I made a big mistake. I decided to watch the speech that Doug Jones gave on December 5th. It was a mistake because it made me admire the man, and that set me up to be disappointed tonight if he doesn’t win the special election for Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s seat in the U.S. Senate.
I’ll be honest, the election of Donald Trump caused post-traumatic stress disorder, which isn’t an ideal condition for a political prognosticator. One way of protecting myself is to not allow myself to get my hopes up, especially in a case where the prospects for victory have never been particularly strong. The simpler and safer course is to assume defeat and stand ready to be pleasantly surprised.
One advantage I’ve had in this case is that it simply isn’t possible to tell who will win based on the polls. Of course, the polls said Clinton would win and she didn’t, so I wouldn’t trust even a modest polling lead. But lacking any lead at all, it’s not difficult or unjustified to take an agnostic view of the likely result tonight.
What I didn’t want to do is to get emotionally invested in this election. But watching Doug Jones’s December 5th speech created a problem for me. He seems to combine some of the better characteristics of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and at the same time to lack some of their flaws. Overall, he’s more progressive than either of them. He connects with an audience a little better than Carter and he brings more moral authority than Clinton ever could. He has a worldview that brings an historic scope to his message. He knows well what’s been holding Alabama back, that they missed out on the New South entirely. He’s prosecuted Klansmen, including the men who carried out the Klan’s most notorious crime. He’s prosecuted child molesters. He may not have quite the policy chops of Carter and Clinton, but he’s fluent and knowledgable about Alabama’s emerging tech, health, and automotive industries.
I had been thinking about Jones more for what he can accomplish for the resistance against Trump’s agenda. With his vote in the Senate, it may be possible to block things that would have otherwise passed. His election would serve as a rebuke to Trump and further undermine his power and sway. Simply by keeping Roy Moore out of the Senate, he would do everyone a service, including the Republican leadership there that doesn’t really deserve the favor. His election would give hope to women and minorities and the LGBT community, and everyone else who has suffered or would suffer under the leadership of people like Roy Moore. All of these were reasons to hope that Jones would win. But he’s added another for me, which is that I think he has a real upside as a leader in his own right. He’s still raw as a politician, which should be expected. Even Barack Obama was a little uneven early on during his first presidential run. But Jones shows tremendous potential which can only be fulfilled if he wins tonight and has a chance to grow.
So, now I am kind of screwed. I anticipated going into tonight with low expectations and with the sense that all the downside would come from Moore’s victory and his heightened role in our national politics. As bad as that would be, it wouldn’t really be all that different from having Luther Strange in the Senate. I was prepared for that kind of ugliness, as it’s what I’ve come to expect since last November.
I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like if Doug Jones loses, we’re going to miss out on a chance to see a real leader emerge who could change things for the better in the Democratic Party, in the Deep South, and for the nation as a whole.
Despite everything, I’m now emotionally invested, which is precisely what I didn’t want to be.
You, to your hope for a better country:
“I can’t quit you!”
Dammit Booman now you got me emotionally invested too.
If he’s that good, send him on a speaking tour, win or lose. It’s what Lincoln did when didn’t make it to the senate.
Though I wonder if the activists are ready to warm up to a white guy from the south. I hate mentioning that, but we have to accept that might be a thing. MOST people don’t respond to policies or data. They go with instinct and stories.
Well, better to be emotionally involved with Doug Jones than, you know, a pedophile. Looking at you Alabama.
I have thus far avoided becoming emotionally invested in this race. In my mind, it’s Alabama, dude. Of course they’re going to elect Roy Moore.
If Doug Jones is worth his salt, he will emerge somewhere, somehow, to the benefit of others. I like your idea of going on a speaking tour, but he’s probably invested in Alabama and wants to help there. Let’s hope he learns something valuable from this experience, and made some meaningful connections outside his world that can carry over to his post-election life as a citizen.
