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by briholt 3132 days ago
The smart move would be to say she's switching parties because of Trump, run as a conservative Democrat left of Trump but right of the progressive wing.
2 comments

I feel like 2018 is going to boil down to only whether you have an (R) or (D) next to your name, if the election in Alabama is any indication.

When people will vote for a pedophile to avoid putting a checkmark next to a (D), that's when you can give up faith in the average citizen's regard for the details of an election.

He seems to be a horrible person who’s done heinous things, but he’s not accused of being a pedophile (except on Twitter). Words have actual meanings, and using ones like pedophile outside their proper meaning reduces their value and impact.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/roy-moore-is-not-a-p...

>Leigh Corfman told the Washington Post that she met Moore in 1979 when she was just 14 years old. The then-district attorney offered to watch Corfman while her mother attended a custody hearing, she said, and he asked for her phone number when he was alone with her. Corfman said that days later, Moore drove her to his house and kissed her.

http://time.com/5029172/roy-moore-accusers/

Your (and the author of that op-ed) opinion and my opinion of the definition of "child" differ greatly.

This is part of what I really like about California's top-two primary system - in a dominant-party system like we have, we end up in a situation where two candidates of the dominant party have to compete on ideology and policy, and the members of the minority party still get an equal say.

With regards to Alabama, the general vibe I've gotten is that the very large evangelical bloc in the state is conflicted - trapped between very strongly held policy preferences (especially on abortion and LGBT rights) and their views on personal morality. Moore has seen a large slide in the polls, including among evangelicals, but there are a lot that are willing to hold their noses and disbelieve for their preferred policies.

See this very interesting write-up: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-values-that-values-...