Doug Jones’s Gay Son Stares Down Homophobic Mike Pence

One of the ironies of the Alabama special election last month in Alabama is that not only does Alabama now have a Democrat in the U.S. Senate, but that new senator has an openly gay son, something Roy Moore attacked Doug Jones on repeatedly.  At his father's swearing in ceremony, Jones' son attended and stared down Mike Pence, a virulently homophobic individual who has done all in his power to harm LGBT citizens throughout his political career.   The Advocate looks at the confrontation:

In a triumphant turn of events last month, voters elected Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama over accused sexual predator and known homophobe Roy Moore. Shortly after the win, Jones’s son — Carson Jones — who at the time said he “couldn’t be prouder” of his dad, confirmed to The Advocate that he's gay. 

On Wednesday, Carson Jones stood side-by-side with his dad as his father took the Senate oath of office, administered by virulently homophobic VP Mike Pence.  Shortly after, Carson Jones, who goes by TheDapperZookeeperon his Instagram page — which includes celebratory photos of the day his father won the election, Pride photos, and a picture of him meeting Lance Bass at a gay bar — posted a photo at the oath-taking in which he appears to be staring pointedly at Pence. 

As for Pence's history of anti-LGBT actions, Towleroad has this:

Pence, as his record shows, is no friend to the LGBTQ community.

In 2000 during his first successful run for Congress, Pence said that he was in favor of sending money allocated to care for people with HIV/AIDS to organizations that provide conversion therapy.

From running a think-tank that published virulently anti-gay articles, to attempting to divert HIV/AIDS money to fund conversion therapy, to refusing to protect LGBT Hoosiers from discrimination, to legalizing anti-LGBT discrimination in Indiana, to cozying up to notorious homophobes, to supporting a ban on gay marriage, and decrying the ‘mainstreaming of homosexuality in the military’ after DADT was repealed, Pence’s record is among the worst records on LGBTQ issues of anyone who has ever occupied the office of the Vice President.

Will Democrats Do What it Takes Claim a New Majority?

An op-ed in the New York Times makes the case that if Democrats will up their ground game and spend more attention and money on getting out minority voters (and by extension, younger voters) who often fail to vote, they have an opportunity to become the new American majority.  The piece cites Doug Jones' victory in Alabama as a shining example.  But a similar phenomenon made the Democrat sweep in Virginia possible as well - the Northam campaign, in coordination with the Herring and Fairfax campaigns, invested a huge effort in the turn out the vote drill, especially with minority and younger voters.  Having a Northam staffer live with us for over 4 months, the husband and I witnessed first hand the intensity of the effort. It is a lesson that Tim Kaine and Virginia congressional candidates in 2018 need to take to heart and replicate.  The same goes for the rest of the country.  If Trump/Pence has done anything, it has shown the dangers that not voting can unleash on minority communities and those not favored by the white, racist, Christofascist base of today's Republican Party.  Yes, you need an on air ad campaign, but the old fashion approach remains crucial.  Here are column highlights:

The Alabama special election for the Senate affirms that the coalition that elected and re-elected an African-American as president of the United States remains a majority of the country’s population. By combining a large and inspired turnout of voters of color with the meaningful minority of whites who consistently vote progressive — even in a state like Alabama — Democrats can win across the country.

A majority of people who voted for Doug Jones in Alabama were black — 56 percent, in fact, according to the exit polls. Mr. Jones’s stunning election victory highlights the path to victory for Democrats. The question is whether they will be smart enough to follow it.
African-American voters were a decisive force in the election, showing up in huge numbers and casting nearly all their votes — 96 percent — for Mr. Jones. They made up a larger percentage of the electorate than they represent in the state as a whole (29 percent versus 27 percent). Overperformance by African-Americans — in an election decided by about 21,000 votes — amounted to 38,000 more Democratic votes than would have been cast had African-Americans been just 27 percent of the that side’s total.

