Alabama’s accused pedophile and Trump-backed, Republican candidate for the US Senate, Roy S Moore, lost the election today in a state that very rarely elects a Democrat, the New York Times reports.
Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate, once considered a long shot chasing after windmills, won the election, according to the Associated Press, and cut the Republican majority in the Senate down to just one vote.
“We have shown the country the way that we can be unified,” the paper quoted Mr Jones as saying. “This entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign has been about the rule of law.”
Mr Moore, who still got about 48½ percent of the vote, has been accused of sexual abuse and child molestation, which didn’t stop President Donald Trump from supporting him or the president’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, from stumping for him. For some people, it’s victory at all costs, and the name of the game in defeat is only scapegoating:
Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017
Mr Trump is right about the write-in votes: More than 20,000 Republicans voted for someone other than Mr Moore, who once said America was last great when slavery was a still a thing.
Alabama has a high poverty rate, a poor educational system, and a sickening infant mortality rate. The people have finally figured out they have a choice—it takes more than an “R” after one’s name to win against a surge in African-America voters, who here refused to overlook moral issues in favor of a political party.
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” —Sir Winston Churchill
If he had won, a little faith on my part would have been lost in Christianity. It would have shown that Christians are willing to abandon the New Testament. I would have also lost some faith in our electoral process, in Democracy itself, and in African-American voters. Many voters in Alabama, maybe not a majority but many, are African-American, and if Mr Moore had won, it would have shown this voting bloc to be completely unable to rise to an occasion, perhaps because the Democratic candidate wasn’t black in this case.
To fail to speak or vote in an election, when a man who honestly believes slavery was the best of America is on the opposing ticket, is the textbook definition of apathetic. But that’s not how it happened today in Alabama, and for that, I’m grateful.
Mr Jones’s victory is a message against sexual assault, against Mr Trump, and, perhaps most importantly, against Alabama’s racist history, as he once prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a church in Birmingham and killed four African-American children. This is a poetic and vibrant message indeed.
