No need to be coy, Roy

Random observations, following the news from Alabama.

• I thought Roy Moore would win, but then again I though Hillary Clinton would win, too. It's difficult to make predictions about the voting patterns in a state you've never visited and, at best, any observations I could have made about the race would have been from a great distance and based on, at best, third-hand information. 
• I suspect at least a few of Moore's accusers were lying, but there was enough underlying truth to the reports, and enough of an ick factor involved, that Moore was going to be tough to defend. Doug Jones, his opponent, is a down-the-line leftist and, in the end, the seat will go back the other way. Of course, a lot of damage can obtain in the interim. Expect a lot of posturing from the usual suspects -- Collins, Flake, Corker, et al. -- through the next year. But I suspect the Democrats will overplay their hand, because they always do.
• The one thing I'm certain of is this -- if Al Franken were thinking about using a Moore victory as an excuse to stay in the Senate, that excuse is now gone. I recommend Franken and Garrison Keillor go out and start a new Chautauqua circuit so they can sneer at the people who deserve it. Perhaps they can do a morality play skit in which they expiate their sins by ululating in the general direction of an intersectional feminist planted in the audience.
• I'm also wondering if the purges are going to slow down now -- the mob isn't going to materialize against Trump any more than it did against Bill Clinton, and for the same reason -- unless people are hurting in the wallet, they aren't ready to upset the applecart. I've long suspected Nixon would have survived if there hadn't been gas lines and other underlying economic tensions in the era.