Decency won

This was not supposed to happen. President Trump did not want it to happen and so did all those that voted for Roy Moore in the Alabama US Senate elections. Many members of the Republican Party, however, though few loudly, paradoxically did want it to happen and by a slim margin but not small enough to trigger a recount, Democrat candidate Doug Jones won. Trump, in an unusually civil Tweet, acknowledged the win with some grace saying “…a win is a win” — and so it is.

It is decades since the Democrats won anything in Alabama and Jones came from behind to take a victory that is marginal but significant. Right up until the polls opened Moore was pegged as the winner. But black voters came out in strength, an unknown number of white voters decided that they would rather not vote than support an accused paedophile that was likely to be the subject of a Senate Ethics Committee investigation if he won — and then there was Harvey Weinstein.

Harvey Weinstein? Yup, and the #MeToo movement that has reached far beyond abused women making a stand and bringing down the great but far-from-good. The Jones win is linked to that backlash, the retaking of space by yes, decent ordinary people. It is a step along the way to making America great again, but only a step, and Jones is already being seen by some as an aberration, he won because Moore was just so odious that he was unelectable, and Alabama will revert to type when his re-election comes due. Possibly, but the marker is now down and the historic misstep that America took with the election of Donald Trump can be righted. ‘Can’ but not ‘will’. One swallow does not a summer make, and Jones is going to have to survive in the feral world of the Senate which is going to mean voting with Republicans on occasion.

As these words are written the defeated Moore is refusing to concede defeat, but the numbers are stacking up and the likelihood is that Jones is in by a (fattish) whisker. What this is not is a win for the Democrats per se, and it cannot be a reliable predictor for the mid-term elections, but from this far-away perspective this is a small step in the direction of repairing the damage done to Brand America in the course of a year of the Trump presidency.

It is almost impossible to calculate just how far and how fast America has fallen in the eyes of a wider world, how it is devalued and losing respect as the Trump juggernaut rolls on, cutting ties, retreating from treaties and wrapping itself in the flag to stand — considerably shorter and without the gravitas — tall in the eyes of a leader who may well be delusional and is clearly untroubled that he is on record as being happy to ‘grab pussy’ just because he is famous and can get away with it. There is no such concrete evidence in the case of Roy Moore but there is enough credible detail in the form of the statements by those that say they were abused by him to make him sub-par as a candidate and perhaps also delusional.

On 5^th October, The New York Times published a story detailing allegations about Harvey Weinstein. On 8^th October, it was announced that his Board of Directors had sacked him. By 16^th October, the #MeToo hashtag was viral and remains so to this day with women coming forward almost daily to expose those that assaulted them. There are going to be more heads to roll and not just in the entertainment industry.

Political heads are piling up in the basket below the #MeToo guillotine; and the voters of Alabama just dropped the blade on the neck of one of those that imagined himself immune, unable to be touched by modern realities. He had not in any sexual sense abused any of those that voted to let go the rope, but he had pushed their ‘decency’ buttons and they duly obliged and did the decent thing. Off with his head. It was worth staying up for. Make America great again…please.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2017.

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