The task should be easier in other states, considering Alabama’s history of supporting racial segregation. . . . . The composition of a progressive multiracial coalition — what I call the New American Majority — in the rest of the country, however, is much more promising.

[W]hat made the difference in Alabama were independent, under-the-radar, grass-roots, on-the-ground voter turnout efforts by black leaders and organizers in black neighborhoods across the state. . . . . Organizations such as BlackPAC blanketed the state with canvassers doing the old-fashioned work of picking people up and escorting them to the polls. These groups and leaders are the “hidden figures” of the Alabama election . . . .

Looking ahead to 2018, can Democrats progress from being lucky to being smart? Being smart means learning the lessons of Alabama and moving money in ways that will continue to chalk up wins. . . . . The outlook for 2018 is hopeful with the right plans. . . . . this formula for victory is more applicable in other states because most white voters outside of Alabama are not as conservative as those inside the state.

By emphasizing turnout in 2018 — especially of voters of color — Democrats can take control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and at least five statehouses. Republicans’ margin in the Senate has now slipped to just a two-seat advantage, and the Senate contests in Arizona, Nevada and Texas are all winnable if there is a robust turnout of voters of color. Texas may be considered as conservative as Alabama, but its actual demographics are much more favorable: Only 53 percent of Texas eligible voters are white (and a quarter of the whites are strong Democrats). Mr. Trump won Texas by 800,000 votes, but there were four million eligible, nonvoting people of color in 2016, three million Latinos alone.

In the 2018 races for governorships, six states could swing from red to blue with the right voter mobilization plan and the proper funding and support. Maryland and Illinois are decisively Democratic, for example, but have Republican governors because Democratic turnout has been abysmal in the off-year elections.

The demographics in other Southern and Southwestern states — Georgia, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona — have brought them within striking distance with a well-funded Sun Belt game plan.

Ultimately priorities are expressed through budgets, and the allocation of political dollars will show whether Democratic strategists have learned the right lessons from the Alabama upset. Which leaders will spend the millions of dollars to win in 2018?

If Democrats want to win, they will elevate and give broad budgetary authority to strategists and organizers with long histories and deep ties in the country’s communities of color. They sent Doug Jones to the United States Senate, and they can bring Democrats back to prominence and power in states and districts across the country.

Evangelical Christians: the Biggest Losers in Alabama Election

In the wake of yesterday's special election results in Alabama, the back biting, blame game, and back stabbing across various elements of the Republican Party is in full swing and will likely  intensify in the coming days.  While the Republican Party and Der Trumpenführer were the obvious losers, as a piece in Christianity Today makes the case (despite efforts to make apologies for evangelicals) that the biggest loser over all was evangelical Christianity, a segment of Christianity already viewed as repulsive, hate-filled and hypocrisy-filled by ever growing segments of American society.  As previously noted in previous posts, 36 percent of Millennials have walked away from Christianity/organized religion and the percentage of Millennials who see evangelical Christians unfavorably exceeds over 80%.  On top of this already bad situation, evangelical Christians' support of Roy Moore has further underscored that this segment of society is abhorrent and  hopefully will see its political influence plummet as decent, moral people walk away.  Here are article excerpts:

No matter the outcome of today’s special election in Alabama for a coveted US Senate seat, there is already one loser: Christian faith. When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.

[The election of] Doug Jones has only put an exclamation point on a problem that has been festering for a year and a half—ever since a core of strident conservative Christians began to cheer for Donald Trump without qualification and a chorus of other believers decried that support as immoral. The Christian leaders who have excused, ignored, or justified his unscrupulous behavior and his indecent rhetoric have only given credence to their critics who accuse them of hypocrisy.

From moderate and liberal brothers and sisters, conservatives have received swift and decisive condemnation.