If Moore wins, Schumer should immediately go after Shelby to switch parties. The guy is 83 years old. He’s not gonna run again. And he can serve out his term saying “I can’t be in the same party as that Moore guy.”
Shelby was a Democrat until the Newt Revolution in 1994.
Is Trump and Moore as bad as Clinton was for him and his constituents?
Double-switches ae rare.
…the most famous example being Winston Churchill. (Not the same party system, obviously, but “re-ratting”, as they call it, is at least equally exceptional.)
Yeah, you’ve got me invested now, too. Although Jones had been growing on me over the course of the campaign. I liked your comment about how Jones understands that Alabama has missed out on the New South entirely. If Jones can help Alabama follow in the path of other Southern states that have moved into the 21st century with high tech and health and so forth. The raw ingredients are there, but the state has not had good leadership. I like your idea of Jones’ emerging as a national leader even if he loses. Let’s face it, a white Southern dude would have a certain appeal.
I am asking out of genuine ignorance.
Our daughter did her MD at Tulane Medical School (2013-2017). So we have been to NOLA several times.
For work I have been to Hattiesburg, MS (U. So. Miss).
Our daughter had to do a rotation in rural Louisiana, and another rotation (psych) in a correctional facility, also in rural LA.
She traveled to coastal Alabama for short vacations.
From our combined experiences (mine necessary limited), I am puzzled as to what constitutes the New South?
I went with Atlanta in my mind as anything ‘new’ about the South. Their growth, becoming a hub for tech, modernizing, attracting new business.
Not a neat, systematic answer, but there’s a long (36 discussion board pages!), fascinating discussion of this question on City-Data.com
http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/2089961-deep-south-opinions-virginia-north-carolina.html
Atlanta’s Henry Grady’s “New South” (generally the Piedmont industrial region of textile, furniture, and cigarette factories) the Birmingham iron and steel industry, and the Atlanta financial and administrative center. That was a century ago and was a proximate factor in the resurgence of the KKK.
OR
The post-civil rights era of diversified manufacturing that started in the mid-1950s and grew with intentional state-funded economic development projects like Research Triangle Park in North Carolina,
OR the post-Reagan high-tech and global investments in information technology, pharmaceuticals, automobile building of US-factories of foreign companies and the auto parts and tire manufacturing that goes with it.
What these developments did was bring in management and relocated technical workers, provide jobs for Southerners up to those skills, and created a generally more diverse workforce in factories run by Canadians, Japanese, Germans, British, French, and so on. Until the 2000s, the foreign and out-of-the-South owners could enforce cultural changes in their workforces at work. And they could put pressure from the top for equal employment opportunities. They became havens for white Southerners who had already moved toward a desegregated society and brought brief change to the schools until the Reagan administration became more tolerant of segregated schools.
The New South (or Sun Belt) in the 1980s and 1990s was an area of better jobs and non-Southern emigration.
Who was left out in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s were Henry Grady’s New South. The steel jobs in Birmingham, the furniture jobs in the Piedmont and mountains, the textile jobs in the Piedmont, the cigarette jobs in North Carolina are pretty much all gone now. Those are the lost manufacturing jobs. The people who lost those jobs and haven’t recovered are at risk for opoid addiction. The people who recovered by schooling and becoming independent businessmen are the ones likely to be attracted to Trump’s line. The blue areas in Southern states are the major cities in each state, which are characterized by minorities, college educated and millennial urban culture lovers (artisanal beer, foodies, bicycles, arts, music scene) and other entertainment that takes some amount of money. And the nationally noted college/university towns.
How much of the bluer new south is transplants? I havent studied the matter but colonization was what changed things, like in VA
That’s an extremely interesting question because people assume that one’s poltical biases are shaped over a lifetime. Or that where one came from last determines political party. Colonization of the DC suburbs changed both Virginia and Maryland. But that colonization brought in different types of people for think tanks, federal government, party functionaries and support personnel such as media, and a lot of other government-related roles, and then the supporting economy for the colonizers. How much bluer are those jobs and areas. Look at Maryland’s Republican governors in recent years and at Virginia”s Democratic governors. What you would expect of folks who privately support anti-government political parties and folks who depend on a technocratic salary to support their families. The DC colony is not as true with Southern states farther afield, outside of the federal agency colonies, military, national park (example Corps of Engineers and National Park Service).
