That unfamiliar sensation you experienced this morning? It’s the feeling you get when, at long last, you wake up to some good political news from America. For progressives around the world who would prefer to admire rather than to revile the United States, the last 13 months have brought cause only for despair. But the defeat of Roy Moore — who believes homosexuality should be illegal and that America was at its best in the age of slavery — is a moment to lift the spirits.
That a man of such vileness, also accused of being a child molester, should lose to a Democrat in deeply conservative, unbreakably Republican Alabama is more heartening still. It represents a grievous blow to President Donald Trump , who endorsed Moore and campaigned for him, revealing the limits to the president’s supposed electoral magnetism.
It also throws another obstacle in the path of Trump’s legislative agenda, which was struggling already but which will now have one fewer vote in the senate. More unsettling still for Trump, it suggests that accusations of past sexually predatory behaviour cannot just be dismissed with the kind of blanket denial deployed by both him and Moore . Had Moore won, Trump would have held that to be proof that voters don’t care about such things. He may try to argue that anyway, but it will be harder.
Moore’s defeat also offers a glimmer of hope for coming electoral contests: the congressional elections in November 2018 and even the presidential race of 2020. For it shows that when Democratic constituencies are motivated — and African-Americans turned out in big numbers in Alabama — Republicans can be beaten even in their most reliable heartlands.
It is now conceivable that Democrats could retake the House of Representatives next autumn, despite the structural disadvantage inflicted by gerrymandering, which means Democrats have to beat Republicans in the popular vote by seven or eight percentage points just to secure a majority of a single seat. Retaking the senate will be an uphill climb, but it too becomes imaginable. If the Republicans were to lose the House, then the impeachment of Donald Trump would be not just possible but probable.
As you can see, it’s easy to get carried away. But, without wishing to spoil the party, there are reasons to be cautious too.
The first is that Moore came very close to winning, taking 48.4 per cent of the vote. That’s despite allegations of paedophilia. It suggests that in the absence of those claims, he would now be on his way to the US Senate. His espousal of theocratic and homophobic views would not, on its own, have been enough to keep him out. That is a troubling thought when contemplating future contests elsewhere.
Look closely at the breakdown of votes. Moore retained the backing of 91 per cent of Republicans who turned out. Those loyalists were not sufficiently repelled to switch parties. More astonishing, 63 per cent of white women and 72 per cent of white men in Alabama voted for Moore, despite everything. Had it been up to the state’s white voters, Moore would be a US senator today.
Put another way, it’s only thanks to the solid and energised support of Alabama’s black voters that the US avoided what would have been a moment of global shame. That it avoided that fate so narrowly should prompt as much reflection as celebration.
Still, for now, a sigh of relief is in order. Despite Trump’s constant race-baiting on Twitter; despite the polluting of the country’s electoral process by an opaque combination of foreign and corporate players, assisted by tech companies that allow lies to spread like a contagious disease; despite the flight from fact and a partisan media that seeks to deny even basic, demonstrable truth; despite all that, American democracy did the right thing. Even in a state as conservative as Alabama — which backed the segregationist George Wallace for president in 1968, and which elected Republican Jeff Sessions with 97 per cent of the vote in 2014 — there was a line they would not cross.
The forces of reaction, xenophobia and hate have dominated the US for more than a year. The victory of Doug Jones, coupled with some notable successes in Virginia last month, suggests that the other America — the one so many around the world admire — still lives. And that is a cause for hope.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist.
