Doug Jones’s victory in Tuesday’s special Senate election in Alabama is an “embarrassment,” as one Washington Republican told me. Embarrassing because it’s Alabama, one of the most GOP-friendly states in the country. Embarrassing because the party’s candidate, Roy Moore, was perhaps one of the only Republicans in the state who could have lost the race. And embarrassing because the party’s leader, President Donald Trump, went all in for Moore in the final days before the election.
There’s no getting around that fact. Trump had no reason to weigh in so strongly, or even at all, on Alabama. His position ever since the Washington Post published its article detailing credible sexual misconduct allegations against Moore was a simple and even understandable dodge: If the claims are true, Moore should step aside from the race. Moore didn’t do that, denying the allegations even as they continued to come in and sound more and more believable.
Over the last month, Trump had all the cover he needed to stay away. Virtually every Republican senator, Moore’s would-be colleagues, denounced the candidate. The National Republican Senatorial Committee withdrew its funding and support, as did the Republican National Committee. Alabama’s senior senator, Richard Shelby, pledged he would write in another Republican candidate on his ballot rather than vote for Moore or for Jones.
Trump alone might have been able to convince Moore to get out, as Rich Lowry has pointed out. With no apparent write-in to take Moore’s place and perhaps no desire to second-guess a candidate who was denying these allegations, Trump did nothing. Had he continued to do so, he would have credibly been able to say following Moore’s defeat “I told you so: I supported Luther Strange.”
But he didn’t, and he can’t.
Trump Tweet of the Day—Here’s how the president weighed in, late on Tuesday night, on the race:
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
Something Republicans in Washington are clearly worried about is a trend. After a rocky start in 2017, where the GOP caught lucky breaks in special elections, Democrats have started to ride what could be an anti-Trump, anti-Republican wave heading into next year’s midterm elections. The walloping of Republicans in Virginia last month was a devastating blow, one that can’t be blamed on a fundamentally flawed and abhorrent candidate at the top of the ticket.
There are some similarities to what happened in the Old Dominion in November and in the Heart of Dixie this week. Virginia Democrats ran up big numbers in the suburbs—not just blue-and-getting-bluer Northern Virginia, but around Richmond and the generally Republican-friendly Hampton Roads area, too. There were a lot of different factors that helped Doug Jones, including a significantly large and motivated group of black voters, but take a look at these results in one suburban Birmingham county:
Shelby County, AL (Birmingham suburbs):
2016: Trump 73,020, Clinton 22,977
2017: Moore 36,424, Jones 27,251#ALSEN— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 13, 2017
Yes, Roy Moore still won the county, but with half the votes Trump did in 2016. But Jones actually earned more raw votes there than Hillary Clinton did during a presidential election year. That says a lot about the candidates, the ground games, the messages, yes—but also a lot about which side is more energized and enthusiastic.
President Trump signed the $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act on Tuesday, calling it a “momentous step in rebuilding our military and securing our future for our children.”
“Today, with the signing of this defense bill, we accelerate the process of fully restoring America’s military might,” Trump said. “This legislation will enhance our readiness, expand and modernize our forces, and help provide our service members with the tools that they need to fight and to win. . . . But hopefully, with this, we won’t have to fight because people will not be wanting to fight with us.”
Trump said the authorization, which boosts military spending by about $80 billion from 2017 levels, will help to enhance America’s military readiness and capabilities, while increasing the size of America’s armed forces and raising the troops’ pay for the first time in more than half a decade.
As he signed the bill, Trump also called on Congress to avoid a government shutdown and pass a clean appropriations bill. “At this time of grave global threats, I urge Democrats in Congress to drop their shutdown threats and descend a clean funding bill to my desk that fully funds our great military,” Trump said.
In a signing statement released later on Tuesday, however, President Trump took issue with provisions in the law that force the administration to take a more aggressive policy stance toward Russia, including by restricting U.S.-Russian military cooperation and prohibiting the White House from acknowledging Russia’s right to occupied Crimea.
In the statement, Trump said these provisions would crimp his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief.
“My administration will apply these provisions consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations, including the president’s authority under Article II, section 3 of the Constitution to ‘receive ambassadors and other public ministers,’” the statement reads.
Stray Trump Quote of the Day—“We need our military. It’s got to be perfecto.”
After Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand called for President Trump to resign over allegations of sexual misconduct Monday, it was only a matter of time before Trump punched back. His retort took the form of a tweet Tuesday morning calling Gillibrand a “lightweight” who, he said, used to come to his office “begging” for campaign contributions and “would do anything for them.”
As all Trump’s tweets do, this one immediately provoked a backlash, with many decrying what they took to be a sly sexual insult. Gillibrand quickly responded herself, calling the tweet a “sexist smear.”
But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed that reading Tuesday afternoon, saying the “do anything” dig was “obviously talking about political partisan games that people often play and the broken system.”
“Only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way,” Sanders said.
National Security Watch—The president will outline his completed national security strategy next Monday, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at a Tuesday speech in Washington. I’m told it’s likely to be an address from Trump himself.
Meanwhile, Margaret Talev at Bloomberg has more on what McMaster said in his rare public remarks:
This set of reviews of ten chain restaurants from the Washington Post’s high-falutin’ food critic was actually kind of fun. I’m a big fan of #1, but there’s a reason we call #7 the “Dead Mobster” in my family.
Song of the Day—“Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
