Bitter Senate race tests Alabama's image in the country - and at home

[DonViejo]

By Robert Costa and Michael Scherer December 9 at 2:30 PM

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — 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.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bitter-senate-race-tests-alabamas-image-in-the-country--and-at-home/2017/12/09/314a63de-db7d-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html

[RKP5637]

1. As Alabama braces for huge influx of predators from around the world! Religion and

pedophilia all wrapped up in one state.

[Crunchy Frog]

6. It's going to become an underage sex tourism destination.

[RKP5637]

9. Rush Limbaugh will be showing up! n/t

[Blue_Adept]

2. "pocket of stubbornness"

I do believe, good sir, that it may be more than just a pocket. It may even be a bag of holding's worth.

[tazkcmo]

4. One minute.

You win!

[tazkcmo]

3. Mr. Fuller is mistaken.

"...there is this pocket of stubbornness in my state.” It's bigger than a pocket. Oh that it were a mere pocket.

[RandySF]

5. Its very simpl

Jones ran a good campaign and laid out a clear choice between a former US Attorney and a pedophile. If’s on Akamva if they choose the pedo.

[misanthrope]

7. It won't affect Alabama's economic allure as much as some say

For over a century, Alabama has played the role of America's Third World, the place you send low-paying jobs before they go completely offshore. It happened when they sucked textile jobs from New England. It happened when they pulled in automotive plants as the Rust Belt nosedived.

Companies are courted by public officials who empty public coffers in handing over outright funds and tax abatements. They ballyhoo union scarcity, low wages and desperate workers.

At first used to lure industry from other regions of the nation, now Alabama officials have extended their beckoning to foreign companies. That's why German steelmaker Thyssen-Krupp, Australian ship makers Austal and French aerospace company Aerobus/EADS landed in the Mobile area and conservatives who formerly extolled "America First" policies and habits are conspicuously silent.

The election of Moore will only show nothing has changed, that exploitation is as easy now as it has ever been.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Supporters of Moore hate it that the "elites"

"caricature their home state as a cultural backwater" - all the while confirming, by their support of a racist, homophobic child molester who flouted the law and the Constitution to the point where he was removed from the bench twice, that their home state is, in fact, a cultural backwater.