Also gerrymandering for districts make it so once it's guaranteed to be a party seat, the primaries can skew towards the extreme of that party.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2017/11/19/why-evange...
A court determination isn't possible in the Moore case. In Alabama, the statute of limitations for a civil claim of sexual abuse of a minor is just years past the victim's 19th birthday. Roy Moore could still in theory still be prosecuted criminally because one of the victims was under 16 and the statute of limitations for sexual abuse of a minor is unlimited, but really there is no chance of that.
But just because allegations don't rise to the level of imprisoning someone doesn't mean that's the end of it. Reputations typically are mediated by non-legal means. If someone writes a blog post: "don't invest with <X> he ripped me off," nobody demands to see the civil judgment for fraud.
That is just silly, and you can easily see why with just a little bit of thought. Almost everything you use in determining who to vote for in an election has not been adjudicated in a court of law, but you still use it to form your opinion of who should be elected.
There is a difference between the courts not sentencing you for a crime until you are convicted and a voter using accusations against a candidate to inform their vote.
edit: Why downvotes? An alleged sexual predator and a sexual predator are two different things. Anyone can become an alleged sexual predator with an allegation, whereas sexual predators are sexual predators through their own actions, regardless of allegations.
At this point no one really knows if Roy Moore is a sexual predator or not besides for Roy Moore and his accuser, who is only attempting to try Moore in the court of public opinion and not in a court of law, despite retaining council of a very well known lawyer.
But more to your point, Roy Moore has not been arrested. He has not been, and probably will not be, charged with any criminal or civil infraction. He has, however, accepted his party's nomination for a seat in the United States Senate and is currently actively campaigning for same.
It is worth remembering that allegations are not, in and of themselves, proof of wrongdoing. It's also worth remembering that a political campaign is not a trial, that the press does not have the same investigatory powers as the judicial system, and that the "punishment" being threatened is not being able to be a United States Senator after all. It's actually okay for "the court of public opinion" to have a different burden of proof and standard of evidence than an actual court.
"[I]t is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer" is a wise and good maxim. "It is better 100 guilty Persons be elevated to high office than one innocent Person should resign from a campaign they had no guarantee of winning in the first place" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
My problem with making any kind of decision based on these allegations is that it is impossible to differentiate them from fabrications designed to blow up a campaign, all down to the detail of having Gloria Allred as legal council(a person heavily involved in the DNC - from Gloria's DNC leaks: "We will come together and discuss the upcoming race, and why we as Democrats must do everything we can to ensure a Democrat remains in the White House for the next four years." - any reason to believe she has given up on her mission to ensure democrats succeed over republicans after the 2016 elections?)
In order to believe this is a conspiracy against Moore, you must also believe that a bunch of teenagers 30 years ago made up stories about Moore, which they told their friends and loved ones at the time, and then waited to use those allegations across all of his political career only to come out now and derail him. Either that, or the conspiracy is so vast as to include 9 accusers, 30 corroborating witnesses, former mall employees, and an ex cop. Many of the accusers are also Republicans and voted for Trump, so you must also believe they are secret Democrats, or at least were somehow bribed by the Democrats to switch sides.
It's either that, or Moore is guilty.
Here's something for you to read. Go ahead and give it a go, and then maybe you can figure out which is more likely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor
To shift political gears somewhat, our legislature is currently engaged in a debate about tax reform. One party claims the currently proposed plan will cut taxes on the middle class. The other party claims that the plan will raise taxes on the middle class. That's a question of fact, and both positions can't simultaneously be correct. The thought process you engaged in above can be applied equally well to that situation regardless of which party one favors, but it's guaranteed to make at least one party's fans wrong.
When we, as a polity, begin to completely disregard information because it comes from a partisan source or has strong partisan implications then I worry that we lose the idea of a shared reality. We can't convince those who disagree with us, nor allow ourselves to be convinced, if we refuse on general principle to listen to and engage with people who disagree with us.
> We can't convince those who disagree with us, nor allow ourselves to be convinced, if we refuse on general principle to listen to and engage with people who disagree with us.
But in this case, you have to decide who to take the word of. There is no way to logically analyze the claims and come up at the correct answer.
That is true. And by refusing to give the allegations credence you have implicitly decided whose word to take.
> There is no way to logically analyze the claims and come up at the correct answer.
Sure there is. You can evaluate the plausibility of each claim. You can verify that the claims are internally consistent. You can ask what motivations each party would have to lie, or what motivations each party would have to tell the truth here and now. None of those will get you to ironclad, unquestionable certainty, but it sounds like you're at ironclad, unquestionable certainty now and I'm not sure logical analysis had much to do with you forming that opinion.
