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Pierce: I Saw a Miracle in Alabama Last Night
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA—The returns from Dallas County were late coming in, so the romantic in me always will insist that it was the votes from Selma that put Doug Jones in the United States Senate for the next three years, that it was those votes that lit up the ballroom in the Sheraton hotel, that it was those votes that dealt a huge—but, arguably, temporary—defeat to everything that has gone wrong with American politics ever since the Republican Party ate the monkey brains 40 years ago and contracted the prion disease that has destroyed the party’s higher functions.
The Party has grown mad and prone to delusions and hallucinations now; it looks at the president* and sees a transformational figure. It looked at Roy Moore and saw a United States Senator. It looks at America and sees a cramped prison with doors that do not lock. What the voters of Alabama did on Tuesday was to slay all the angry ghosts and, because of that, I choose to believe that it was the votes in Selma that dealt them the final blow, because it was Selma whence so many of them first materialized in blood and rage....
And it ignores one of the underground sources of energy behind Jones’s appeal—the fact that he convicted the last two murderers who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. Time and again, voters I spoke with mentioned how brave they thought Jones had been in simply bringing that case, let alone winning it. Again, in his victory speech, Jones referred obliquely to his courtroom triumph in the long sweep of Alabama history.
I choose to believe that Selma put Doug Jones over the top because I believe that the country owes that particular place a debt that it only has begun to repay, a debt on which it reneged for decades. His entire campaign was based on getting repayment of that debt back on schedule. Indeed, his entire public career has been dedicated to that. He’s smart enough to recognize what a small miracle his victory actually was for the disenfranchised people on whose behalf he fought and won, and decent enough not to turn his back on them.
The Party has grown mad and prone to delusions and hallucinations now; it looks at the president* and sees a transformational figure. It looked at Roy Moore and saw a United States Senator. It looks at America and sees a cramped prison with doors that do not lock. What the voters of Alabama did on Tuesday was to slay all the angry ghosts and, because of that, I choose to believe that it was the votes in Selma that dealt them the final blow, because it was Selma whence so many of them first materialized in blood and rage....
And it ignores one of the underground sources of energy behind Jones’s appeal—the fact that he convicted the last two murderers who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. Time and again, voters I spoke with mentioned how brave they thought Jones had been in simply bringing that case, let alone winning it. Again, in his victory speech, Jones referred obliquely to his courtroom triumph in the long sweep of Alabama history.
I choose to believe that Selma put Doug Jones over the top because I believe that the country owes that particular place a debt that it only has begun to repay, a debt on which it reneged for decades. His entire campaign was based on getting repayment of that debt back on schedule. Indeed, his entire public career has been dedicated to that. He’s smart enough to recognize what a small miracle his victory actually was for the disenfranchised people on whose behalf he fought and won, and decent enough not to turn his back on them.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14424877/doug-jones-alabama-win/
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