Smear campaign may not work next time.
Via Baltimore Sun:
All the headlines about Doug Jones historic victory over Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election for Senate — and especially the ones calling it a humiliating defeat for President Donald Trump — have got to put a spring in Democrats’ steps as they look ahead toward next year’s midterm elections. To take back the Senate next year, Democrats had to win all the races that were likely to be competitive and pick up at least one long shot. Now they can cross “long shot” off that list. Meanwhile, unexpectedly high turnout among groups that tend to vote Democratic builds the case for a wave election. That African Americans made up a higher percentage of the electorate and broke more strongly for Mr. Jones, who is white, than they did for Barack Obama in 2012 is nothing short of remarkable.
But before Democrats start pouring champagne into their post-eleciton orange juice this morning, let’s put this race into some context. All we have proven here is that Republicans can lose a state-wide race in Alabama if they really, really try. Mr. Moore was all but unparalleled as a bad candidate, and not just because of the multiple credible reports that he preyed on teenage girls, including one who was just 14, when he was in his 30s. He had plenty of negatives long before the Washington Post meticulously exposed that stain on his character. He was, after all, twice kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court for defying the law. He once lamented the decline in family life since the end of slavery, and he argued that America would be better off without any amendments after the 10th, including, for example, the one that gave women the right to vote. He is so much an unrepentant, unreconstructed relic of Alabama’s past that even the state’s Republican senior senator, Richard Shelby, urged voters to write someone else’s name on their ballots.[…]
What can Democrats take away from this? It is possible for them to get their voters out in large numbers in years when Barack Obama is not at the top of the ticket. Doing so in midterm elections has historically been a challenge, and the fact that so many showed up for a special election in which only one race was on the ballot should be encouraging for them. But they won’t be able to count on Republicans putting up candidates as awful as Roy Moore. They still need to give people something to vote for, and for a party in only slightly less disarray than the Republicans, that’s no easy thing. Just like the elections earlier this year in Virginia and New Jersey, this victory shows Democrats that success is possible in 2018, not preordained.