CHANGE IN THE HEART OF DIXIE
THE WAY THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING IN ALABAMA, SOME Democrats thought they might never taste victory again. So when Doug Jones took the stage at a Birmingham hotel after his special-election win on Dec. 12, it was hard to blame him for being briefly overcome.
“Oh, my,” the state’s new Senator began, as moist-eyed, joyous supporters hung on to his words. “Folks, I got to tell you, I think that I have been waiting all my life, and now I just don’t know what the hell to say.” As the crowd basked in the jubilation, the DJ queued up “Sweet Home Alabama,” the anthem of Southern defiance. Young and old, black and white, men and women, the Democrats sang along—“Ooh, ooh, ooh”—as if to say, This is our state now.
With Jones’ surprising win, the American political landscape seemed to rattle and tilt on its axis. If a Democrat could be elected in Alabama, a lot of things suddenly looked possible for the party out of power. And if the Republicans could lose in the heart of Dixie, no Republican may truly be safe in next year’s midterm elections.
Jones faced an unusually weak opponent in Roy Moore, the twice-defrocked former state-supreme-court justice who was accused by several women, after winning the Republican nomination, of preying on them when they were teenage girls. But just 13 months ago, Alabama also faced a referendum on an accused sexual predator who, like Moore, struck divisive themes while seeking to discredit the media—and President Donald Trump won the state by 28 points. Since Trump’s election, something has changed in the American electorate—something far-reaching enough to flip one of America’s reddest states. “Doug Jones tapped into something bigger than Democrats and bigger than Alabama,” Randall Woodfin,
