The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

Tis the season for all things impeachment, so stuff your stockings accordingly. Although don’t forget that Congress is now in recess for the Christmas and New Years holiday.

So we will all have to take a break from that news until an agreement can be reached between the House and Senate for a show trial of sorts next year. Somehow we don’t think it is shaping up as the trial of the century, but there is still a small sliver of hope that some Republican Senators may find Jesus, so to speak, and do the right thing.

Meanwhile, politics carries on in other ways, like the battle for which party will control the United States Senate after the 2020 election. According to most pundits, the Democrats should keep a firm hold on the House next year. It’s anybody’s guess at this point as to what will happen in the race for the White House.

The Republican Senate majority may be in play next year, however, according to the Cook Political Report and other public opinion and political news outlets (like this one).

The campaign team for U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, the Democrat from Birmingham, is crowing like a banty rooster in an email blast to supporters this week about a new lede story out from Cook calling his race to keep his seat a “toss up.”

“Cook Political Report just put out their new analysis of our race, and it’s great news for Doug,” said campaign tech guru Joe Trippi, the guy who helped Barack Obama win the White House in 2008. “We’re firmly a ‘toss up’.”

Of course Cook also had his race in the “toss up” category up until the final moments of the race in December 2017, when we had him firmly in the win column from day one. Who are you going to trust this time?

What that characterization “essentially means,” Trippi added, “is that the campaign (which) does the best job talking to voters is going to win.”

That’s political pundit talk, however, so we will wait and see how it plays out.

The Republican primary is certainly going to get more interesting next year to be sure, and the race is a key one to watch to see which party will control a majority in the Senate. Meaning there will be big money and lots of media coverage all over this race, which of course is good for Alabama.

With Trump or no Trump in the White House, if the Democrats control both houses of Congress they will hold the balance of power in Washington. So let’s look at what Cook is saying about the Senate.

The story, under the headline “”The Majority is in Play,” says “Democrats appear to have expanded the playing field enough to put Republicans’ majority at risk.”

If Democrats want to win the majority, Cook says, they need a net gain of three seats “if they win the White House” or “four if they don’t.” That’s because the Vice President holds the deciding vote in the Senate.

While a number of Republican seats are up for grabs, including the seat in Kentucky held by now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who appears to be in the fight for his life against Democrat Amy McGrath, Cook says there are only two Democratic-held seats in jeopardy next year: The seats now occupied by Gary Peters in Michigan, and Doug Jones in Alabama.

“It is hard to see how Republicans expand the playing field beyond these two races,” Cook says.

But there is a bit of a problem with Cook’s analysis going beyond that.

As Cook points out, Trump’s former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined the Republican primary field in Alabama recently, and they consider him to be “the frontrunner given his name ID and war chest.”

That may be, considering he has already been endorsed by the other Senator from Alabama, Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa.

But then comes a problem. Cook says U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne and former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville “are backing down,” presumably meaning they are withdrawing from the contest, but that is far from the truth at this juncture. Secretary of State John Merrill was in the race but bowed out.

There’s no other news story out there I could find making this claim about Tubberville and Byrne, and there’s nothing on either of their Facebook or Twitter feeds to back it up.

In fact, when I reached out to former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville on Facebook Saturday morning to ask him directly if he is “backing down,” he responded within minutes, saying “absolutely not.”

There’s no comment from Byrne yet, but he and Tubberville have been engaged in a battle for the past few months to see who could suck up more to Trump and maybe obtain his endorsement.

Tubberville is turning out to be quite the politician in the Trump mold, quoted recently as saying “God sent us Trump” and then getting into a public fight with a drag queen on Facebook who marched in the Auburn-Opelika Christmas Parade.

“Hard to believe that right in my own backyard the city of Opelika allows drag queens in the city Christmas Parade which was held this weekend. What is next?” Tubberville tweeted.

Marcus Gulatte, iconically known on stage as Aalora Banks, fought back, as did the Gay Pride group in Auburn that sponsored the “Mean Girls” float.

It’s hard to know what will win out in Alabama in 2020, the racist, homophobic, gun toting, religious right, or fired up Democrats and reasonable suburbanites. It will depend on who shows up at the polls, and some of that may depend on who the Democrats nominate for president.

Meanwhile, Cook is still focusing on Sessions, without pointing out that neither he nor alleged underage sex abuser Roy Moore are likely to obtain an endorsement from Trump.

“It’s been a very long time since Sessions has been in a race that will be as competitive as this one,” Cook says, which may in fact be good news for Jones.

“The one benefit to Sessions’ entry is that it has relegated the candidacy of former state Supreme Court (Chief) Justice and ’17 Senate nominee Roy Moore to the nosebleed seats. He is now an asterisk in this race as opposed to the threat that Democrats hoped for and Republicans feared,” Cook says, but we’re not so sure about that.

