Moore’s defeat in Alabama was a seismic event
On the first night of Hanukkah, a great light appeared in the southern sky: It was a Democrat, from the State of Alabama, alighting in the United States Senate.
In the hierarchy of biblical wonders, the sweet triumph of Doug Jones will not challenge the miracle of the lamp in the temple (with oil enough for one day, it burned for eight). In politics, though, Jones’s upset comes close.
For a century or so, a segregationist Alabama elected only conservative Democrats, but it switched in the mid-’90s, with flinty resolve, to conservative Republicans. Donald Trump won the state overwhelmingly in 2016.
What happened Tuesday in Alabama took an exquisite convergence of events: a flamboyant Republican accused of sexual assault and child molestation; a moderate Democrat with a reputation for integrity as a prosecutor of reopened civil rights cases; a vulgar president inviting public humiliation; and Alabamians, struggling to shed a past that kept them poor, reactionary and racist.
Roy Moore, the Republican, often invoked God in his campaign. Call his defeat an act of divine intervention, a political tsunami in the United States. Let us count the ways.
It alters the balance in the Senate to 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats and Independents, narrowing the GOP majority for the next year. Their advantage could all but disappear if John McCain, who has brain cancer, is absent.
It gives new leverage to moderate Republicans — Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker — who have shown independence and skepticism. Now, with only one vote to spare rather than two, their dissent becomes critical.
It discredits Stephen Bannon, the self-styled populist who has declared war on the Republican
Call his defeat an act of divine intervention, a political tsunami in the United States.
leadership by threatening to run antiestablishment candidates against them in the primaries in the midterm election next year. He supported Roy Moore, until the end. Bannon isn’t a political genius, after all.
It validates the #MeToo movement, which brought down Moore. He denied knowing his accusers, despite evidence to the contrary. Alabamians believed them. That is bad news for Trump, who faces similar allegations that are not going away. It relieves the congressional Republicans of an albatross. Had Moore been elected, they would have had to decide whether to seat him. Had they done so, Moore would have been the face of the Republican Party — a sanctimonious cowboy, in a leather vest, packing a pistol, on a steed named Sassy. The Republicans will still have to wear him — the Democrats will see to that in their attack ads — but not as much as had he been in the Senate.
It damages Donald Trump. The vote was not a referendum on him, strictly speaking, but it was the best opportunity for appalled Americans to rebuke him a year after his election. Trump endorsed Moore and campaigned for him. Moore’s loss is a personal repudiation.
Most of all, Alabama has redrawn the map of the 2018 midterm elections. Alabama is a special case — a flawed candidate like Moore was a Christmas gift — but the lesson is electrifying: If the Democrats can win there, they can win anywhere. Emboldened by their success in Alabama, the Democrats will strengthen efforts to take Republican seats in Arizona, Tennessee and Nevada, where the electorate is more favourable to them. They will have an easier time recruiting star candidates (as they did in Tennessee) and raising money. Doug Jones, bland, honest and earnest, is now a rock star.
Retaking one or both houses of Congress next year will be hard, though not impossible. The 2018 election is looking like the decisive midterms of 1994, 2006 and 2014.
But the real news from Alabama is the victory of decency. It reflects the basic instinct, in this reddest of states, to do the right thing. To reject a bigot and his apologist in the White House. To reach for the right side of history — and invite the rest of the country to follow.