It took until December 12 for the biggest lesson of 2017 to arrive. That was the date of the special Senate election in Alabama to replace former Senator Jeff Sessions, who had been appointed by Donald Trump as United States Attorney-General. The candidates were Doug Jones, a Democrat who had successfully prosecuted two men who [...]
It took until December 12 for the biggest lesson of 2017 to arrive. That was the date of the special Senate election in Alabama to replace former Senator Jeff Sessions, who had been appointed by Donald Trump as United States Attorney-General.
The candidates were Doug Jones, a Democrat who had successfully prosecuted two men who had killed four young black girls by bombing a church in Birmingham in 1963, and Judge Roy Moore, a Republican who had a history of homophobia and religious obsession, as well as having been charged with sexual crimes involving an under-aged girl.
With all of Moore's flaws the conventional wisdom was that he would easily win the election because Alabama is not only part of the Bible Belt but also the reddest Republican state in America. A Democrat had not been elected to the senate from that state in a quarter of a century.
At 7:00 PM on the night of the election Moore's campaign manager predicted the result would be in early and that his candidate would win by eight or nine points. At 10:00 PM it was too close to call, but major network analysts didn't hold out much hope for Jones, saying they didn't see where enough votes could come in to bring him victory.
Suddenly the tide turned drastically, and everything broke Jones' way. He won the election by a narrow margin, but a win is a win is a win, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.
Pundits made their post-game analysis, and they agreed that the turnout was the major factor in the Democratic win, not only the numbers who turned out but also the voter demographic.
In an off-year special election the prediction was that 25% of those eligible would vote. On December 12 40% of Alabama voters showed up at the polls. It was also thought that black voters would not come out to vote the way they did in 2008 when Barack Obama was a candidate. But the black turnout in this election matched the numbers set when a black man running for president was on the ballot.
It was great for liberals in Alabama and for the rest of the country, and now the Republicans have only a two-seat margin in the United States senate.
A wee bit too late, however, by approximately 13 months, to put Hillary Clinton in the White House instead of Donald Trump.
What happened in November 2016 was that too many black people didn't vote, and too many white liberals either didn't vote or voted for a third-party candidate who couldn't win. The votes were there for a Democratic victory, but the voters didn't turn out.
The lesson here is that it's not the 'flawed' candidate who's to blame. It's the flawed electorate. Sixty-two million Americans turned out to vote for the most flawed candidate in history, a candidate who did everything wrong. He insulted a war hero, a Gold Star mother, a handicapped journalist, referred to Mexicans as rapists, and was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women 'by the pussy.'
Despite all that his voters turned out. Trump said, 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.” He was right.
What this means is that in 2020 any Democratic candidate— Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Corey Booker, Andrew Cuomo, or one of a dozen others—can be elected if liberals stop their internal war between progressives and moderates, coalesce behind one candidate, and turn out to vote in November of that year. Democrats should divert some of the money used for TV ads to ensure that voting rights for black people in Southern states are not suppressed. That happened in North Carolina in 2016.
'It's the economy, stupid,' was replaced by 'It's the Supreme Court, stupid' (that was obviously ignored), but in the final analysis
'IT'S THE TURNOUT, STUPID.'