I'm not the only one who thinks that the "Believe Women" movement will soon benefit the Trumpers. UPDATE: Why Beverly's tale is not a "lock"

Attorney Gloria Allred represents a woman named Beverly Young Nelson, who says that Roy Moore attempted to rape her (Nelson) when she was 16:

Nelson said she was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up from work one night when Moore offered to give her a ride home.

"I trusted Mr. Moore because he was a district attorney," Nelson said.

When Nelson got in Moore's car, she said he drove behind the restaurant and parked near a dumpster instead of taking her home. Nelson said Moore groped her and tried to force her head onto his crotch. Nelson says she yelled and tried to leave the car, but Moore locked the door.

"I was not going to allow him to force me to have sex with him," Nelson said. "I was terrified. I thought he was going to rape me. At some point, he gave up."

Nelson said before Moore opened the door and either she fell out or he pushed her out, he said. '"You're just a child and I am the District Attorney of Etowah County, and if you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you."'

Nelson says she had bruises on her neck after the assault but covered them with makeup.

Nelson says she told her sister about the incident two weeks later. Nelson told her mother about four years ago, and she told her husband before they got married 13 years ago, she said.

Is this claim credible? On initial glance, it seems so. But I also have some problems:

1. Gloria Allred also represented (probably pro-bono) the Trump accuser known initially as "Katie Johnson," whose story I consider unlikely. Allred no doubt acted in good faith, but I'm not sure that she was wise. "Katie" was also promoted by the ultra-dubious Robert Morrow, partner to Roger Stone. His involvement suggests that she might have been a set-up designed to injure the credibility of women offering real abuse accusations against Trump.

2. We don't have an organization like the Washington Post behind the Nelson story. Whatever you may think of the WP, it is undeniably a "sue-able" entity with deep pockets. For legal reasons which should be obvious to all -- even though they are not obvious to many Trumpers -- the WP is going to research the hell out a spectacular claim before publishing anything that opens them up to a court action. That's not what's going on here: Beverly Young Nelson -- so far -- seems to be on her own.

Has anyone actually talked with the mother, the husband, and the sister? What will happen if they give us reason to doubt Beverly's credibility? We're told that Moore left a message in her high school yearbook: Is the handwriting genuine, and is the ink correct for the claimed time period?

(Incidentally, Gateway Pundit calls the WP "far left." Good lord. Do people actually believe that crap?)

3. We must understand that we are facing an extremely well-funded conspiracy that is capable of anything. I am not referring to a conspiracy to promote Roy Moore: I am talking about a conspiracy to put and keep Donald Trump in office. More than that: It's a conspiracy to convert this country to Trumpism, to make the current nightmare permanent. It is easy to see how the conspirators might promote a false claimant against Moore in order to injure the credibility of the real claimants.

4. Even if Beverly Neson is telling the absolute truth, the revelation of her testimony right now -- with Allred by her side -- will probably push Moore's poll numbers up a couple of points. That's Alabama for you.

In order to navigate these treacherous waters, you have to think at all times like Roger Stone, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and Machiavelli. You have to think like the dirtiest dirty trickster ever employed by the CIA. You have to think like a professional grifter, like a ruthless carny. Trust no-one. Do not even trust a tearful woman telling you a story that accords with what you already believe about a man you know to be a creep.

UPDATE. Listening to Beverly Nelson's press conference again, one detail really bothered me: She said that she tried to get out of the car but Moore "reached over" and locked the door, preventing her escape. That's not how car door locks worked. The phrase "reached over" indicates that we are not talking about an electronic locking system. With manual locks, it is impossible to keep someone locked IN a car.

On CNN just now, I heard a proponent of the "Believe Women" mentality insist that we must accept all of Moore's accusers or none of them -- and that any man who questions even one of these women must be doing so for psychological reasons. Apparently, evidence and logic no longer count.

I now think that Beverly is a ringer.

I'm not the only one saying it. I pissed off some readers when I suggested that our new 11th Commandment -- "Thou shalt never doubt anyone making an accusation of sexual abuse" -- will soon be used to help the Trumpers. But look at what happened to George Takei: His travails have the Alt Rightists cackling with glee -- and his tale is but prologue to what is to come.

Brian Beutler gets it. You simply must read his new piece "Breitbart's coming exploitation of the Believe Women movement."

Unfolding against the backdrop of the post-Weinstein revolution, the Moore scandal exposes the conservative propaganda machine in the ugliest and most discrediting possible fashion. But these cultural changes are all but destined to collide with one another in the opposite direction, in a way that exploits both the beneficence of the “believe women” campaign, and the even-handedness of the mainstream media. It is a collision we as a political culture are not equipped to handle, the consequences of which are almost too awful to contemplate.

