What We Can Learn From Doug Jones's Victory
Doug Jones is the Democratic senator from Alabama. The Democratic senator in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 25 years – and the last one switched parties halfway through his second term. Jones’s win is a triumph for much more than just the Democratic Party. It’s a win for the women who have spoken up against harassment, mistreatment, and abuse at the hands of powerful men. It’s a win for good journalism. It’s a win for the many who have argued that Democrats need to play to their base instead of trying to peel off the angry white men who voted for Trump. And it’s a winning strategy going forward.
Just a year ago, 62 percent of Alabamians voted for Donald Trump; just over a third cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. The state is one of the deepest red in the nation, and that shines through in its politics. The most creative writers’ room in the country could not have dreamed up a more cartoonish Bible Belt candidate than Roy Moore: Moore insisted on installing a monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Judiciary Building, in violation of the constitutional principles he was sworn to uphold; he was often coarsely racist, sexist, and homophobic; it seemed he could barely go more than a few sentences without talking about abortion. He often donned a cowboy hat, and he even rode his Tennessee walking horse to the polls. Her name is Sassy.
The night before the election, Moore’s wife defended him (and herself) from accusations of anti-Semitism by proudly proclaiming that their lawyer is a Jew. At that same rally, an old military buddy of Moore’s told a rousing tale of a trip to a Vietnamese brothel full of sexually exploited children – his point was that Moore is such a virtuous guy he refused to pay for sex with kids and the two men left (unsaid but strongly implied is that refusing to partake in paid sex with children means that Moore probably did not prowl malls and courthouses looking for teenage girls to prey on, as has been reported). The audience loved it, and had a good chuckle at the part where Moore and the storyteller left a third friend at the brothel, ostensibly to pay to rape some children. Good fun.
And yet Moore almost won anyway, because for a shockingly large number of Alabama voters, an Evangelical Yosemite Sam accused of practically cruising mall parking lots in a windowless black van is still better than a Democrat. Doug Jones only squeaked by because women are brave, journalists did their jobs, black women saved our collective butts, and activists groups focused their efforts on turning out Democratic voters.
One thing should be obvious: Without the Washington Post article by Stephanie McCrummen, Beth Reinhard, and Alice Crites detailing allegations that Moore preyed on teenage girls, Roy Moore would today be the Republican senator-elect from Alabama. Without Leigh Corfman, Wendy Miller, Debbie Wesson Gibson, and Gloria Thacker Deason, the four women who said Moore made sexual advances on them when they were teenagers, there would have been no Post article (several other women came forward with similar accusations after the Post piece was published – Moore denied all the allegations). Without the many women who this year have spoken out about abuses at the hands of powerful men, would these women have spoken about Moore? Probably not – these are secrets they held onto for years, only talking now because they were finally convinced they would be believed. Would they have been believed if so many women, in ways large and small, had not said “me too” and made clear to too many oblivious men that harassment and assault are pervasive and ugly and damaging?
The many, many brave women who have raised their voices in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election – publicly against powerful men, more privately on Facebook, intimately just by telling a partner or child or loved one – are the ones who get much of the credit for this particular moment.
So do the voters who showed up, and the organizers who facilitated showing up in a state where African-American voters face systematic barriers to doing their civic duty and exercising a constitutional right. Ever since the 2016 presidential election, the Democratic Party has been divided on how best to move forward and win. The more populist wing of the party says we should abandon “identity politics” and instead focus on uniting the working class; to win, they say, we have to appeal to the white working-class voters who ushered Trump into the White House. Others argue that the Democratic base is a melting pot of African-Americans, Hispanics and other people of color, and women (black women especially, but also white women who are young, college-educated, and single), and that’s where we should aim our appeals and our outreach.
The latter model is what worked. In Alabama, turnout was way up among African-American voters, and they pushed Jones over the edge. This was not an accident. The NAACP and other organizations launched expansive and expertly executed get-out-the-vote efforts, in part to counterbalance the adverse effects of decades-long voter-suppression efforts in the state. Part of what energized voters to get to the polls was Trump’s presidency itself; many voters were likely additionally buoyed by the chorus of female voices that have emerged in Trump’s electoral wake.
All of these factors worked in concert to score a victory for Democrats.
Elections are never about just one thing, and wins this narrow always have a little bitter tainting the sweet – in Alabama, it’s that someone as odious as Moore nearly won, and that the Republican Party machine backed an accused child molester who was clearly unfit for office. This is not a moment for cockiness. But it is one for reflection and stocktaking. Hopefully, the Democratic Party has learned to run every race – to put up strong candidates even if they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell (sometimes, the Washington Post comes along and Hell freezes over). Hopefully, Democrats have learned to get their base to turn out, not just by firing up voters during election years, but by meeting their needs, making their lives better, and pushing back on laws that disenfranchise them.
And maybe, if we’re lucky, a critical mass of powerful men will finally realize that their actions have consequences and begin behaving accordingly.
Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. Follow her on Twitter.
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