This is not to excuse some statements by conservative leaders that cannot be interpreted in any other way than as a slur against gays, Muslims, Mexicans, and others. Some conservatives are fearful beyond reason. Some conservatives clearly worship political power as much as they do Jesus Christ. But too often, we mistake the inarticulate groanings of certain foolish conservative leaders for the actual beliefs and behavior of the mass of evangelicals who vote for Donald Trump or Roy Moore. Our concern here is with a cabal of noisy conservatives, whom the press has apparently (and unjustly) appointed as spokesmen for all conservatives. This group pretends that the choice for someone like Moore represents unalloyed godliness and refuses to unmistakably criticize immorality in other leaders they admire. To justify or ignore the moral failings of a politician because he champions your favored policies—well, that is to step onto the path of self-deception and hypocrisy, which according to Jesus, leads to no less place than hell (Matt. 23:15). As suggested above, some of the critiques by the Left and center (matched by a fair amount of critiques by leading conservatives, by the way), are hard to argue with. Hypocrisy is again the most salient charge.

As recently as 2011, PRRI found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” But by late 2016, when Donald Trump was running for president, that number had risen sharply to 72 percent—the biggest shift of any US religious group.

The logic is then inexorable: “Where does that leave evangelicals? It leaves them with a choice. Do they sacrifice a little bit of that ethical guideline they’ve used in the past in exchange for what they believe is saving the culture?”

Apparently yes. This is precisely why, when serious and substantial allegations of sexual abuse of minors were made against Roy Moore, many doubled down on their support for him.

[M]any conservative Christians simply don’t believe the many news accounts and chalk it up to a secular, liberal, Democratic conspiracy against Moore. Others acknowledge that while the charges may be true, they are minor in nature or happened so long ago they don’t matter today. Some are simply Machiavellian, saying they are not electing Mother Teresa but a man who can look out for the interests of conservative Christians.

The problem with many Christian conservatives is this: They believe they can help the country become godly again by electing people whose godliness is seriously questioned by the very people they want to influence.

They have forgotten that old evangelical idea (and, before that, a Jewish idea) of putting a “hedge around the law.” That refers to behavior that is not wrong in itself but is practiced so as to not give even a hint of wrongdoing.

When combative conservative Christians refuse to suffer patiently in the public square, retaliate when insults are hurled at them, and do not refrain from the appearance of evil, they sabotage not only their political cause but the cause they care about the most: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What events of the last year and a half have shown once again is that when Christians immerse themselves in politics as Christians, for what they determine are Christian causes, touting their version of biblical morality in the public square—they will sooner or later (and often sooner) begin to compromise the very principles they champion and do so to such a degree that it blemishes the very faith they are most anxious to promote.

And one of the biggest blemishes—for it is an open refutation of Jesus’ prayer that we be one—is when we start divorcing one another over politics. . . . . No wonder few believe much of anything we say anymore.

One can only hope that more and more Americans will realize that evangelical Christians today are the antithesis of what it means to be a true, believing Christian.  Meanwhile, as older evangelicals die off and younger generations walk away in disgust over Christian lies, hypocrisy and homophobia, if America is lucky, the influence of evangelicals will continue to go down the toilet figuratively and literally.   

Alabama and the Triumph of Sanity and Decency

Alabama rejected immorality and extremism

There were many losers in yesterday special election in Alabama in addition to the foul and delusional Roy Moore - who has refused to concede despite a roughly 20,000 vote deficit - that range from Der  Trumpenführer,  who endorsed a fellow sexual predator, Steve Bannon, the RNC , and GOP primary voters who backed a man that a majority of voters found repulsive.   The latter group here in Virginia, comprised on neo-Confederates, white supremacists and religious extremists, will likely nominate a challenger to Tim Kaine who will, like Moore, be far outside the mainstream and push yet more moderate Republicans to flee the GOP and vote for a Democrat.  Hopefully, the larger message is that the days of Donald Trump and his foul brand of Republicanism is moribund.  A column in the New York Times looks at what yesterday's vote might signify.  Here are excerpts:

Good riddance to Roy Moore and the horse he rode in on.  If I sound jubilant, you bet I am. And if I’m being snarky, well, Moore of all people warrants it.

