I’ll have more to say in the morning. But a few quick points.
1. I agree with Jim: It stinks to lose a Senate seat, but if ever there was a reason to do so, this was it.
2. Steve Bannon isn’t responsible for Roy Moore and neither is Mitch McConnell. The difference is that McConnell wanted nothing to do with Roy Moore for all the obvious reasons and Steve Bannon wanted to take credit for him! He wanted to take credit for Moore when it was clear Moore was a bigot, buffoon, and charlatan, and he wanted to take credit for Moore after Moore was credibly accused of being a child molester and jailbait fetishist. Bannon has an almost unblemished record of picking disastrous candidates on the theory that he knows what he’s doing. That theory is wrong.
3. Relatedly, one would hope that Republicans would now recognize how ridiculous it would be for them to continue acting like Mitch McConnell is the problem. McConnell is the single most important person for getting the “Trump agenda” passed, and declaring open war on him and backing fourth rate candidates is not just dumb, it actually hurts Trump more than it does McConnell.
4. One of the things I’m most interested in is to see who suddenly claims to have been troubled by Moore all along or thinks he may be guilty after all — without any new evidence coming in. Some people must feel shame having backed him, and others are no doubt eager to muddy the record by pretending they were scandalized from the get go.
5. I want to say one last thing, because for months I’ve been ridiculed by people for even suggesting Moore could lose and that nominating him was dumb:
I told you so.