This article contains news with liberal commentary.
It’s practically an article of faith among Democrats their party will lose the seat occupied by Doug Jones, reducing their haul of Senate seats this year by one. What polling exists tends to reinforce that belief. But Jones, despite representing deep-red Alabama, thinks he can win. Why? It’s complicated. But isn’t everything?
Jones made a name for himself as a federal prosecutor by convicting two of the Ku Klux Klan perpetrators of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. In 2017, he eked out a narrow win in a special election for the Senate seat foolishly vacated by now-unemployed Jeff Sessions by having the great good luck of running against a crazy wingnut pedophile. Alabama voters had no problem with the crazy wingnut part, but are sentimental about children.
No such luck this time. His 2020 opponent is a popular former Auburn head football coach who goes to church every Sunday, and other than getting sued for fraud, is a fine upstanding Christian and southern gentleman, and wasn’t in the car when his wife squashed an 87-year-old man.
Returning to the only candidate in the race whose wife hasn’t killed any helpless elderly people, in an interview with Vox (read it here), Jones first talked about his post-reelection legislative priorities. “I still believe our first priority is going to be to get out of this health care, economic, and racial inequality crisis that we find ourself in,” he said. Actually, that’s three priorities, all of them gigantic, and at least two of them gigantically contentious. He also said, “Voting rights is going to be a very important part of a Biden-Harris administration.” That’s one of my own top priorities (see my op-ed here).
When the Vox interviewer pointed out that “many people in both parties assume Alabama is simply too Trump-friendly and too Republican for you to win again,” and asked, “Is there something you know that they don’t?,” he replied, “Yeah, there’s a lot that I know that they don’t.” This seems reasonable, as U.S. Senators generally know the political terrain of their home turf pretty well. He continued, “Alabamians have always had an independent streak.” He does, too. “Sometimes that means I am not voting with a majority of the Democrats; sometimes it means I am. It just really is going to depend on the issues.”
He sees a Democratic revival coming in the South “because of changing demographics” and because the Democrats are “the party that looks out for the little guy” on “kitchen table issues.” He cited more businesses coming to the South, bringing people from all over the country, more “college-educated folk,” and a younger generation who “went to school with people of a different race … and had friends who were gay.”
Jones believes Trump will carry Alabama again, although not by as much (which could help Jones), because of “Trump fatigue.” He says voters there “wish he would follow the science and listen to health care professionals, instead of insisting that he knows everything about everything.”
Jones also talks extensively about race relations and police reform in the interview.
Voting out wingnuts one nut at a time 2020.
Is there a future ambassador in Alabama? Get in good with the Biden-Harris administration, unless you really want to go to Cape Verde.