It's fine, really, if you've looked at the evidence and found it unconvincing. It's fine, too, if you've decided it is convincing but that your partisan interests are strong enough that you're willing to overlook them. But it sounds like you're just refusing to engage with them because they're confusing. That's not wisdom. It's anti-intellectual tribalism at it's most raw, and I for one expect better of the commenters at HN.
You have a public figure, law enforcement official and chief judge with a pretty well demonstrated (even celebrated) contempt for following the law, whose behavior towards young girls while a law enforcement official is fairly well documented.
The idea that an ADA in his 30s is cruising the shopping malls looking for teen (even if legal) companions is disturbing on many levels. Is that really the caliber of man that belongs in the US Senate?
In public service, perception matters.
You would still be entitled to be skeptical of such allegations, of course, but their multiplicity is an empirical fact that you seem unwilling to acknowledge.
> Moreover, we're in the midst of a moment when women who've been harassed or abused by public figures are more willing to come forward.
Right, so does that mean we are more likely to hear about true, buried stories, or hear about new fabricated stories? Or both?
It's very interesting that Moore has been quite an active and public elected official in the past, but every current accuser independently decided to not say anything until this election cycle. What gives?
"Roy Moore On Pedophilia Accusers: ‘These Women Are Only Discrediting Me Now Because Shifting Sociocultural Norms Have Created An Environment In Which Assault Allegations Are Taken Seriously’"
2) It's not a he-said-she-said story. It's 9 accusers, whose stories were corroborated by others (who were told 30 years ago). One accuser can describe the inside of Moore's house in detail. Another has a yearbook signed from him referencing the restaurant he claims to have never visited. Still others from the community note that he was banned from the mall for being creepy with teenagers. And finally, Moore himself cannot offer a full throated denial that he has pursued teenagers in the past. Just not these particular women.
3) Claiming these women want "15 minutes of fame" is naive. No one is getting "famous" off of this. The victims are opening old wounds and getting new ones in the form of death threats and attacks on their character. It's not fun for anyone coming forward.
Maybe you've never had to deal with this in your own life or in the life of someone who was close to you. Congratulations, you've been lucky.
False rape accusations are a little more rare than men abusing their position of power over women. The later is endemic. Avoiding a false rape accusation isn't luck. But ask your wife, your mother, your daughter, your sister. I bet they all have stories of unwanted sexual attention from men. This kind of stuff happens daily for them. For women, it's like a constant background drone of men leering at them. Sometimes it's whistling. Sometimes it's stalking. Sometime's it's groping, and yes, sometimes it's rape. But it's a minefield, and it really is luck if they are never confronted with such indecency.
Further, if you've been paying attention, you'll notice the people being accused are serial offenders. In one case, more than a dozen women came forward. Unless you're willing to claim that women are engaged in a widespread conspiracy to take down men in positions of power, it's pretty hard to dismiss any of this as "false" accusations.
Okay, but that doesn't tell you anything about the truthiness of this specific event. Black people commit way more murders per capita than asian people in America - would you use that factoid as a hunch that between two suspects in a murder(one asian, one black), that the black one is more likely guilty?
> Unless you're willing to claim that women are engaged in a widespread conspiracy to take down men in positions of power, it's pretty hard to dismiss any of this as "false" accusations.
Is that the only possibility you see? It's either a massive conspiracy among women in general, or the accusations are true?
That wasn't really a comment about the truthiness of this specific event, but about your comment about being lucky for avoiding a false rape accusation. That's like saying you're lucky that you didn't get struck by lightning. Well, okay I guess, but it's not a frequent occurrence to begin with.
> Black people commit way more murders per capita than asian people in America
In Moore's case, I'm not coming to any conclusion by looking at frequency of occurrence alone, as I wouldn't in a murder case. However, I probably wouldn't elect either man accused of murder to the Senate. Regardless, I think you're still not appreciating how widespread an issue this is for women. It happens on the sidewalk walking down the street, on the bus, at work, at a restaurant, on the train, at church, at school, at the hospital. Men are sleazes, and I'm pretty sure the sleaze frequency in men is much higher than the murder frequency in blacks. Much higher. Like, 60-80% high. And the worst part is, there is zero awareness of this by sleazy men.
> Unless you're willing to claim that women are engaged in a widespread conspiracy to take down men in positions of power, it's pretty hard to dismiss any of this as "false" accusations. Is that the only possibility you see? It's either a massive conspiracy among women in general, or the accusations are true?
Yeah, pretty much. Although, I'm willing to hear a scenario that could account for all of the accusations, the corroborating facts, the mall ban, and Roy Moore not being able to definitively say he didn't pursue teenage girls.