Enjoy the day...and keep fighting

Don’t we all feel better this morning?

This Alabama election took on a meaning beyond itself. So important on so many levels:

• Keeping a child molester out of office
• Keeping out of office a guy who puts the Good Book ahead of  Constitutional law
• Keeping out of office a man whose wife proclaimed – particularly for the media to hear I guess so she could really make her point – that they have  a JEW (emphasis not added) lawyer, proving in her mind that she isn’t a bigot. I’m surprised she didn’t say also that he handles their money really well too.
  

• Black voters, especially black female voters, are getting credit, finally, for the difference they can make in an election. Look for leaders of the black community to demand more for their support of Democrats and, maybe finally, get it.
  
• It showed that Alabama overcame the weight of nearly always going Republican to rising up and electing a Democrat for the first time since the state’s other senator, Dick Shelby, though he switched parties a couple years later. And, to his credit, he chose to go on national television the Sunday before this election to say he couldn’t vote for Moore and cast his ballot for a write-in.
• While Sen. McConnell did the right thing by saying he wanted no part of Roy Moore, he also complicated his life because he has one fewer Republican vote than he had and the “new” Senate means that one Republican senator can extract much for his or her vote.
• We don’t have to watch the Republicans in the Senate contort themselves on ways to keep Moore out of the Senate despite voters electing him.
• The voters gave President Trump and his “chief strategist,” Steve Bannon, their comeuppance. Finally.

Bannon can point fingers at McConnell, Trump can point a finger at the write-in vote that he says cost the Republicans a victory. But those on the other side can point to the fact that the RNC pulled its money from Moore a few weeks ago only to be ordered to reverse course by Trump who had a foot on the Moore train since the beginning and both feet the last couple of weeks.

Trump lost in the state twice, backing incumbent Luther Strange in the primary and losing to Moore and then saddling up with Moore for the election and losing again.  It will be hard to defend Trump or the RNC when the Democrats hang Roy Moore around their necks for at least the next year.

And, maybe the #metoo bloc can gain more momentum to say that gender and sexual abuse of women’s day has come.

With all the analysis we have read and will read I think the best part of yesterday’s election was it gives those on the anti-Trump train hope that the country has not gone off the deep end completely.  While the pundits can point to the President having “only” 48 percent approval in Alabama, they should also note that his national approval is around 35 percent, so Alabama’s isn’t so horrible for him. And while Trump may see Alabama as a state he won on his own, maybe (though I doubt it) he’ll get that Alabama is/was one of the easiest states for Republicans to win.  Hell, I could have won Alabama in the presidential election.

This win, by as small a margin as it was (again, big, though, in ‘Bama terms) will give the Democrats hope that they can field stronger candidates next year and will give the anti-Trump GOP senators reinforcement that maybe they aren’t all wrong in thinking the President isn't all right. The win shows that the candidate matters not who supports him.

But don’t go off the deep end. Yesterday proved he can be beat. There are many more rounds ahead.