In short order I’ll talk about the political implications of his surprising, jolting defeat by Doug Jones in Alabama, the first time in more than a quarter century that voters in this deep-red state elected a Democrat to the United States Senate.

But those can’t be divorced from the soaring emotions of his win. What it does for the spirits of people petrified by his country’s trajectory can’t be overstated.

For more than a year now, virtually all Democrats, many independents and even a significant share of Republicans have looked at President Donald Trump’s conduct and governing priorities and felt that they were suddenly in a foreign land. I count myself among this stunned and despairing group.

We saw decency in retreat. We saw common sense in decline. We saw a clique of unabashed plutocrats, Trump foremost among them, brazenly treating the federal government as a branding opportunity or a trough at which they could gorge. We saw a potent strain of authoritarianism jousting with the rule of law.

And we saw many Americans, including most Republican leaders, either endorsing or quietly putting up with this, to a point where we wondered if some corner had been turned forever.

That’s still an open question. But Alabamians provided a partial answer on Tuesday, showing that there are limits to what voters will tolerate, in terms of the lies they’ll believe, the vices they’ll ignore and the distance they’ll stray from civilized norms.

Moore, an accused child molester who sugarcoated slavery and seemed intent on some sort of extreme Christian theocracy, was simply too far.

With his defeat comes relief, yes, but also a desperately needed encouragement.

Trump openly supported Moore, urging the residents of a state that he won by about 30 points in November 2016 to reward him anew and smile again on the G.O.P. Their refusal to do so is vivid proof of the president’s vulnerability, no matter Moore’s flaws. If Trump can be foiled here, he can be foiled elsewhere.

[A]s Trump completes a crazily turbulent first year in office, Democrats are on a streak — or certainly feel that way. Last month, the party’s candidate handily won the governor’s race in Virginia, where heavy Democratic turnout translated into huge gains for Democrats in the state legislature.

Alabama adds to that, and it’s a different story altogether, a state in which the Republican candidate in recent gubernatorial and Senate elections has typically prevailed by a whopping double-digit margin similar to the one that Trump achieved.

Alabama amplifies Democrats’ sense of momentum going into the 2018 midterms, which, on the evidence of what happened Tuesday, could be a blood bath for Republicans.

Historical patterns already boded ill for the G.O.P.; the Alabama results are a brutal harbinger on top of that. I happened to speak midday Tuesday with one of the smartest Republican strategists I know, and he predicted a Republican comeuppance in 2018 so profound that it could alter the party forever or even jeopardize its survival.

And this was before Moore’s defeat, which the strategist did not feel comfortable wagering on. Think about that.  And about this: Trump, a man amply unbalanced, is being thrown further off stride and out of whack.

Democrats are the bigger victors. Scratch that: Americans are. If Alabama isn’t beyond redemption, then the country isn’t, either. To use a word that Moore would appreciate: hallelujah.

Doug Jones Wins Alabama U.S. Senate Seat

First snow in the Deep South last week and now a Democrat winning the Alabama U.S. Senate in a special election.  True, Roy Moore was always a flawed candidate known for racist and religious extremism plus more recently credible allegations of sexual predatory behavior towards teenage girls.  But both Der  Trumpenführer and Steve Bannon threw their weight behind Moore as did the RNC after a brief hiatus.  Interestingly, eleven (11) counties that had voted for Donald Trump swung to the Democrat candidate in this election. Already Mitch McConnell is throwing blame at Bannon and less directly Donald Trump.   Following the GOP disaster in Virginia last month, I suspect that a number of Congressional Republicans are seeking a clean pair of underwear and dreading November, 2018.  Yet, in many ways they have brought the GOP low but throwing decency, the rue of law, and norms on the trash heap.   I can only hope this victory further energizes Democrats, progressives, and anti-Trump/Pence forces across America.  As a former Alabamian myself, I am also thrilled that a majority of voters in Alabama decided to put decency, concern for fellow citizens and morality ahead of partisan habit.  Tonight the vote reflected the Alabama that I experienced years ago where the majority were decent people. I am also happy for the Alabama business community which will hopefully be boosted in its efforts to remake Alabama.  The Washington Post looks at this wonderful upset victory.  Here are highlights:

Democrat Doug Jones has won the special election to fill a Senate seat in Alabama, according to exit polls and returns – a shocking upset in a solidly Republican state, in which massive turnout among African American voters helped defeat a candidate enthusiastically backed by President Trump.

