Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Alabama, Whodathunkit? Thank You, African-American Women

It's been rare these days that I come home from a night of drinking, put on the news, and am pleasantly surprised, but last night was certainly one of them. Wow, I still find it difficult to believe that Doug Jones won the Alabama senate race. I have to note that African-American women were instrumental in Doug Jones' victory, and will be instrumental in future efforts to reclaim Congress for the Democratic party.

I've said it before, but African-American women are the canaries in the coalmine of American politics- they are the first to be negatively impacted by bad policies. Bad banking policies? They started in African-American neighborhoods, but they will blow up on a national level. Police shootings? Don't look so shocked when they spill out into the mainstream. As we saw in Alabama, African-American women are shaping up to be the first line of defense for a civil, democratic society. Forget trying to woo the white working class voters who succumbed to the siren song of Trumpism, the real key to electoral victories is to get out the vote in African-American districts and to fight voter suppression efforts.

The repudiation of Roy Moore was a repudiation of dominionism, sexism, racism, anti-semitism, and that good old boy network which has, for centuries, left a trail of dead bodies and ruined lives in its wake. Doug Jones made his reputation putting the murderers of young girls in jail, it's appropriate that he put Roy Moore's political career on ice.

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