Charles Bethea interviewed Roy Moore’s former law school classmates and professors. Nobody seems to have liked him, one of the professors nicknamed him “Fruit Salad” because he was so confused and mixed up, and they’re uniformly astounded that he’s running for the senate. But they also think he’s going to win.
None of the classmates or professors whom I interviewed, including those who described themselves as Republicans, said that they were supporting Moore’s Senate candidacy. “I probably won’t vote,” Melton said. “That’s how bad it is. I don’t think this Doug Jones has a snowball’s chance in Hell,” he added. “He’s a Democrat and they gonna . . . ” Melton trailed off. “Hell, Moore will get sixty-five per cent of the vote. I don’t care what the polls say.” Melton referred to a recent poll showing that Jones and Moore were tied. “I know what the public is gonna get out and do,” he said, sighing. “I mean, we’re one of three states without a lottery. Southern Baptists control the damn state. And they’ll vote for Roy. It’ll be a landslide.”
And there’s the problem with America in a fruit cup.
That’s actually a good thing. In California the lottery was sold to the state’s voters as a get-rich-quick scheme that subsidizes public schools (“Our schools win, too!”). But the pittance from the lottery is used as an excuse to oppose local school bond measures and other school funding. And, of course, the gambling interests that bankrolled the measure make out like bandits from their contracts to run the lottery. It’s a tax on our innumeracy.
@1 I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read an article once that claimed that if a lottery was introduced for school funding the government of the day would then slash school funding by the amount of revenue generated in order to sneak in a de facto tax cut.
Can we not use fruit as an insult?
It’s the salad part that is the insult.
…Goddamnit. So, he recognizes what a mess Moore is and his solution is to not vote?
# 5
I was wondering about that, too. This gives him a sort of Pontius Pilate washing of the hands and when Moore & the party in Washington are doing mad (well madder than usual) things he can say, “I didn’t vote for him”.
Here’s an out there idea: go vote for Jones instead of sitting on your ass!
You know, firsthand, how terrible Moore would be, yet you’d rather sit it out over taking a chance on bringing a bit of sanity back to the Senate even if that meant voting for a party you normally wouldn’t. Assuming it’s an accurate assessment, maybe- just maybe- the reason Moore will get 65% of the vote is because there are too many people who have conceded the election before it’s even happened.
Couldn’t someone try to convert The Southern Baptists to Xtianity?
….convert The Southern Bastards to Xtianity? FIFY
Jeremy Shaffer #7
I think that shows how tribal politics are for many in the US – they can’t stand the idea of voting for the “other” party even if they actually like the other party’s candidate better. Incredibly short-sighted and self-destructive.
It would be nice if we had a group of actors all over the country… ones willing to be the most rabid, ignorant, loud-mouthed assholes clawing for political power and spouting all the vicious, racist, xenophobic, anti-civilizational drivel that we’ve had to listen to for decades… and ramp it up past the existing goalposts of crazy.
Get those people in office, where they can switch on a dime and finish out their one and only terms being good liberals.
Hell, every last Democrat should register as Republican. We’ll just have to work out some liberal dog whistles. Or secret handshakes or something.
“Liberal” and “Democrat” are such poisoned terms for so much of the country, we might have to abandon them.
#5
like lambs to the slaughter I guess
uncle frogy
The property of a salad is that it’s mixed up, but I don’t know what would make a salad “confused”, so that must reference the other property.
I don’t intend any offence, but it almost seems like kupo (#3) is right.
The big problem with fruit salad is that it takes some delicious things like peaches & apples & bananas and puts them in the same bowl with abominations like pineapple & catalope. And mixes it all together.
If you accept a serving you hafta take the good with the bad.
@#5, doubtthat
I used to think that way. Then I realized that you can say the exact same thing about Democrats who don’t like the way the party is moving, but won’t vote Green.
Frankly, the game is rigged. We had Democrats in full charge of the government in 2009/2010. They did essentially nothing of any worth — we’re still fighting all those wars (except the one we left on Bush’s timetable, of course) plus a bunch of new ones, banks and Wall Street are still essentially unregulated, cops are still killing people (mostly brown-skinned, but I’m sure that will change over time), industries are still writing their own regulations, government remained completely in the pockets of corporations, the Democrats even are now quite definitely guilty of disenfranchising voters who are likely to disagree with their preferred candidate (the admission was finally made a few days ago)… instead of any change, we got Mitt Romney’s healthcare bill which still screws most people over while preventing any actual meaningful reform. If you think that that was worth voting for, well, I must disagree. Going to the polls is increasingly a waste of time, because the choice is between explicit evil and people who are evil but pretend momentarily to be good for a while every election. As long as the majority of people who turn out are willing to vote for the latter, rather than supporting a third party, it really doesn’t matter very much whether the evil is explicit or not. Hell, we might as well have the explicitly evil people in charge — it’s less confusing when you don’t have to parse every statement like a hawk to see what they’re avoiding admitting and then watch their every move to find out how they’re going to irretrievably screw you over, as you do with the Democrats.
In other words: the Lesser of Two Evils is not good enough, will never be good enough, is a recipe for failure, and anyone who advocates it ought to go jump off a cliff for the damage they do by supporting evil.
And fuck the millions of people who now have insurance they couldn’t get before, amirite?
The Vicar… @ # 15: … the Democrats even are now quite definitely guilty of disenfranchising voters who are likely to disagree with their preferred candidate (the admission was finally made a few days ago)…
Can we have a link or two on that one, please?
@#15 – The Vicar
Oh my God. And the judges nominated by Republican administrations are basically the same as those by Democrats, right? How utterly stupid.