The Associated Press called the race at 10:23 p.m. Eastern time.  Jones becomes the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama since 1992. 

Jones’s victory followed a pattern set earlier this year in Virginia’s gubernatorial election: a wave of enthusiasm among the Democratic party’s traditional base, which was aided by a swing from Republicans to Democrats among well-educated suburban voters.

Jones, 63, is a former U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham Baptist church, which killed four girls. The bombers were not tried until the 1990s.

Jones’s opponent, Republican Roy Moore, is a former state chief justice who believes that “God’s law” trumps the U.S. Constitution. [T]he night’s early returns showed Moore ahead, as mainly rural votes came in. But he [Jones] surged ahead after 10 p.m. Eastern, as large cities like Mobile, Montgomery and Birmingham reported huge increases in turnout and large margins for the Democrat. Overall, news reports indicated that statewide turnout had smashed expectations, roughly doubling what officials had predicted. Jones’ victory will reshape the calculus of the Senate, where Republicans will see their thin majority shrink from two votes to one. While Republicans are likely to pass a huge tax-reform push before Jones is officially seated, the rest of the GOP’s agenda may now plunge into jeopardy. The coalition that backed Jones was sketched out in early exit polls. They indicated that black turnout might be slightly higher than the levels in 2012 and 2008, when Barack Obama was on the ballot. African Americans made up 28 percent of the electorate in 2008, and 29 percent in 2012. In this election, they make up about 3 in 10 Alabama voters so far on Election Day according to preliminary exit polls. During the campaign, Jones sold himself as a centrist who would work with Republicans – and as a politician who would not embarrass Alabama or drive away business. He took advantage of a scandal that began with a report in The Washington Post: several women said that Moore had pursued romantic relationships with them decades before, when he was in his 30s and they were in their teens. Jones also encouraged voters to put “decency” ahead of party loyalty and urged them to consider how Alabama will be viewed by business leaders as a result of the election.

In the longer term, Jones win may signal the limits of President Trump’s political pull – and the drawbacks of remaking the GOP in his image. Trump had joined enthusiastically. He become one of Moore’s most fervent defender in recent days, tweeting about him repeatedly and recording a robocall to drive out the vote. “Roy Moore will always vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!” Trump tweeted on election day. ““This is the first time I’ve voted for a Democrat,” said Henry Waller, 24, who works in logistics for a granite company, said at a polling place in Mountain Brook, Ala. “I’m a Christian, and I think Moore represents the absolute worst way to put Christianity into politics.”

Roy Moore - A Referendum on Alabama's Identity

Alabama Capitol

Years ago my first job out of law school took me to Mobile, Alabama, where I lived and worked for four (4) years.  I found the people to be conservative, but gracious and nowhere deserving of the horrible reputation that Alabama had in much of the rest of the country (when visiting my former wife's family in New York City, it was always interesting to see people's reactions when we said we lived in Alabama). In the legal realm, the state had updated its rules of civil procedure and was actually much more modern than Virginia's to this day very outdated rules governing court actions.   Mobile, with its Catholic majority population was very different from the Baptist dominated northern part of the state.   Most importantly, the Christofascists had not yet hijacked the Alabama Republican Party.  But this latter event came to pass and now, Alabama has become a place I barely recognize, all thanks to the evangelicals/Christofascists.  Graciousness has given way to extremism in all too many contexts and, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the state is posed to engage in a referendum on its identity and how it will be perceived by decent, moral people across the country and world.  The referendum centers on Roy Moore, a foul person in my view and a disgrace to Alabama.  Here are article highlights:

For many Alabama voters, unaccustomed to a competitive election and the national attention that has come with it, the bitter showdown between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones has become something more personal than a race to fill an open Senate seat. It is now a referendum on the state’s identity.

