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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAlabama proves that appealing to Trump voters is a lost cause. The power is elsewhere
In 2012, a man who believed in what he called "legitimate rape" ran for senator of Missouri, the state where I live. Todd Akin, a Republican, was the front-runner until he said rape victims should be denied abortions because, "if it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down." It horrified both my state and my country. Republican women abandoned Mr. Akin in droves, and his opponent, Democrat Claire McCaskill, trounced him at the polls, 54.8 per cent to 39.1 per cent.
Today, Mr. Akin's remark would barely register on the public radar, as a man accused of sexual assault holds the presidency and rancid revelations of brutal misogyny among our elected officials emerge daily. This grotesque plunge in standards led many, including me, to expect Roy Moore to win the Alabama Senate seat. I was thrilled to be wrong.
Before Tuesday night, Mr. Moore seemed like the embodiment of a government that had forsaken everything decent and good. Mr. Moore is an accused serial child molester who believes America was greatest when it had slavery, a disgraced lawyer who wanted to eliminate every amendment after the 10th and a hypocrite who wrapped his hatred of black, Muslim and LGBTQ citizens in a cloak of cynical piety. He was abetted by the enthusiastic support of Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon, as well as the cowardice of Republican officials, most of whom refused to forthrightly condemn him.
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What the Alabama race demonstrates to Democrats is that attempting to pry away white Trump voters is a bad strategy, both morally and politically. The priority of any representative should be protecting the rights of the most vulnerable particularly their right to vote, without which all other rights are threatened. The job of an elected official is to serve the entire body politic, something Mr. Moore showed no desire to do. He sought instead to punish certain Alabamians for their mere existence for things no one can change, such as race or sexual orientation, or for having progressive beliefs to which they are legally entitled. Like the President, Mr. Moore ran on the politics of subjugation, and those who voted for him could do so only because they knew they would not be among the subjugated.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alabama-proves-that-appealing-to-trump-voters-is-a-lost-cause-the-power-is-elsewhere/article37313990
Voltaire2
(12,610 posts)So while I was ecstatic that we won in deep red Alabama, we should not think that our national nightmare is over. This is not going to be easy to undo.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)Geechie
(857 posts).. which is what all Southern schoolchildren were taught about their US history. See Lost Cause if the Confederacy.
Gothmog
(143,998 posts)It is a waste of time trying to convince these idiots