Moore still has a hold on the large Christian base in Alabama, especially the white Southern Baptists, although Sessions holds some appeal to that crowd too, especially considering his role in creating the humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border by detaining illegal immigrants and seperating children from their families. On that he and Trump still agree.

Of course Cook also had Hillary Clinton winning the presidency in 2016, while we predicted Trump might win.

“The primary does give Jones some breathing room to raise money and put his organization together,” Cook goes on. “Democratic strategists argue that Jones does have a path to victory, but they also acknowledge that he needs a few breaks.”

Unfortunately for Jones, a Senate impeachment trial of Trump is more of a dilemma than a break.

“For … Jones, a vote to acquit Trump won’t be received well in a state that gave him 62 percent of the vote in 2016,” Cook says, “yet it would also put Jones at odds with his party, especially activists and donors.”

Yes, it is going to be a difficult decision for him to make on how to vote, legally and politically. He could decide to vote against impeachment and say the Democrats didn’t have the votes to remove Trump from office anyway. But that would be a political decision, not a legal one.

It wouldn’t stop the Republicans from attacking him as an anti-Trump liberal anyway, and it would alienate some of his hard corps anti-Trump supporters on the left who may decide not to work for him or show up at the polls to vote. Their votes won’t count for much in the presidential election anyway, since if Trump is still standing and not removed from office in an impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump will carry Alabama’s nine electoral votes next November anyway. Republican voters would have to split their tickets to vote for Jones. His best hope is a massive anti-Trump turnout on the part of Democrats.

In his most recent press call this past Thursday, Jones indicated he will be spending time over the holidays reading documents from the impeachment investigation, and sitting in a deer blind considering how he will vote. Like his hero in the U.S. Senate Howell Heflin, he always takes the position that he will consider all the facts and do the right thing — no matter how the politics shakes out.

If his comments in an earlier media conference call are an indication, he has expressed serious concerns about the president’s behavior concerning Ukraine.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones Expresses Concerns About Impeachment

Cooks bottom line has at least five GOP-held seats in play, with a chance that Democrats could add one or two more.

“This puts Democrats in a position to win the majority, even if they lose Alabama and/or Michigan,” Cook says. “This is not to suggest that Democrats will win the majority, only that their prospects are considerably better today than they were five months ago.”

According to Trippi, “This is great news but it isn’t a surprise for us. Here’s what we’re seeing on the ground and why it reflects what we’ve always known.”

He pointed out that Jones has put together enough legislation over the past two years in the interest of actually doing the job and helping the people of Alabama that some of it paid off this week.

“Doug brought both parties together and got wins for hundreds of thousands of Alabamians and tens of millions of Americans for increased family leave for federal workers, ending the Widow’s Tax, making it easier for students to apply for financial aid, permanently funding Historically Black Colleges and Universities, (and) funding gun research through the CDC,” Trippi said.

He says there is still a lot of voter enthusiasm for Jones, and claims “Alabama voters are responding to what our campaign is all about. They’re clearly sick of the division in Washington and Doug’s message of One Alabama is working.”

As for Jones’ potential opponents, he said: “Voters in Alabama are split right now in the Republican primary. Jeff Sessions entering the race has not been the cakewalk he had hoped — it’s clear to us that Alabamians are not looking to re-hire a career politician who’s too extreme for their state. We can beat Sessions or anyone Mitch McConnell picks to run against Doug.”

So if you agree, don’t forget to break out your Doug Jones sign for Senate from 2017 and maybe put it out in the front yard along with all the Christmas lights and decorations.

It’s hard to imagine Virginia thinking any Santa would give anything but coal and switches to Trump and his supporters this Christmas. They have been bad boys and girls this year.

Add 1:

Just after this story was posted, Senator Doug Jones said on ABC News “This Week” that the allegations against President Trump exploiting Ukraine for his political benefit are “serious” and “impeachable,” but added that there are “gaps” in the House’s case and that he is willing to acquit Trump in a Senate trial if “those dots aren’t connected.”

“What I’m trying to do, because quite frankly I didn’t sit in front of the TV set the entire time the last two or three months, I have been trying to read this,” Jones said. “I have been trying to see if the dots get connected. If that is the case, I think it’s a serious matter, I think it’s an impeachable matter. But if those dots aren’t connected and there are other explanations that I think are consistent with innocence, I will go that way too.”

According to Axios, it matters becaus Jones is a vulnerable moderate whose vote will likely play an important role in his 2020 Senate race, is viewed as one of a handful of Democratic senators who could vote against Trump’s conviction.

Trump and Jones have previously suggested that they want people like Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to testify in the Senate, where he says the trial will be “fair,” but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has signaled that he has no interest in calling witnesses.

Jones stressed, however, that he wants the Senate to call witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton in order to “fill in the gaps,” and he urged Trump and McConnell to allow them to testify.