Thursday, December 14th, 2017
Stephan: Doug Jones' win has been the "A" story on all media all day. But I want to talk about something not receiving much attention except on Rachel Maddow's show. To whit: voting matters. White people in Alabama still voted overwhelmingly for Roy Moore, although White women less so, and younger voters particularly so. What mattered, what elected Jones, was turnout. More people voted for Doug Jones.
I hope all my socially progressive readers hear this. I know from the emails I receive that many social progressives think that there is no point in voting, both parties are corrupt.. yada...yada. Let me be explicit: This is absolute crap.
If you don't think that there was a difference between Roy Moore and Doug Jones you shouldn't be allowed out alone. Voting is the key to a successful democracy, and the point is not convincing people to change their positions, the point is to get out all the people who think as you do to vote.
The way to get rid of Trumpism, is for EVERY SINGLE PERSON who cares about wellbeing to vote in support of those convictions. More votes, more wins. It's that simple.
People wait in line to vote in the Arizona to vote
Credit: www.azcentral.com
The question hovering over the Alabama U.S. Senate election, at least for the pundits, was simple: Would Alabama Republicans rather vote for a child molester or a Democrat? The answer was sadly predictable: Even though the allegations against Republican Roy Moore — that he had pursued or molested teen girls when he was in his 30s — were entirely credible, white conservative voters still picked Moore over the KKK-fighting Democrat Doug Jones.
In the end, however, in a true miracle that concludes a bizarre year in American politics, Jones won the Alabama race in a squeaker. (At this writing, his margin over Moore is barely over 10,000 votes.) In the end, Jones’ unexpected victory came because Democrats — depressed after many years of never winning statewide elections in Alabama — were fired up to vote, and turned out in big numbers sufficient to drown out the hard right.
As Nate Cohn of the New York Times tweeted, the Alabama result was the direct result of the turnout […]
