun Buying Loses the Fear Factor Under Trump, Sparking Price War
“We believe the industry environment will remain difficult for several more months, if not longer,” Chris Krueger, an analyst with Lake Street Capital Markets, said in a note.
A record number of background checks, a proxy for gun purchases, during Black Friday had sparked investor hopes that gun demand had hit bottom. But that holiday buying was merely a sign that consumers were waiting for steep bargains, Debney said. The National Instant Criminal Background Check system dropped 12 percent in November from a year earlier.
NY Times:
Nikki Haley Says Women Who Accuse Trump of Misconduct ‘Should Be Heard’
Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct “should be heard,” a surprising break from the administration’s longstanding assertion that the allegations are false and that voters rightly dismissed them when they elected Mr. Trump.
Ms. Haley, a former governor and one of the highest-ranking women in Mr. Trump’s administration, refocused attention on the allegations against the president by insisting that his accusers should be treated no differently than the scores of women who have come forward in recent weeks with stories of sexual harassment and misconduct against other men.
“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Ms. Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I think we heard from them prior to the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”
Sean McElwee:
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS FINE
It is the most united American party in modern political history.
This brings us to today: A Democratic party united in opposition to Trump, and in closer alignment on issues like abortion, health care, and climate change. This is not to say the party is completely united — the core question at the heart of it is what it means to be a progressive or a liberal, rather than whether the party should be liberal or progressive.
On most core issues the parties become more united. Take one question that is a standard measure of racial resentment: “It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.” As the chart below shows, Democratic primary voters have become far more opposed to that sentiment since 2008, as the party has sorted to become more racially liberal — supportive of more action to alleviate racial inequality and supportive of more immigration.
Congressional Republicans are poised to pass the biggest tax overhaul in a generation, but Americans remain unconvinced that the measure will cut their own taxes or significantly boost the economy.
A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds just 32% support the GOP tax plan; 48% oppose it. That's the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades, including the Affordable Care Act in 2009.
Politico:
ALARM BELLS -- Republicans are growing increasingly worried about the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th district. Former Republican Rep. Tim Murphy resigned after it became public that he suggested his mistress have an abortion. D.C. Republicans nominated Rick Saccone -- a state lawmaker -- to run, and Democrats have tapped Conor Lamb -- a 34-year-old former federal prosecutor who was in the Marines. The district is solidly Republican, but Republicans watching the race take shape are worried they’ll have to spend money to boost Saccone. The election is in March, and it will certainly be seen as a harbinger for the midterms.