In more scrambled cities, there are a lot of transplants that come in as Republicans, such as those from western Michigan. Or Republicans from upstate New York and Central Pennsylvania or suburban Chicago. Or New Jersey. And certain occupations tend Republican — surgeons, some engineers, tax accountants, attorneys (unless specifically Democratic lawyers in a bipartisan firm).
What gets really scrambled is the political conversations with the Canadians, French (such as Michelin in SC), Japanese. And those can have a leavening effect if they are a large enough presence in a community, even without voting. And their attitudes can drive some of the conservative who work for them nuts.
A lot of the bluer South are older more progressive (less conservative) area of the old Democratic/Dixiecratic South. A lot is minority-majority counties. A lot are the effects of military communities, which have kind of scrambled political identities as well as demographic identities.
Actually in my experience in South Carolina and North Carolina, outside Republicans did the colonizing. Gov. Pat McCrory was born in Columbus OH; his familiy moved to the Greensboro area when he was a child. Former Rep. Sue Myrick was from Tiffin OH. Virginia Foxx is from a traditionally Republican part of the mountains of North Carolina.
Trey Gowdy was born in Greenville SC in 1954, the same year I graduated from high school there. His father was a local pediatrician. Gowdy got his conservatism from Baylor in the era of Ronald Reagan’s election. (graduate 1982).
Life choices make lots of differences in peoples’ politics. Since the Republican Party recruited heavily in the medical community in the Greenville-Spartanburg era during the period when Medicare was before Congress, Dad Gowdy probably was the first Republican in the family and against government health care. See how it works.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper was the son of a farmer and a school teacher in rural Nash County NC. I have a strong suspicion of what kind of a teacher his mom was. It has made him a strong candidate and Democrat.
Different folks had different reasons for going red or blue as the polarization got amped up during the era of first Helms and then Newtie Gingrich and then Rushbo. And now Trump.
Things are now quite scrambled by native/transplant.
Thank you for that commentary. I, too, have assumed that in-migration to certain Southern states (Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia) is what has driven the on/off drift towards more liberal–or at least less reactionary–politics in those places. You did a salutary job of pointing out that the situation is far more complicated.
I guess if a West Va Dem senator is possible, a AL Dem senator is possible. Jones would have had to be a natural talent diamond-in-the-rough to run as strongly as he has. That the polls (however useless) are baffled is remarkable.
But in one of the most successful (Dem) vote-suppressing regimes in the New Confederacy, a victory would be little short of a miracle. AL Dems must battle every single branch of government, both state and federal, whose “conservative” functionaries view this seat as a fight to the death.
If Alabama Democrats haven’t staffed up a strong election protection operation, they get faulted for failure of due diligence. That was one of the first things that Obama did.
The nature of the suppression operation tells you that Jones has his election protection in place. Destroying the records as soon as possible is depending on the absence of a friendly state or federal judge to enjoin the Secretary of state.
You should read this:
https:/thesouthlawn.org/2017/12/13/the-black-belts-revenge
It’s the kind of thing I’ve been screaming about for ages. State and local parties need long-term investment, especially in the South.
Try this:
http://thesouthlawn.org/2017/12/13/the-black-belts-revenge/
Slap! Snap out of it! Moore’s winning. Jones becomes a distinguished member of the failed resistance.
Yeah, exactly that. Of course, I bought some tickets in that lottery (long odds as usual but BIG jackpot.)
Yahoo! Won that lottery ;~) Ok I promise to root for the Crimson tide in an upcoming sportsball event.
