The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: If Republicans Won’t Get Rid of Roy Moore, They’ll Never Get Rid of Trump

Roy Moore in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.

Impeaching a president requires a majority vote of the House, but removing him or her from office requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. What that means is that, barring 2018 being the greatest landslide in history, at least some Republican senators will have to turn on Trump to force him from office.

My running assumption when writing this column has been that this withdrawl of political support could happen after a cratering of Trump’s public standing in response to, say, a devastating report by special counsel Robert Mueller on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. What Roy Moore is proving right now in Alabama is that neither the cratering nor the withdrawl of support might take place no matter what Mueller proves. Moore has been quite credibly accused of sexual behavior that ranges from the creepy to the illegal by a number of women, and while some Republican senators who would’ve preferred a more buttoned-up candidate in the first place have called him to drop out of his race, here’s what else has happened:

It’s hard to imagine that Russia-related allegations against Donald Trump will be more conclusive or viscerally offensive than what’s been alleged about Moore’s behavior. If Moore can really ride this one out—and at this point, it looks like only the voters of Alabama can stop him from doing so—it’ll very bad news for the cause of political accountability.

Update, 5:15 p.m.: Here’s some relatively good news—a just-released Fox News poll finds Moore trailing Jones by eight points.

Today’s meter level has been lowered for the reasons explained above.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.