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.

The GOP Should Be Scared by Virginia

Why did the Republican Party lose so badly in Virginia yesterday?  That is a question that pundits will be bickering about for days and weeks.   But to me, the GOP loss comes down to several factors, not the least of which is the reality in the age of Der Trumpenführer is that it is becoming increasingly impossible for decent, moral people to remain Republicans.  Both in the Virginia campaign and nationally, all the Republican Party has to offer is increasingly overt racism/white nationalism, the coddling of Christian extremists, and taking from the poor and middle class to give to the wealthy.  The entire GOP platform has become the antithesis of the Gospel's social message and outside of rural and ostensibly more religious areas, people are finding the GOP's message repulsive.  Ed Gillespie tried the tax cut promise which would have bankrupted Virginia in the style of what Sam Brownback did in Kansas.  Urban Virginia voters - who shoulder the bulk of the tax burden and basically support rural areas - said "No" resoundingly.   With Danica Roem defeating Bob Marshall, the GOP's use of god, guns and gays to mobilize voters is in its death throes in Virginia.   The other notable thing about the election is the degree of dishonesty in the GOP candidates. Gillespie, John Adams, and Jill Vogel (and many of the GOP House of Delegates candidates as well) lied with abandon and at times shockingly so. Rather than garner them votes (outside of white supremacists and evangelical Christians) the open and blatant lies disgusted far larger numbers of voters.  A column in the New York Times picks up on some of this and lays out why the GOP should be very worried after their playbook went down in flames.  Here are excerpts:

Although at times over the last week it seemed that Democrats were doing their damnedest to lose the Virginia gubernatorial race, they failed miserably in that endeavor, which is to say that they succeeded emphatically at the polls. Ralph Northam will be the state’s next governor.

That’s a gigantic relief, because a Northam defeat would have prompted a Democratic meltdown — and rightly so. In statewide races, Virginia is increasingly blue: Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump there by five points a year ago. And Trump’s ceaseless assault on propriety, decency and ethical, responsible government is supposedly firing up liberals as never before. Virginia on Tuesday was the place to demonstrate that.

The demonstration was impressive. Not only did Northam beat his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie, by about nine points . . . but Democrats also performed strongly in other Virginia races. So strongly, in fact, that one Democrat, Danica Roem, easily unseated a longtime Republican incumbent in the House of Delegates and will become the nation’s only openly transgender state representative. The history that she made flies squarely in the face of the bigotry and divisiveness that Trump sows.

Just when we needed a sign that his America is not all of America, Virginia came to the rescue and gave us a vivid one. And I guarantee you that the Republicans up for re-election in 2018 saw it, shuddered and will spend the next weeks and months trying to figure out just how much trouble their party is in and precisely how to repair it. . . . . the returns in Virginia suggested that Trump antipathy is indeed real and that it is definitely animating.

Does it mean that Democrats can wrest one chamber of Congress from Republican control in 2018? Impossible to say. . . . But there are reasons for Republicans to be very afraid.  One is that Northam outperformed Clinton without being a particularly energetic, forceful candidate. . . . . He prevailed, handily.

Republicans should also worry that they’ve oversold themselves on the moderate-progressive divide in the Democratic Party and how severely Democrats would be hobbled by it.

Late Tuesday night, as the final votes were still being counted, Democrats were poised to pick up at least 13 seats, and taking control of the House was not out of the question.

In rooting for a Gillespie victory, the G.O.P. was looking for something larger: an assurance that a Republican in a swing state or swing district could find the right recipe for energizing Trump supporters without alienating Trump skeptics.  Gillespie’s answer was . . . . he parroted the president’s tough talk about criminals and immigrants and denounced professional football players who didn’t stand for the national anthem.

Beyond the returns, this was a governor’s race that made the skin crawl, which is to say that it was a sufficiently accurate mirror and microcosm of American political culture in the Age of Trump. . . . . Northam didn’t sell out his principles nearly as thoroughly as Gillespie did, and Democrats didn’t sink to Republicans’ level. In fact one of the most audacious tricks that Republicans sought to pull off was ginning up as much outrage over a loathsome Latino Victory Fund ad that ran on television just a handful of times — it showed a truck with a Confederate flag hunting down children of color — as there was over viciously negative commercials of Gillespie’s that blanketed the airwaves. These attacks essentially branded Northam, a mild-mannered pediatrician who served in the Army, as some unhinged leftie eager to give guns to pedophiles.