Just tell yourself that no matter how disappointing (even wrenching) tonight could be, you’ve already been through Trump’s victory. And you’re still standing.
It’s like getting a cancer diagnosis and then, months later, finding out you’ve got the flu. (So what?)
What’s funny is I see people on the internet who are more anguished over whether Star Wars will be good (and what it will “reveal” etc.) than what happens in Alabama tonight.
This election in Alabama cannot be criticized for not providing a stark choice.
Even the Nazi-punchers should like the fact that Jones picked up a supposedly cold case and brought it to a verdict that did not get waylaid by jury nullification. It is unlikely he could repeat that in today’s Alabama, but a lot of those same people are being given the choice of justice and democracy again. Whatever else happens tonight, there is that. Unlike some other races, the Jones race in Alabama did not pull punches on the difference between Jones and his opponent.
Whether that was from the Jones campaign’s doing or the fallout of some ladies getting fed up with Harvey Weinstein we likely will never clearly know. But not pulling punches makes the race unpredictable (as all races really should be if an election is going to be worth the effort).
I’ve been rooting for Jones for months because he’s a decent man and Democratic politician. If his opponent were anyone other than Moore — who isn’t that well liked even in AL — he wouldn’t have had a chance. Haven’t the foggiest what turnout will be in an AL special general election. However, in the best case scenario, Jones needs presidential election level plus turnout among Democrats. That’s a tall order.
Just got the news, Jones WON!!!!!!! Let’s hear it for Alabama.
However, in the best case scenario, Jones needs presidential election level plus turnout among Democrats.
That is apparently what he got!!!!! Someone on Twitter said Jones got about 95% of the votes HRC did.
92.3% to be more precise IF all his votes were from ’16 HRC voters. He and his team did a very good job in getting those Obama/HRC voters to turn out for a special general election, but I’d be surprised if near 100% of ’16 Green voters and some proportion of libertarians weren’t also in the mix. Always interesting that more people vote for a hopeless candidate, as was the case for both Obama and Clinton in AL, than bother to show up and vote for a candidate like Jones that has a chance to win.
Jones: 673,236
Clinton: 729,547
Obama (’08): 813,479
In the aggregate, turnout was 65% of ’16 (similar to the VA ’17 off-year turnout). But it was only 49.5% of Trump voters (assuming none of them could see their way to voting for a Democrat).
The safe bet has always been that this was Moore’s race to lose. And Moore has certainly run as a candidate who expects to be elected. I’d still call it the safe bet this evening. However, Moore is a weak candidate (for a whole host of reasons including his thing for underage girls) – even in what is by all descriptions a deep Red state, Jones has run what strikes me as a strong campaign on the Democratic side, and to an extent Trump’s favorables have been underwater enough to where he is going to be a drag on most Republican candidates. If Moore wins, it will probably be barely, and we can say he grossly underperformed based on historical precedent. If Jones (hopefully) wins, we can chalk that up to a lot of factors. I don’t know if he’d win reelection, but he’d be a fantastic addition to the Senate. I’ve been invested in this race from the get-go, not the least of which is due to having friends who live in Alabama. And as a Southerner, I’d sure as heck love to have some representation at the national level that would represent us at something more closely resembling our best.
“Of course, the polls said Clinton would win and she didn’t, so I wouldn’t trust even a modest polling lead.”
You can’t read polls, how is that the fault of polls? Clinton had a 3 pt lead in the national polls and won by 2 pts. The polls don’t take into account the Electoral College. How can you write a political blog and not understand polls. The polls are not the problem you are. You panicked about the VA race and I explained Northam had but you want to freak out.
Moore wins by around 8% according the latest exit polling.
