Democrat Doug Jones has won in Alabama, and it changes EVERYTHING
Democratic candidate Doug Jones has been declared the winner in the special election for U.S. Senate in Alabama, with several major news outlets having called the race in his favor. Jones had something unique working in his favor, with his Republican opponent Roy Moore being an accused child molester. But even with this factored in, this is a massively unlikely victory – and it changes everything about American politics going forward.
Here are just a few new rules for U.S. politics, based on what just happened in Alabama:
– Donald Trump obviously has no political muscle left. He endorsed Roy Moore repeatedly and emphatically, and even held a campaign rally for him just days before the election, yet it did Moore no good whatsoever. Trump can’t motivate his base to turn out for anyone, as we’ve already seen when his endorsements of Luther Strange and Ed Gillespie failed.
– Nearly every Senate race is now up for grabs in 2018. States don’t get much redder than Alabama. The Republican should have won this race by twenty points. It’s now clear, however, that the mere presence of toxically unpopular Donald Trump in the White House means that the Democrats can compete in nearly any state in the midterms. There are a number of House districts that are too fundamentally red for the Democrats to win, but there are no statewide races that are off the table.
– Come to think of it, the Republicans in Congress are probably on the phone with each other right now, discussing the cold hard reality that they’re going to get wiped out in the midterms if they don’t oust Donald Trump first. Then again, if they oust Trump and his base blames them, they may get wiped out anyway.
– Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced earlier today that no matter who won the Alabama race, he would refuse to seat that person until after the new year. This is a blatant attempt at keeping lame duck Luther Strange in the Senate a bit longer so he can vote “yes” on the final version of the tax scam bill. Doug Jones needs to take immediate legal action to try to force McConnell to seat him immediately.
– The Democrats are doing just fine. In every 2017 election that they were supposed to win, they’ve won big. In every 2017 election that was supposed to have been a toss-up, they’ve also won. In every 2017 election that was supposed to go to the Republicans, the Democrats have won or come close to winning. So much for the “Democrats in disarray” narrative that we’ve been hearing all year from the media.
– Donald Trump is about to completely lose what little is left of his mind. He’s already so far gone that he posted a sexual tweet today about a female U.S. Senator. Roy Moore’s loss is the ultimate slap in Trump’s face, and it’ll shatter his increasingly fragile psyche into pieces. His tweets tomorrow will be even more deranged, if he can even bring himself to keep tweeting.