Gillespie’s campaign “has not been just a dog whistle to the intolerant, racially resentful parts of the Republican base; it’s been a mating call,” wrote The Washington Post in a blistering — and wholly warranted — editorial . . . 

Before this race, Gillespie was as establishment as an establishment Republican could be . . . Until the last few months, when he utterly transformed. The impression he left on voters was an ugly one, and he and the G.O.P. have nothing to show for it. That should scare Republicans most of all.

France Avoids Making America's Mistake

French president-elect Emmanuel Macron

With most of the votes counted, right wing Neo-fascist French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has gone down to a nearly 2 to 1 defeat to centrist Emmanuel Macron who will be the youngest French leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.  Le Pen tried to excite the same emotions of hate and resentment that took Trump to the White House but French voters seemingly saw the dangerous the toxic brew Le Pen was peddling - in sharp contrast to aggrieved white voters in America, many of who will lose their health insurance coverage if the current hideous of Trumpcare were to pass. Hopefully, Trump's victory and the aftermath here in America proved cautionary to French voters and will do the same in Germany when it holds elections in September, 2017.  One can only hope that Macron can reinvigorate the French economy and help unify the European Union after the UK's foolish exit vote.  The Washington Post looks at the election results.  Here are highlights: 

The anti-E. U. French leader Marine Le Pen’s larger-than-expected defeat Sunday in her nation’s presidential election was a crushing reality check for the far-right forces who seek to overthrow Europe: Despite the victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, they are likely to be shut out of power for years.

Given one choice after another since Trump’s U.S. presidential victory, Western European voters have delivered mainstream candidates to office despite a post-November sense that an anti-immigrant populist wave was washing over the Western world. Far-right candidates in Austria, the Netherlands and France have faltered. The euroskeptic far-right party in Germany has collapsed in recent polls ahead of September elections. And an unforgiving election calendar now offers few routes into power for years.

The thwarted momentum comes despite clear evidence that views that would have been taboo to express just a few years ago are no longer too toxic to exclude politicians from coming a breath away from leadership. When Le Pen’s father reached a presidential runoff in 2002, his opponent refused even to debate with him, so unacceptable to the mainstream were his views. This time, many French citizens sat out the election altogether because they detested both Le Pen and Macron — even though the pro-European centrist Macron offered a vastly different platform from his opponent. Le Pen’s result, just above 34 percent with most of the vote counted, was still a historic high for her party.

French people have chosen the continuity candidate,” a visibly disappointed Le Pen said in a brief concession address. She said she would seek to rename her National Front party, a measure of the extent to which her defeat rattled supporterswho just weeks ago harbored hopes of capturing the Elysee Palace.  Instead, Le Pen’s numbers sank in the two weeks since she placed second in the first round of the French elections.

[T]he failure of the far-right to seize office comes in stark contrast to expectations in November that Trump’s ascendance in the United States would unleash a global wave of populist politicians. Le Pen was one of the first leaders around the world to congratulate Trump the night of his victory. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders exulted the day after. And Trump advisers and top European far-right leaders conferred in the weeks after the U.S. election.

The subsequent elections have shown a clear trend in Western Europe: Voters are sick of the mainstream and fed up with their leaders. But they are still not ready to hand power to the far-right. The chaotic first months of the Trump presidency may actually have hurt Europe’s populists rather than helping them.

European leaders rushed to turn the page on a grim year for the bloc, embracing Macron’s victory as the first step in the rejuvenation of an embattled alliance against forces that would tear it apart. Many mainstream leaders feared political Armageddon if Le Pen had won. In Brussels, the seat of the E.U., cheers could be heard in the streets the moment the exit polls were released Sunday evening, as though a favorite soccer team clinched a match.

In Germany, meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany has collapsed in opinion polls in recent months following post-Trump heights. The party presided over a smaller but still telling defeat on Sunday, bringing up the rear in Sunday’s vote in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with projections showing it winning less than 6 percent of vote.

Macron hopes to soften Germany’s exacting insistence on fiscal austerity as he imposes sweeping pro-business reforms inside his own country. If he succeeds, he may help disarm anti-E. U. voices across the continent. But if he fails to jump-start France’s economy — and Europe’s — he will fuel questions about whether the European Union is helping or hurting its citizens’ lives. 

I wish Macron lots of luck and success.  The far right needs to crawl back under the rocks from whence it emerged.