Supporters of Jones say with concern that a win Tuesday by the firebrand Moore would derail the state’s efforts to escape its painful history and rebrand as a forward-thinking place welcoming to Fortune 500 companies and a highly educated workforce. And they express a nagging feeling that a Moore victory would be a deflating sign that Alabama remains beholden to its past.

“You travel across the country and you say ‘Alabama,’ and something goes right across people’s eyes every time,” said retired actor Jonathan Fuller, a 61-year-old Democrat, as he shopped at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in the suburbs south of Birmingham. “I don’t want to apologize anymore for where I’m from because there is this pocket of stubbornness in my state.”

Supporters of Moore, meanwhile, see his candidacy as a conduit for their rejection of the national media and political elites who they believe unfairly caricature their home state as a cultural backwater. They shrug off the notion that sexual misconduct allegations against Moore — allegations that some see as a fabrication by outsiders — should make a difference. . . . He said people outside of Alabama “have no right to judge us.”

The vivid contrast between the two candidates — Moore, 70, with his apocalyptic warnings about Muslims and gay rights, against Jones, a low-key 63-year-old lawyer best known for prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members who planned the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham — has put in sharp relief the idea that the results could speak volumes about Alabama to the rest of the country — and to itself.

One pivotal group on Tuesday will be voters who feel caught between these two visions and must pick a side, especially ­Republican-leaning voters who feel pulled between their traditional values and a desire to turn the page on the uglier parts of Alabama’s past.

“We’ve got a lot of good here, a lot of people who died for equal rights. And we’ve got a lot of people who are stuck in 1930, and that’s not going to change,” Phillip Hutchins, a 67-year-old Democrat and retired aircraft worker, said last week outside a grocery store in Titusville, a heavily black neighborhood in Birmingham.

Business-minded white Republicans — a bloc that sees itself as modern and puts an emphasis on education, commerce and tradition — have been uneasy about Moore. They have recoiled, too, at the cascade of controversies that have gripped the state this year, making the current race a culmination of various discomforts rather than a sudden drama.

The competition with other states for corporate investment is fierce, and state business executives have watched closely what happened in North Carolina after its ban on gender-neutral bathrooms.  Jones has courted the business establishment, many of them Republicans, on both moral and economic grounds, urging them to abandon their partisan instincts to protect the state’s economy and reputation.

But Jones, who supports abortion rights and whose campaign headquarters has a Planned Parenthood poster on its wall, has struggled to win over Republicans such as JoAnn Turner, a 71-year-old nurse who lives in Vestavia Hills, a mostly white Birmingham suburb.

“I’ve been in Alabama for 42 years, and I’m so tired of the publicity being so bad. It’s not who we are, and it’s embarrassing,” Turner said, . . . “All that said,” Turner added, “I can’t vote for Roy Moore, and I can’t vote for Doug Jones. . . . . Turner plans to write in Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.). . . .

[V]eteran Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) have remained wary of the former judge who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court — and have called the allegations against him credible and disturbing.  Shelby has opted to cast a write-in vote, telling The Washington Post that he is anxious about how a Moore victory would affect the corporate world’s impressions of Alabama. 

Outside of Birmingham and in rural towns to the east — home to massive evangelical churches and family-owned barbecue restaurants that puff black smoke out of chimneys — Moore’s support is heartier, particularly in his home town of Gadsden on the Coosa River. . . . Otis Dupree, a 53-year-old retired chicken-plant worker who works part time at the Burger King in Gadsden, said he is “disgusted” with the city’s embrace of Moore.

