Wow. I must admit, I am torn on this one. I don’t think this should be done, But in these trumpian times, it’s hard to tell your team they must turn the other cheek.
“If you don’t do it, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back,” Osborne told the Times. “You have a moral imperative to do this — to do whatever it takes.”
You know he’s right. Until either the Rethugs quit (don’t hold your breath for this) using such strategies or it becomes illegal (get rid of dark money and Citizens United) you “fight fire with fire” for a level playing field.
Same thing with gerrymandering. In your heart you know it’s wrong but until the SCOTUS says it’s illegal and you can do it? Then you do it. Force their hands or play their games. No hard choices here.
No. Turnabout is NOT fair play. If we want to make things better and clean up after the Republicans’ mess, we cannot descend to their level. If Democrats want to be the party of truth, fair elections and honest government, then we have to BE that party.
Shorter: Your mom was on target. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Sorry, old, but your mom was wrong. She didn’t see this coming.
Nope. If we play the Republican game then we won’t make things better. Different, but not better.
Can someone render an educated speculative count as to how many votes this may have cost Roy Moore, given everything else that was prominent in this election?
I am tired of fighting with one hand behind my back. In my lifetime, Ronald Reagan collaborated with the Ayatollah Khomeini to keep our hostages in captivity until he could be elected and sworn in, so no one but him could claim credit for their release. His party, reinforced by all the Civil War Result and Brown v Board of Ed and Civil/Voting Rights Acts hating Dixiecrats have an ethic of cheating and imposing their power by bare knuckles whatever means necessary. Last witnessed during the Brett Kavanaugh nomination and confirmation.
I am not going to wring my hands over Democrats using the same tactics. Democrats are not suppressing the vote, or claiming that their opponent engages in massive voter fraud.
And fuck the NYT. Really.
Exactly. It’s seems that calls for civility, no-disinformation, no dirty tricks, no electoral fraud only apply to democrats.
It’s the second such example that the Times has uncovered in recent weeks that reveals deceptive tactics were used on social media to hurt Moore, who had also been accused at the time of molesting teenage girls when he was in his thirties and whose previous conduct as a judge had been called into question.
The innuendo here is that the teenage girls stuff was fabricated too. That would be a big story. The Dry Alabama stuff, not so much. I don’t approve though. Democratic brand needs to be clean on that stuff.
And if you are going to do it, don’t get caught!
My sentiments exactly.
this is slime-ball shit that lowers one side to the other and why i don’t belong to either party.
You’re not the only one conflicted on this.
I don’t like the dirty tricks. I would prefer we keep to the high road. I would hope that Karma will carry us through.
But I ask myself how much we have lost over the past couple of years by sticking to the high road. Sometimes, I feel we’re like the folks that were burned at the stake in the Middle Ages because they would not compromise on their religious beliefs. Gotta admire their strength, but they still went down in flames.
No good answers from me, I am afraid.
At least part of the problem with stunts like this coming from Democrats is that they are unnecessary. The truth about Republicans is dirty enough that fabricating dirt is a waste of time and just risks people dismissing the real dirt as fabrication, see for example Moore’s history with young girls.
Nope. This is not how I want to fight back.
Doing stupid shit like this will blow up in the Democrats faces. Now Moore has standing to re-litigate the “false claims” made against him that he’s a sexual predator. He’ll be able to claim they were made up just like this.
Yes, we need to fight hard. But this isn’t just dirty fighting–it’s an own goal against our side we don’t need.
We have to remain the party of truth, of transparency, of facts. We lose all legitimacy in our attempts to out dirty tricks played by R’s, Trump’s Team, Cambridge Analytica, Russia…
Yep just bolsters both sides do it.
So let him run again.
Really, in the wake of a Russia assisted Presidential victory in 2016, I am not going to attribute false equivalence to the entire Democratic Party. Which is kind of what the NYT is looking for here. All this while in NC we are seeing actual documentation of GOP election fraud that was known about well before the current congressional election, whose perpetrator was referred to the NC US Atty’s office, and whose US Attorney, who employed the GOP Congressional candidate’s son, did nothing.
Someone do an educated quantification of how many votes this swung. Like the one that has been done on the votes in the Swing States won by Trump.
Exactly!
“Nixon’s the one!”
Congratulations Dems!!!
Didn’t know you had it in ya!!
No! No! No! How we win is every bit as important as whether we win. Further, this does not mean we don’t play hardball, or fight to win… but bullshit astroturfing and deceit is not who we are, and if it is, then this is my resignation.