Its coverage has been enlightening, as usual. As of now, many of the areas still unaccounted for are most likely ones that should favor Jones (Jefferson, Mobile, and Montgomery Counties have over half the vote left to report and Dallas County had not reported at all). Baldwin County still has plenty left as well, and that one should favor Moore. So, it appears to be a nail-biter. But interestingly, while Jones is now at a .5% lead (after being behind most of the evening), Moore’s base counties have shown that his voters are not showing up in the quantity he would have hoped for (approx 55% of 2016 totals). Counties in the “Black Belt” of Alabama, which are generally favorable to Jones, have been punching above their weight – turnout has been about 75-78% of 2016 totals. Still way too close to call. Jones could actually win this thing. Keeping fingers crossed.
What I pointed out a few months ago that Jones would need. Except being a conservative optimist, the goal should have been 110% of 2016 Democratic turnout. If not for GOP turnout falling off a cliff, Jones would now be lagging instead of LEADING by 11,000 votes right now. Holding my breath watching the live updates.
CNN just called it for Jones!
Congratulations to Doug Jones.
I was thinking more along the lines of “hot damn!”
Last week I noticed comparisons to the way Moore was campaigning in Alabama and how Coakley campaigned in Massachusetts in 2010 – basically running lackluster campaigns, and running at a time when their respective parties faced considerable headwinds. Noticed those parallels again mentioned again in my twitter feed. Other than Coakley not having Moore’s baggage, the parallels make sense.
In the meantime, Steve Bannon is a heck of a campaigner – going from being the genius Marxist/Soviet genius to crazed fool.
The one difference that puts a smile on my face –
Brown’s win forced the house Dems to pass the Senate version of Obamacare straight through.
But this time the senate fucked up their version of the tax bill so severely that it isn’t an option for the house. One more senator plus the fear of voter’s wrath in 2018 could still kill this damn thing.
Oh, another difference: Coakley didn’t tie the Democratic party or the president to predatory kiddie fucking.
All points well taken!
There’s hope for the US yet. Moore was a real piece of work for sure.
That, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls is how it is done even up to dropping Dallas County (Selma) in time to bump Jones over the mark to a win. Someone had a relatively good idea of what votes to expect coming in from where.
The crew from the Jones campaign now becomes the campaign crew for Congressional races in 2018. And this time, you can start working on persuading some white voters. You turned out your base and Moore was so bad that he failed to turn out his. Maybe Alabama is ready to stop doing automatic voting for whoever the radio says.
Disagree. Jones campaigned from day one on turning out the Democratic base and getting the active support of the fresh new faces in the AL Democratic Party and outsiders held in high regard by AL Democratic voters. Moore was disliked by almost half of GOP voters BEFORE the revelations of his behavior with teen girls. Only 47.8% of Trump voters turned out for Moore.
While the numbers were comparatively small in the 2016 presidential election, the libertarian, write-ins, and greens voters may have been what ended up making the difference in this senate race.
Jone’s might have done better if he’d hired from Sanders’ team for his senior strategist instead of the one he did hire, Joe Trippi.
This site needs a block poster function so badly.
But how else would we know the Putin position?
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–sigh– Your gal Hillary crushed it in Alabama against Trump, amirite? (BTW, how many decades did Clinton spend working the south? And for the primary, she had it so locked up that an unknown Jewish Senate from a small northern state couldn’t possibly have been competitive within less than a year.)
You wrote off Jones as a loser. Whereas I, the person you troll to troll rate, have been saying for months that this was the candidate against Moore that could actually win and articulated how he could do it. Jones mostly did that, but still failed to turnout all of the Democratic base which a rational analysis indicated that he would need because it wasn’t reasonable to project a less than 50% GOP turnout. Fortunately, more than 50% of those white AL GOP voters sat this one out.
Other than trashing me and anyone else not in lockstep with your kneejerk centrist Democratic Party fealty, you have yet to display any skill at political analysis, at the level of either electoral or public policy, IOW, a bot could replace you with no change.
“Quoting an old proverb: “An empty cart rattles loudly.” she said. meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest.”
