Albert Cesare/The Montgomery Advertiser/AP
After briefly dropping in the polls following sexual misconduct allegations, Roy Moore is once again leading Doug Jones in the Alabama race for senator. Naturally this reminds me of an old Doonesbury cartoon:¹
The flip side of this, of course, is that bad news can be disclosed too soon. After a month or two, supporters have had plenty of time to get over their shock and start inventing reasons why they really need to vote for the cretin anyway.
Of course, this cartoon is from 1976. In the internet age, everything has been speeded up by a factor of two or three. One week was plenty of time for James Comey’s letter to kill Hillary Clinton, while four weeks was way more than enough time for Donald Trump’s supporters to rationalize away the Access Hollywood tape. If the Washington Post had really been on a political vendetta against Roy Moore, they would have run their story right about him now, not three weeks ago.
¹Just as there’s a Trump tweet for everything, there’s an old Doonesbury cartoon for everything.