More than 100 miles southwest on the state’s flagship campus — the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa — hundreds of students in athletic clothing and T-shirts stream out of dorm buildings and sorority mansions across the street from the school’s beloved Bryant-Denny Stadium.

As with the men and women in Vestavia Hills, many of them are financially stable and white — and Republican in a cultural sense as much as ideologically. They see themselves as Alabama’s future and are eager to define it.  Roy Moore isn’t part of that plan, according to Ella Jernigan, a 19-year-old Republican student who’s studying marketing. . . .  I can’t stand us getting pinned now as rednecks or uneducated.”  She added, “Every time you think we’re going forward, something like Roy Moore sets us back.”

George Will: Roy Moore and His Evangelical Supporters Are an Embarrassment

Elect Doug Jones on December 12, 2017

Like many conservative columnists, George Will largely lost favor with me when he became largely an apologist for failed Republican Party policies and a cheerleader for reprehensible Republicans and Christian extremists.  It took Donald Trump, and now Roy Moore, to seemingly finally wake Will up to the ugliness he has been helping to support.  I guess, it's better to wake up late to reality as opposed to never like so many in the Republican Party base, but so much damage could have been avoided had people like George Will had ceased to be enablers years ago.   In his latest column, Will goes after Roy Moore and his evangelical Christian supporters and makes the case why Democrat Doug Jones should win the Alabama special election next month.  Here are column highlights:

But for the bomb, the four would be in their 60s, probably grandmothers. Three were 14 and one was 11 in 1963 when the blast killed them in the 16th Street Baptist Church, which is four blocks from the law office of Doug Jones, who then was 9.

He was born in May 1954, 13 days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. . . . . As a second-year law student, Jones cut classes to attend the 1977 trial of one of the church bombers, Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss. In 2001 and 2002, as U.S. attorney, Jones successfully prosecuted two other bombers. Was there resentment about this protracted pursuit of justice? No, he says as he nurses with tea a voice raspy from campaigning, because after 9/11 intervened, punishing domestic terrorism was not controversial.

Moore campaigns almost entirely on social issues — National Football League protests, the transgender menace — and the wild liberalism of Jones, a law-and-order prosecutor and deer and turkey hunter who says he has “a safe full of guns.” Jones’s grandfathers were members of the mineworkers’ and steelworkers’ unions. . . .

Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be especially grotesque specimens of the vanity — vanity about virtue — that is curdling politics. Another public benefit from the Moore spectacle is the embarrassment of national Republicans. Their party having made the star of the “Access Hollywood” tape president, they now are horrified that Moore might become 1 percent of the Senate. Actually, this scofflaw, twice removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court, once for disobeying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is a suitable sidekick for the president who pardoned Joe Arpaio, Arizona’s criminal former sheriff. Even after Donald Trump conceded that Barack Obama was born in the United States, Moore continued rejecting such squishiness.

It has been 21 years since a Democratic Senate candidate won even 40 percent of Alabama’s vote. It has, however, been even longer — not since the George Wallace era — that the state’s identity has been hostage to a politician who assumes that Alabamians are eager to live down to hostile caricatures of them.

Nothing about Moore’s political, financial or glandular history will shake his base, unless the credible accusations of serial pursuit of underage girls are suddenly overshadowed by something his voters consider serious, such as taking sides in the Alabama-Auburn game. Jones’s hopes rest with traditional white Democrats (scarce), Republicans capable of chagrin (scarcer) and African Americans. They are 27 percent of this state in which “civil rights tourism” (the 16th Street church, Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery church, and more) is economically important.

This month, Virginia’s African Americans turned out for Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, a Democrat who, like Jones, invited voters to take a walk on the mild side. Approximately a quarter of Alabamians live in the metropolitan area of Birmingham, which has had an African American mayor since 1979.

Next month’s election will occur during many distractions, midway between Thanksgiving and Christmas and, more important, 10 days after Armageddon — the SEC championship game. Perhaps an Alabama victory would make the state hanker for a senator worthy of its football team. If so: Roll Tide.