Imagine it’s September or October 2020, and out of nowhere multiple women accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of sexual abuse, but instead of surfacing in a meticulously sourced story in a news outlet with a healthy tradition of careful reporting, it runs in a blind item on Breitbart.com. Or imagine such a story about a current Democratic candidate or leader landed in such an outlet tomorrow.

We saw what form this might take a year ago, when Steve Bannon, the Breitbart impresario who chaired Donald Trump’s campaign, responded to the unearthed videotape of Trump boasting about committing sexual assault by parading Bill Clinton’s accusers around the second presidential debate.

There is more than a kernel of truth at the bottom of the idea that Bill Clinton was a sexual deviant, or that he deserved more social and legal censure than he endured, but it is also farcical to imagine that Bannon and Breitbart were first and foremost interested in seeking justice. They ran factually questionable counter-ops in bad faith, to neutralize Trump’s liability, suggesting Hillary Clinton was, through her loyalty to Bill, similarly tainted. The psychological sabotage at the debate was an ancillary benefit.

It is taken for granted at this point that the next Democratic presidential nominee will become the focal point of bad faith conspiracy theories, amplified by the right wing noise machine. But it is only in the realm of sex abuse that liberals will have committed in advance to lending credence to accusations of wrongdoing. “Believe women” is an important movement, but it also obligates its adherents not to dismiss thinly-sourced allegations out of hand, even when they appear in outlets that have torched their credibility—and that impulse will be magnified by the mainstream media ethic of manufacturing symmetry between partisan teams.

I can’t imagine a more straightforward way to force liberals into a toxic cycle of recriminations. Obviously, as in the cases of Weiner and Weinstein, liberals don’t reflexively circle wagons around accused abusers, but propagandists thrive on the proliferation of doubt, and in this case the doubt would stem from the far right’s inherent lack of credibility. We underrate—as in haven’t considered at all—how low the rot of bad faith in conservative media could drag the rest of us, the whole country, all on its own. But the test of it is almost certainly coming.

I agree with most of this, although I have a few quibbles. I do not believe that Clinton is a "deviant," unless we define deviancy to mean "heterosexual male who had sex outside of marriage." I also believe that Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick have all told stories which expanded over time, and that Broaddrick in particular demonstrates that not all cries of "rape" are equally credible. Allow me to repeat an earlier post:

The Broaddrick tale is long and involved, as these stories invariably are, but the bottom line comes to this: She has no credibility. No objective party who has examined her tale believes that Bill Clinton flew into rape mode the moment he met her. David Brock (when he was a right-wing hit man) couldn't take her seriously. Even the National freakin' Enquirer couldn't take her seriously.

Juanita Broaddrick attended a pro-Clinton fundraiser after the alleged incident. She told the lawyers for Paula Jones: "I do not have any information to offer regarding a nonconsensual or unwelcome sexual advance by Mr. Clinton."

(For more context, see here.)

After the spirit of art took hold of Juanita, she not only spoke of rape, she added the detail that Bill Clinton savagely bit her face, leaving a lasting wound. Oddly, there are no photos of this bite mark. (Yes, children: Cheap cameras were widely available back then, and nearly everyone had at least one.) There are no medical or police records.

I believe that the current "Believe Women" movement is being manipulated. It's all a massive Roger Stonian ploy to prepare the way for a newer, better version of Juanita Brodderick -- Juanita 2.0.

This brings me to my other issue with Beutler. He avers that the Alt Rightists are going to use false sexual accusations against the next Democratic candidate. Why wait? It's perfectly obvious that the neofascists are running against the Clintons, and will continue to do so for decades after Bill and Hillary are dead. Trump may seek to destroy democracy itself under the guise of protecting the nation from the Clinton/Soros menace.

I predict that a new "Bill raped me" accusation will come from a former "Epstein girl" from Russia who will claim that Bill Clinton raped her when she was underaged. Millions of dollars will be spent on backstopping this story. ("Backstopping" is a spy term which refers to the concoction of detail to make a false identity seem real. You can't sell a fake Monet without first creating a fake provenance.) When that story hits, the world will forget about Trump/Russia.

You've no doubt heard about Roger Stone's rules. Cannon's rule: Think like Stone. Whatever happens, anywhere in the world, ask yourself: How would Roger manipulate this? When predicting the future, ask yourself: What would Roger do with unlimited resources?

My other rule: All "movements" are bowel movements. I cringed the first time I saw the words "Believe Women movement." Even a movement which seems beneficial and necessary can be perverted to Alt Rightist ends.

I know what you're thinking: "That's a very paranoid attitude, Mr. Cannon." Well, you know what old Chuck Manson used to say: "Paranoia is just another form of awareness, and awareness is just another form of love."