The Lessons of Alabama

Doug Jones's victory over Roy Moore in last Tuesday's special election in Alabama will be repeatedly analyzed in the weeks and months to come. Once again the conventional wisdom has been overturned, the expectations of pundits and prognosticators confounded. At the danger of adding a droplet to what will no doubt be a torrent, I would venture to offer my own reading of the lessons to be garnered from the event:

1)Turnout is destiny. Alabama's election replicated a pattern displayed by the presidential race of 2016, which demonstrated that the distribution of opinion among the populace matters less than the raw number of people who take the trouble to go to the polls. That is to say, though Donald Trump was deemed an inferior choice by a majority of the electorate, larger percentages of his supporters (among whom were many people who had never voted before, and were thus difficult to predict as "likely voters") actually cast votes on November 8. That fact, combined with their fortuitous dispersion across the electoral college map, gave Trump the White House. In the same way, though it is hard to know whether any clear majority of Alabamans favored Jones, a larger percentage of his supporters showed up at the polls. A growing awareness of this trend (that elections are, presently, being decided by actual voters in open contradiction of the polls) is likely to affect voting behavior in the near future, making polls less useful as predictive tools. Fewer people will be dissuaded from voting by polls that tell them the outcome is foreordained.

2)Credibility matters. Why did a larger percentage of Jones's voters take the time to cast a vote? Some of the answer no doubt lies in Roy Moore's lack of appeal. But the outcome would not be fully explicable without some accounting for why so many thousands showed up to vote for Doug Jones. This is especially true in the African-American community, which turned out in greater numbers (relative to the total number of registered voters) for Doug Jones than it had for Barack Obama in 2012. Cynics who would reduce all electoral strategy to narrow identity politics have been proven wrong. Jones's race mattered less than the fact that, as a federal prosecutor, he had brought to justice the murderers responsible for the 1963 bombing that had killed four young black girls in Birmingham. He had actually taken personal and political risks in service of the interests of the African-American community, making him a much surer gamble than the average politician who merely talks about what s/he will do if elected. Call it a variation on the "Field of Dreams" rule ("if you build it, they will come")- "if you give them a reason to, they will vote."

3)Ideology matters less. Jones is a moderate by national standards, but is very liberal within the political field of Alabama. That was supposed to have ordained that he would not stand a chance, even under the extraordinary circumstances of this special election. But voters obviously care less about standard ideological desiderata than they do about having some credible reassurance that a candidate's victory will make a concrete difference for them personally. This was already demonstrated by the 2016 election, in which many Republican voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump despite his break with GOP orthodoxy, on the perception that he would be a champion of the working class (whether they actually had credible reassurance of this is debatable, but they clearly believed they did). Any qualms Alabama voters had about Jones's politics were quashed, especially among African-American voters, by the feeling that Jones stood a better-than-average chance of fighting for them.

4)Principles matter. In the run up to Alabama's election, many Democrats nationally bewailed what they perceived to be a strategic gap between their own party and the GOP. Lawmakers like John Conyers and Al Franken were falling due to allegations of sexual misconduct, while Roy Moore continued to enjoy Republican support. This was taken to portend doom, as Democrats naively ate their own while smart, cynical Republicans continued to back morally compromised candidates for win after win. But last Tuesday's election clearly gave the lie to such scenarios. A key factor in Jones's victory was the demoralization and disenchantment of the GOP electorate. Many Republicans, taking the example of Senator Richard Shelby, withheld their votes from Moore. Others who might have told pollsters that they favored Moore lacked the motivation to actually go to the polls: turnout in "pro-Moore" counties was much lower than in those voting for Jones. If turnout is destiny (and Alabama shows us that it is), then the side with the strongest motivation is the one that will prevail, and giving people reason to feel that their vote counts for something more than the naked seizure and exercise of power is intensely motivational.

What does all of this portend moving forward? Democrats should focus on offering credible solutions to voters, and worry less about ideological labels. A candidate like Elizabeth Warren, who has taken real political risks on behalf of working- and middle-class voters in her struggles to curb the financial sector, stands a much greater chance of motivating turnout than some more "middle of the road" candidate that has no record of such service. Getting one's own voters excited is a much more urgent need than trying to attract votes from or avoiding the ire of the opposing side. Democrats who fear that running a woman for president would fail to attract Trump voters are hunting unicorns. Better to ponder how one might bring the energy of the Women's March to the polls. A presidential ticket in which both spots were held by women, especially one in which the candidates had an established record of serving the working class and people of color, would be a virtually unbeatable force in the current climate.

Donald Trump's nominal support is likely to remain stable for the indefinite future, 30-40% of the electorate will persistently tell pollsters that they approve of his leadership. But Alabama showed us that the degree to which that approval translates into action at the polls is very variable. Motivation was high among Trump voters in 2016 when his movement was a complete novelty. Whether that enthusiasm will persist after his administration has been in power for 2 or more years is doubtful.  Many voters who still speak fondly of Trump did not show up to the polls in Alabama, not because they dislike Trump, but because nothing he has done has sustained their excitement about what voting for him (and, by extension, his program in the person of Roy Moore) might mean in their own lives. Barring some drastic change in Trump's governing style or level of competence, the trend we saw in Alabama will deepen and intensify in 2018. The lessons of Alabama dictate that the next election should be a blue wave, if only Democrats can field candidates with credible records of service to the voters and offer practical solutions to the problems voters face.