OK. In the cold light of noon, let’s have a look at this thing.
There will be plenty of analysis about how this was won: enhanced turnout among Democratic voters driven by a sustained and repeatable GOTV effort fully funded by the DNC and external donors, leveraged against a compromised candidate – and there will be a case that this cannot be done again barring the nomination of yet another holy roller pervert for statewide office by the GOP. I’m here to tell you it’s wrong. Roy Moore came within the population of Gardendale of a mandatory recount. His issue positions are not materially different from any other Alabama Republican. His voters were not that dissuaded by the allegations, because they already reject any reality that doesn’t fit their views. And his voters are dying. Old white men who remember life before desegregation are sinking sand on which to build a voter base.
More to the point, contra my remarks yesterday, the fact that Doug Jones won suggests there is a path to statewide Democratic victory in Alabama. Hang Trump around the GOP’s neck, get black voters to the polls, and get young voters mobilized and active. It will take extra effort to overcome the structural obstacles Alabama has spent years if not decades placing in the path of likely Democratic voters, but we now have the existence proof that it can be done. And if you can do it once, you can do it again – for the right gubernatorial candidate in 2018, and then beyond.
But more to the point…
Last night, the fans of Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires were crossing team lines on Twitter to exult in their victory, with Auburn fans posting Rammer Jammer cheers and Tide fans gleefully showing off the toilet paper fluttering in the trees at Toomer’s Corner. Grapico and special dogs and Milo’s were invoked and great oaths were sworn about how “We Dare Defend Our Rights” now means everyone’s and all of them. And I contemplated the fact that of all the places I’ve ever lived, 13 years in California and 7 more in the NoVA suburbs of DC, the only place that ever stereotyped me as a white man from Alabama was Jefferson County, Alabama…which went 3-1 for Doug Jones last night.
That’s not nothing. That’s a meaningful marker laid down, that what was once a tiny blue dot in Southside in a sea of red is now a burgeoning and reliable blue county driven by African-American voting power. That in addition to baseball and wi-fi and recycling and craft beer, Birmingham is developing a politics that looks like America and pushing it ever outward toward the rest of the state. And the ones who resist, the ones who fight hardest to keep things like they are, the ones who are so wedded to how it used to be that they might as well be Vol fans…they’re dying. Every day.
I still don’t see ever moving back. But being able to visit, being able to enjoy it, being able to take pride in everything from the Barons to Avondale Brewing to Top Hat BBQ to a 205 area code? This morning, there’s a path back to the light that wasn’t there yesterday. And I am grateful for everyone who trod out that path and who fights to clear it today and tomorrow and the day after that.
It raises the possibility that before I die, I could live to see the state of my birth not showing its ass to the world. That for the first time in my life, it might just extend a hand and say “y’all come home.” That there’s a path back to Birmingham that doesn’t involve looking out the bay doors of the bomber during the Second American Civil War. That who I am, what I am, could actually be part and parcel of what the city and the state and the South is. That I wouldn’t have to hang my head and make excuses and disavow a state that disavowed me…because it wouldn’t, not any more.
Wouldn’t that be something.