If, on or about December 12, you saw a flock of pigs hovering over Hell filling up ice buckets, I wouldn't be surprised. I didn't, but I did see something that seemed, as recently as the day before December 12, every bit as likely an event:
A Democrat winning a statewide election, one that puts him in the U.S. Senate for the next four years. And not a conservative Democrat, either. One that supports the ACA. Hell, one that openly supports abortion rights.
Seriously, this was not supposed to happen. That's why Donald Trump felt so confident about plucking Jeff Sessions away from this Senate seat and making him Attorney General. There was no danger of seeing this seat and its vote disappearing from the Republican Senate caucus. Not at the beginning of this year, anyway.
But then, the rest of the year happened. Day by day, Trump demonstrated what the majority of voters knew in 2016: that, by temperament, intelligence, and experience, he was utterly unfit to be President of a washroom, let alone of the United States. Even in a state as ruby-red as Alabama, his popularity had cratered badly.
And then, for Democrats and Republicans alike, the unexpected happened in the form of Judge Roy Moore as the Republican nominee to take Sessions' place. A man twice removed from his post on the Alabama Supreme Court. A man who, nevertheless, embodied the tastes the older-white-evangelical-rural vote that not only allowed Trump to put together an Electoral College majority, but has been, in fact, the backbone of the "Southern Strategy" that has allowed the Republican Party to dominate American politics for the past 40 years. A man who, for a time, appeared to be a shoe-in, even against a well-qualified opponent like Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan in federal court.
Until he was no longer a shoe-in, due to the revelation of an earlier-in-his-life predilection for dating underage young women, some of who accused him of sexual assault. Suddenly, it became a lot harder for white, rural, older evangelical voters to identify with Moore. A lot of them did so anyway, unfortunately; Jones' victory over Moore was, in the end, only by a handful of percentage points. But, given that it wasn't supposed to happen at all, that scarcely matters.
Was Moore's morally compromised past the only reason he lost? No doubt it was the biggest one. Alabama is still a Republican state; no one should talk about it being "purpled" just yet. But that doesn't mean that Jones, and the Democrats, owe this victory entirely to serendipity.
For one thing, it turns out that the Democrats have developed a "Southern Strategy" of their own.
It depends in no small part on something Democrats should have done a long time ago, especially after Obama won the Presidency: organizing the African-American vote, and making sure that it gets to the polls. And starting that process at the beginning of the campaign, not adding it on at the end as an afterthought. And understanding that the African-American vote includes, especially in a era in which women's needs have moved to the forefront of the public debate, African-American women.
That's a welcome sign. The trick, however, for 2018 will be to keep that up, in every county in every state where any and every election will be taking place. And making sure that, once in office, the Democrats who are elected as a consequence of this organizing deliver for the African-American communities. Otherwise, you're going to see a lot more stories like this one--and there will be far fewer Democratic victories like Jones'.
There's a second prong to this "Southern Strategy" as well, however, and it borrows from the Republican playbook: white, suburban, moderate voters who are prepared to vote for candidates who look for politicians who practice bipartisanship to get things done. Moore clearly was not that candidate, while Jones worked hard to make it clear to voters that he was.
Democrats have had success with suburban voters outside of the South, but Jones' election is perhaps the first sign that it might work inside of it as well. Why the change? Perhaps it is because of what Republicans have done to themselves and to their party in the age of Trump. Some have tried to focus on conservatism as a movement of ideas, while others have focused on their need to keep the party identified with conservatism in power, even if that means accepting the reality of a moral reprobate at the apex of the party, as well as the country. Make no mistake: this split is threatening to tear the GOP, and perhaps the modern conservative movement, into shreds.
If that happens, it will give the Democrats an opportunity to reposition itself in the political perceptions of voters, as a left-center party that strongly advocates on behalf of all the people, not just its most loyal followers, and focuses on working cooperatively on the best ways to help everyone. The fact that the current government of the nation is so reflexively conservative may make it easier for Americans to make that shift in perspective, as the Republicans' priorities (think of the recent tax bill) become more divorced from the lives of working-class voters, whether white- or blue-collar. In effect, the Democrats could do, in the early 21st century, what the Republicans did in the late 20th--become the dominant American political party.
In any event, Jones' victory over Moore may prove to be a major turning point in national American politics. Perhaps it does reflect my own, Newtonian view of politics: that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Eight years of Obama led to a white-nationalist uprising that produced Trump; perhaps Trump is already, without realizing it, pushing the pendulum back in the other direction. Just ask Will Smith, an unlikely but, in my opinion very accurate political commentator in this case. And, of course, just ask Charles Blow of the New York Times, who has been on Trump's case from the very beginning, and understands our current politics as well as, if not better than, anyone else.
If nothing else, perhaps Jones' victory shows that, even in Alabama, people are just sick and tired of fighting with each other. They've seen the price tag for all of this, and they don't like it. Perhaps it is most poignantly summed up here.
Let's hope, and pray, that Jones' victory leads not just to a Democratic wave in 2018, but also a "democratic" one in which we start talking to each other again, and stop hating--or worse.
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