I’ll ignore hundreds of thousands that voted for Roy Moore, and focus on the majority who voted for Jones and/or against Moore.
Yeah, I’m happy that the GOP majority in the US Senate has shrunk to 51-49. In a hyper-partisan era, this close of a vote means that the extremism of the Senate GOP (and Congress) is perforce tempered still further.
But I’m significantly more happy to see Roy Moore crash, burning, in defeat. Even besides the credible and multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against him, the man is a positive menace of theocracy, states-rightism, and all the worst of divisive Southern conservatism.
It is probably too much to hope that this is the end of Roy Moore’s career. But I’m inexpressibly glad to know that even the people of Alabama were willing to give him a solid NO.
Democrat Doug Jones defeats Roy Moore in tight US Senate race in Alabama
For the first time in more than two decades, a Democrat has won a US Senate seat in Alabama. Doug Jones narrowly defeated Roy Moore on Tuesday after Moore’s campaign was rocked by allegations of sexual misconduct in the 80s.
All due to black People, whites voted 65% for Moore.
Getting significantly black vote out [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/940657094050615297] was key. To be fair, a number of GOP whites staying home helped, too.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/940657094050615297
The difficulty of this election is that it is so edge of a case (a wildly extremist GOP candidate that both the GOP establishment, everyone in the Democratic cohort, and a number of GOPers who were willing to put morality over partisanship, all joined against the GOP candidate) that it's difficult to extrapolate anything to 2018, except that a Dem can actually win against a theocratic populist GOPer.
The 1.7% who wrote in were probably all people who otherwise would have voted for the Republican-endorsed candidate. They won it for Jones.
Also, as the voters have now 'judged' Moore, can we apply the Huckabee Sanders rule and say that he's been convicted of attempted rape and other offences?
+Dave Hill Yes, it's difficult to extrapolate anything to 2018. Easier to gauge is the morale energizing effect for Democrats – especially the enthusiasm of potential Democratic candidates pondering getting into the ring.
It just became ??? times easier to recruit Democratic challengers in red districts/states for 2018. We're going to need actual challengers across the ballots in 2018 to get Virginia-like results across the country.
Apparently, God doesn’t want Moore in DC after all.
+Travis Bird I don't have a good number for the past number of write-ins, so that's hard to say. But one could argue that any group that voted more than the gap between "won" the race. It was a joint effort.
I do like the observation that if Moore won that would be the voters exonerating him of the charges, so if he loses that would be the voters convicting him of the charges. Which is, in fact, the case, but is no more proof of anything than a successful election would be.
+Isaac Kuo Actually, there's been a sizeable surge in Dem candidates already with just Trump being Trump. But you're correct, this should have an effect on the Dems in terms of confidence and enthusiasm, even if it's a weird edge case.
We'll see how things go, but I think Bannon and his ilk are going to double down and double down hard. We may see more Moores in 2018. It might not turn out to be such an edge case.
Remember that the early Tea Party crazy candidate losses didn't convince them to ease up or ease off…