Roy Moore’s
stunning defeat reveals the red line for Trump-style politics
Richard
Wolffe
The shock
election results saw a Democrat make rare inroads in deep-red Alabama – and
will hasten the existential question facing the Republican party
‘If Trumpism
has any future, any constituency moving forward, it should be thriving in
Alabama.’
Wednesday
13 December 2017 05.30 GMT First published on Wednesday 13 December 2017 05.27
GMT
There’s no
sugar coating the stunning defeat for Donald Trump and his cronies in Tuesday’s
senate contest.
There’s no
accusation of fake news that can cover the tracks of the disastrous results for
the president – and for his supposedly populist politics – little more than one
year after his own election.
There’s no
comeback for his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who declared war on the
Republican establishment by stumping for a toxic candidate like Roy Moore.
This wasn’t
a marginal contest in some familiar swing state, a typical bellwether of
political trends. We’re talking about Alabama. One of the most Republican
states in the union where there’s a long and violent history of rejecting
outside influences, and anything that smacks of progressive politics.
If Trumpism
has any future, any constituency moving forward, it should be thriving in
Alabama. For months we have all endured the endless reporting from Trump
Country where the president’s loyalists say their love of the blowhard-in-chief
is undiminished.
Instead,
Alabama – the state whose love of segregation gave us some of the greatest
flashpoints in the civil rights movement – has drawn the reddest of red lines.
There are still limits to what voters consider acceptable behavior, and Roy
Moore is on the wrong side of them.
Standing by
him are his biggest boosters. Donald Trump chose to waste what little remains
of his political capital on a man accused of being a sexual predator of teenage
girls. The Republican National Committee tarnished its name by supporting
Moore’s campaign in its late stages after earlier abandoning him. And then
there’s Steve Bannon, who lambasted every Republican for treating Roy Moore
like a cancer on the GOP.
For now,
Democrats can enjoy the sight of their first senator from Alabama in a quarter
of a century. They can enjoy the moral victory of seeing Doug Jones, who
successfully prosecuted two of the racist killers behind the 1963 Birmingham
church bombing, triumph over a Republican who seemed to hanker after the days
when slavery stained the South every day. Democrats can start recalculating the
vote-counts on every legislation now they have narrowed the GOP’s Senate
majority to just two.
“I have always believed that the people of
Alabama have more in common than what divides us,” Jones said in his victory
speech. “We have shown the country the way that we can be unified.”
For
Democrats, the winning way is pretty clear: run against the demagoguery and
divisive politics of Donald Trump.
For
Republicans, the lessons are just as clear, but far harder to follow. In the
coming weeks and months, Republicans now need to wrestle with something they
have happily ignored for the last year. Alabama’s results will hasten the
existential question facing every GOP member of Congress who faces re-election
next year: is it better or worse to break with Donald Trump?
Until
Alabama, this seemed like an easy calculation. Trump’s obvious failings, his
freakish nature and his abusive conduct were all brushed aside because he
seemed to have a lock on his party. Who could stand against Trump except
senators who already said they were retiring from politics?
Now the
balance has shifted dramatically. Who can afford to stand with Trump when the
Democratic voters are so energized they turn out in numbers huge enough to
overturn the monumental Republican majority in Alabama?
The more
delusional Republicans will dismiss Tuesday’s results as the fault of a
disastrously poisonous candidate like Roy Moore.
Who could
vote for a senate candidate who was reportedly banned from shopping malls
because of his alleged interest in teenage girls?
What kind
of candidate agrees with Vladimir Putin that America is a focus of evil in the
world, and who speaks fluent Russian along the way?
But there’s
someone on the national stage who bears an uncanny similarity to the profile of
Roy Moore. Someone who stands accused of sexual predation on young women, who
demonizes the media as much as he lauds Vladimir Putin, and who pretends that
his critics are subjugating working class voters. That man works out of the
Oval Office.
For the
next year, Republican candidates will be hounded at every campaign stop by a
simple question: do you approve of Trump’s treatment of women? The party of
Moore and Trump is no place for suburban women voters, who have decided the
last several election cycles. And women voted by huge margins for Doug Jones in
Alabama.
The scale
of the surprise is worth measuring. Donald Trump won Alabama by a monumental 28
points just one year ago. The fact that the race was in any way competitive
speaks volumes about the disastrous effects of his presidency and Moore’s
candidacy.
Two years earlier,
Jeff Sessions – the man whose hapless tenure as attorney general prompted
Tuesday’s election – won re-election in Alabama with 97 per cent of the vote.
These are the kind of numbers that Saddam Hussein used to enjoy in his periodic
elections. The remaining three percent of the free votes went to write-in
candidates because no other candidate bothered to file in time to get on the
ballot.
Even Mitt
Romney won Alabama by 22 points in 2012, despite his reputation as a moderate
Republican. As much as black voters rallied to Barack Obama with record
turnout, they still only represent 25% of Alabama’s population.
In Alabama,
the past is never dead in large measure because people like Roy Moore have no
idea how the past was experienced by his fellow Alabamians. You don’t need a
degree in history from the University of Alabama to understand Moore’s
worldview.
At a rally
in September, he was asked by an African-American voter in the audience when he
thought America was last great. “I think it was great at the time when families
were united – even though we had slavery – they cared for one another,” he
said. “Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
In case you
were still confused, Moore is the kind of man who appeared on conspiracy
wingnut radio in 2011 to lament the constitution’s amendments that abolished
slavery, and gave the vote to women and African-Americans.
His reward
for this kind of racism was to energize the very voters he disdained. The
African-American voters of Alabama have delivered a crushing blow to
Trump-style politics.
It’s only
reasonable to expect Latino voters to deliver the same blow to GOP candidates
who support their president’s demonization of immigrants. It’s only normal to
expect women to disdain Republican candidates who refuse to condemn Trump’s
sexual harassment.
And it’s
only realistic to expect Donald Trump will learn nothing from his humiliation
in Alabama. He will continue to rage against Hillary Clinton, the media, and
athletes who protest for equal justice. He will continue to obsess about
Twitter and cable television instead of finding a new political path.
The real
test of the next year lies not with the president, but with his party. Only
one of them has the capacity to change.
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