and now, a hefty dose of reality from a jaded liberal snowflake

I was pretty sure Roy Moore would win yesterday.

Actually, scratch the modifier. I was SURE Roy Moore would win yesterday. In preparation for a tight but decisive Moore victory, I jotted down ideas for pieces on how to overcome a weak voter turnout, on lessons in how to combat toxic Trumpism in future races, on the next steps for dealing with a sexual assailant in office, and on how we must remember that Moore was a product of and a stain on the Republican party.

I was so overwhelmingly excited when Jones won that I gleefully deleted those notes from my computer. I then texted a few ideas about optimistic article ideas to Hayley (I literally called dibs on “writing a happy piece!!”), ate a bowl of chocolate ice cream, and went to bed.

I woke up still thrilled that Jones won if not a bit more subdued in my unbridled, dance-around-my-apartment joy. After a series of minor, if not thoroughly mood-killing tribulations--think a walk through Manhattan wind tunnels, a post-celebratory-Talenti-stomach ache, and the realization that I forgot to wear deodorant to work--I found myself not in a “Bye Bye Bannon,” “The South Will Blue Again,” “Moore Pedophilia, Moore Problems” article writing state of mind and went to look at my notes for a “Fuck You, Alabama Voters” piece.

Whoever says that what you write online lasts forever has obviously never tried to retrieve a deleted Google doc, because once you hit the garbage can button, your writing is as good as electronic confetti.

With that, my symbolic deletion of pedophilia and Bannonism and Republican complicity yielded an equally symbolic realization that despite Jones’ shocking and historic win and the valid hope that comes along with it, we still must deal with a Trumpist, sexist, toxic government.

We can and should celebrate Jones’ win and appropriately thank those who gave him that victory, namely the black electorate; making up 29% of the voters, black men and women overwhelmingly voted for Jones, with 98% of black women and 93% of black male voters rejecting Moore. We can and should look at what did go right, namely that Jones was a great candidate for his state whose history of prosecuting Klan members and firm Democratic stance did well with female and minority voters. And we can and should see this victory as hope for the Democrats taking back the senate in 2018, as a much-needed morale boost for us resistant, if not exhausted, liberals.

We can and should view last night as a victory, but we cannot and should not take this victory for granted nor see it for more than it is.

We still need to look at weak voter turnout and, more troubling, deliberate voter disenfranchisement. In the last few years, Alabama Republicans have taken measures to prevent black and latino voters from voting, passing a law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID. This disproportionally disenfranchises non-white voters who are less likely to have an ID, especially since the state closed numerous DMVs in rural, majority-black counties, a move that was later challenged by a federal civil rights investigation. The state also closed around 200 voting precincts, meaning longer lines in--you guessed it--mostly black neighborhoods. The fact that black voters were able to give Jones a victory despite numerous barriers to voting is a huge part of this story.

Moreover, in the weeks leading up to the election, the conversation revolved around whether Alabama Republicans would rather vote for a Democrat or an alleged child molester. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, they voted for the latter. Jones won in large part because of an increased voter turnout amongst Democrats that drowned out loyal Republicans. When it comes to voter turnout, the next steps are twofold; Democrats need to both work to remove barriers to voting (especially barriers that affect people of color, former inmates, the elderly, and the poor) and push for greater turnout within their own party rather than focus on changing the minds of Republicans. This is especially important in races in which the Republican candidate isn’t an alleged pedophile. The only way to beat ye ole run-of-the-mill Republicans is to convince Democrats to show up and actively help those facing difficulty in doing so.

We also need to remind ourselves that, as news-explaining deity Ezra Klein put it, “we’re the country that almost elected Roy Moore. We’re the country that did elect Donald Trump.” Alabama voters did reject Trump in choosing Bannon-backed Moore over Trump’s pick, Luther Strange; this move, however, was hardly a rejection of Trumpism. Furthermore, the same voters that chose Moore over Strange were the ones who voted for him again in this election. They didn’t choose Moore to spite Trump; they chose him because his agenda lined up in many ways with the president’s agenda. Had Roy Moore just been an unqualified, racist, sexist xenophobe who says that homosexuality should be illegal and Muslims are not fit to hold public office, he probably would have won. Had Doug Jones not had a pretty great record on standing up for racial justice and a very focused local message, he would not have attracted the same kind of voter turnout as he got.

And we can’t forget that an unqualified, racist, sexist, alleged pedophile only lost by 1.5%. It would be premature to call this vote a predictor of what will happen in the 2018 Senate races. If anything, this race shows that Democrats need to have a clear message and give constituents something to vote for and not just vote against, as most white voters did not vote against Trumpism in Alabama.

There’s also the fact that Jones’s victory does not mean that we avoided putting a sexual assailant in power. Rather, we avoided putting another sexual assailant in power--Donald Trump still is the president of the United States despite bragging on camera that he assaulted women. Jones narrowly defeating Moore does not change the fact that 71% of Alabama Republicans did not believe that the claims against Moore are true; nothing about the results of last night’s election change the fact that society is slow to give the benefit of the doubt to women. Taxpayers continue to fund harassment settlements in congress; Republicans and Democrats alike are just starting to grapple with how to deal with issues of sexual assault in the workplace. Just because Moore is not in office does not mean that we can grow complacent about addressing the issue of sexual assault in politics, in the media, in universities, in restaurant kitchens, in farms, in homes. Jones’s win is not a victory for women just as lifeboats were not a victory for the Titanic. He certainly makes the situation better, but the safety-for-women ship is hardly afloat.

And finally, Jones’s victory cannot prevent us from remembering that the GOP actively worked to aid a sexual predator in rising to power. Few and far between were the Jeff Flakes (take this one pat on the back, buddy--there’s still plenty to criticize you about) who supported Jones; more common but still rare were the Richard Shelbys who advocated against Moore, though didn’t go all the way to Jones. Trump enthusiastically campaigned for a man accused by multiple women of child molestation. The RNC gave money to his campaign. Mitch McConnell, who initially said “he believes the women,” later walked back on his condemnation of Moore, stating, “the people of Alabama are going to decide a week from Tuesday who they want to send to the Senate.”

The GOP, with few exceptions, remained largely silent AT BEST about the prospect of electing a child molester to Senate. This--along with their attempt to strip healthcare from millions, their refusal to confirm Merrick Garland, their acceptance of Trump’s racism and xenophobia, their likely passage of a corrupt tax bill, and a whole laundry list of other abhorrences--should be their legacy. Though Democrats should not craft entire platforms on anti-Republicanism, they should remind voters of Republican complicity. Just because Moore lost does not mean that McConnell or anyone else gets a free pass.

Sigh. Writing this has been thoroughly depressing. It’s almost as if one of the reddest states in the nation didn’t just elect a pro-choice, pro-LGBT, pro-ACA attorney whose accomplishments include prosecuting four of the KKK members who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in the 1960s. This is a big deal, and the fact that Trump and Bannon are pissed about it is the cherry on top.

Hope is a powerful thing, and Jones’s win should generate a nice dose of it. It’s now time to turn that hope--hope that we can increase voter turnout and block barriers to voting, hope that we can truly reject Trumpism and vote for candidates that represent our values, hope that we can bring justice to sexual assailants in power, and hope that the country will remember Republican silence--into action.

#alabama #roymoore #dougjones #sigh