THE BATTLE OF ALABAMY

[defrog]

As you no doubt know, Doug Jones won the Alabama Senate race.

Unsolicited commentary follows:

1. Like many people who are not from Alabama, I’m glad Jones won.

2. Also like many people, my reasons for this date back long before we found out about Roy Moore’s colorful history of stalking/sexually assaulting minors. Moore’s various comments and judicial actions over the years regarding racism, sexism, Islam, LGBTs and church/state separation – to name a few – have been more than enough to convince me we’d all be better off if he lost.

3. Unsurprisingly – yet hilariously – Moore has refused to concede. And characteristically, his list of reasons why have nothing to do with recounts or alleged voter fraud and everything to do with his belief that America is such a Satanic cesspool of liberal godless immorality that we can’t possibly let the Senate fall into the hands of those evil atheist gay sodomite Muslim baby-killing DEMOCRATS. In which case the fact that Jones got more votes than me is irrelevant to the fact that I MUST HAVE THAT SEAT TO SAVE AMERICA!

Well. Nice try.

4. The conservative reaction has been slightly more subdued (or at least not focused on the Biblical apocalyptic ramifications), but no less predictable – from blaming the Evil Liberal Media’s Fake News unfair and totally false hit jobs on Moore to conspiracy theories that black people cheated by busing in more black people from Mississippi to vote for Jones (ha ha, no).

The only real surprise was Trump’s congratulatory tweet to Jones, which no one seriously believes for a minute he wrote himself. Indeed, Trump soon followed up by saying, “See, I TOLD ya you shoulda gone with Luther Strange, but did anyone listen to me? No! I was right all along, but will the fake media report that?! NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Which sounds more like him.

5. It’s worth taking note that while it’s good Jones won, the fact remains that almost half of Alabama voted for – and most of the GOP outside of Alabama actively endorsed – a racist pedophiliac conspiracy theorist over a guy who successfully prosecuted KKK members for murdering black people.

Granted, it’s worth remembering that many of the people who support Moore don’t believe that WaPo story is true to begin with. So from their POV they weren’t endorsing a pedophile because they don’t believe he is one. Meanwhile, the ones who do believe the WaPo story have long since bought into the nonsense reality bubble that Democrats (and WaPo, for that matter) are literally the enemy of America, which in their mind is far worse than what Moore may or may not have done 40 years ago. Also, they really need to keep Congress locked up long enough to pass Trumpcare, that tax bill, etc, and that’s more important than Roy Moore’s sex life. So, you know, lesser of two evils?

But that doesn’t address the racist/conspiracy theorist bit. That’s something we probably need to address – or at least keep in mind for next year’s midterms. These people aren’t going away anytime soon.

6. Which is why I don’t think the fallout from this election spells the end of the GOP, as some have been postulating – though I guess it depends what you mean by “the end”.

Does it mean it’s the end of them ever winning elections? Of course not. The aforementioned batshit alt-reality that Trump, Moore and their fans currently habit will preserve support for the GOP for some time. That’s not to say it’s not going to cost them seats in the short term – Jones could well signify the beginning of several seat flips in the next election year. But losing elections doesn’t mean the “end” of the GOP.

That said, I do think the Battle Of Alabama could help to destroy the GOP as we know it – the Reagan-era Establishment is fading fast, and it’s being slowly but surely replaced with a party increasingly obsessed with delusional, xenophobic white identity politics and strong-arm authoritarianism (in the guise of Law And Order). The lower classes (which increasingly include what used to be the middle class) are getting fed up with the growing wealth inequality gap, and the New GOP’s apparent strategy is to do what they can to keep the rabble at bay by making the gap wider (to say nothing of the deficit) whilst assuring anyone who will listen that the superrich will totally invest that extra money into nice cushy senior VP jobs for everyone else.

Or not. The GOP hasn’t gone full Bannon just yet, and FiveThirtyEight thinks that Moore's loss could help give GOP moderates an opening to try and get the party back on track – but as the Establishment either retires or dies, the Batshit Fascist wing is increasingly well-positioned to step in and take over eventually. The result could spell the death of the GOP in the same sense that turning to the Dark Side spelled the death of Anakin Skywalker and the birth of Darth Vader.

7. So yeah, while it’s good that someone like Jones can still win an election – in Alabama, of all places – the forces that enabled Moore are still very much in play (to say nothing of the White House), so we’ve got a long way to go here.

It ain’t over til it’s over,

This is dF