― Alan Brennert, Honolulu
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So where’s your early projection that this AL Senate seat could flip? Or did you just, as usual, go with the consensus here and get it wrong again?
Contrary to your faulty impression, when I err in electoral projections it’s my left-bias that I can only imperfectly factor out. I completely blew the ’16 WI Senate race, but that’s an exception. You and others here flip-flop from overestimating weak Democratic candidates in some races (ie McGinty ’16 in PA and Ossoff ’17 in GA) and throwing in the towel on better than average Democratic candidates and/or worse than average GOP candidates in really tough territory. What’s wrong with rational and analytical projections even if one doesn’t like how a race is shaping up?
I’m very pleased that Jones pulled it off, but not shocked because this was a plausible seat to win.
What the literal fuck are you talking about? It’s been clear that Jones had a solid chance since Moore won the primary. Taking a victory lap over his win shows that you’ve been paying zero attention. Saying Jones should have replaced the guy who actually won his campaign with a guy that couldn’t come close in the primary against your hated Hillary is embarrassingly dumb, but par for the course.
As for the rest of your endlessly repetitive invective, you can cram it. Blah blah Hillary blah centrist blah kneejerk Democrat. A bot indeed.
Give that a man a cigar!!!!!
When I started my job many years ago, my supervisor assigned to me an assistant I’ll called T—, and then gave me this sage advice: “T— has never made a mistake in his whole life, and if you don’t believe me, just ask him yourself.” Sound like anyone we know on this blog?
This is, I’m convinced, a big part of the source of the negativity of most response to her. Good luck explaining that to her, though. Been there, done that.
Everything’s OK Booman. Jones WON! Just got the announcement.
I’m thinking there should be some term describes your state now – something that means “The surprise at the lack of disappointment and instead a rising feeling of small joy and hope” . If my german was good, I would make up a term – Let’s enjoy the moment. They are are rare.
How about “unerwartete Enttäuschungsabwesenheitsfreude”?
I’m so glad Arthur Gilroy told me whom to “bet on.”
Me too. I just made 500 bucks.
Was that before or after he told you to STFU?
. . . he would do.
Couple of great quotes from Charles Barkley on Jones’s victory:
“This is a wake-up call for Democrats. Democrats–and I told Mr. Jones this, and I love Doug–they’ve taken the black vote and the poor vote for granted for a long time. It’s time for them to get off their ass and start making life better for black folks and people who are poor. They’ve always had our votes and they have abused our votes, and this is a wake-up call. We’re in a great position now, but this is a wake-up call for Democrats to do better for black people and poor white people.”
Charles Barkley on CNN: “This is a great night for Alabama. We’ve been stuck in a time warp a long time…Yeah, we got a bunch of rednecks & ignorant people, but we got some amazing people, and they rose up today.”
The thing that’s so great is that this Alabama black man said “do better for black people AND poor white people.” Not like some people I know, who say fuck the white trash. Listen to this man. Any Democrat who wins in Alabama has got to know something about how Democrats can win elections. That’s the real reason the Alabama Democrats asked the national party to sit this one out and let them handle it.
https:/www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-original-underclass/492731
Sure, the black vote did it, but note this header from WaPo: “Jones benefitted from near-unanimous support from black voters, historically large support from whites … ” Jones got 30% of the white vote, as compared with 15% for Obama in 2012. Jones got 45% of women with college degrees. We’re talking Alabama here.
AL Democrats — white and black — turned in greater numbers for the Senate race than white AL Republicans did. So, of course Jones’ percentage of white voters would be higher than Obama’s. Jones likely succeeded in holding most of Obama’s AL white voters. Too soon for a granular analysis of why the white GOP voters didn’t show up: is Moore simply too dreadful for them or while they couldn’t vote for a Democrat, they couldn’t be bothered to oppose him. If Jones got them on the fence, that would be a major accomplishment.
I just re-read this post and realized that Booman had made mildly positive comments about Bill Clinton. Cue up the Clinton haters!