This is quite a story: Dec. 12th’s Alabama Senate race between Roy Moore, Republican, and Doug Jones, Democrat. Jones probably doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Alabama but the race became somewhat more interesting with today’s allegations (reported in the Washington Post) by four women that Moore made sexual advances to them when they were teenagers. One of them was 14. Moore was 32 and an Assistant District Attorney. In this current race, Moore was pushed forward and supported by Steve Bannon.
Now, here’s another part of the story. Moore’s Democratic Party opponent also has some level of fame. He served as a United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and rose to prominence for prosecuting the remaining two Ku Klux Klan perpetrators of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which killed four African-American girls. You might remember that story.
Here’s what’s really galling about this story. In today’s bizarro world of American politics where the president is a confessed sexual predator and this senate race is between a pedophile and someone who convicted racist killers of four black girls, the pedophile has a better chance of being elected.
When Republican voters were interviewed about whether this story would make any difference to their vote, they said “absolutely not”. After yesterday’s stunning wins by Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere, it is just a little depressing to realize that for large swaths of the American public it’s not about character or political platform, it’s about party. And that’s just as tribal as Afghanistan or Syria or Congo - or anywhere else you care to mention.
And the beat goes on.
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