Alabama Is Still the Biggest Political News We May Ever Get. (Part One.)

[In December I promised a series of comments on the Alabama special election for the vacant Senate seat that had been held by Republican Jeff Sessions. On election night, Doug Jones, the Democrat, won the seat. And the import of that victory and the details of its achievement are among the most important political news we shall ever encounter. This story was of such magnitude and (hopefully) lasting importance, that the 2016 electoral college fluke for Trump was by comparison a nothing. Here's the first comment about that momentous night in December in Alabama. What a great way to start the New Year!]
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In all my 81years I never saw what I saw on the night Doug Jones beat Roy Moore for the Senate seat from Alabama. On the TV screen black and white Alabamans were joyfully celebrating Jones' victory. They were hugging each other, laughing together, slapping each other on the back. Together, they had done this great thing!

Together. Blacks and whites. In the deep South. Sharing  — of all things!  — a political win.

It's a wonder the TV didn't blow up.

Do you understand what this could mean?  It could be the end of the vicious black/white divide that has been ruthlessly enforced by the whites in the Deep South, even with violence, since the Civil War.  And nothing has divided the blacks and white as much as has politics.

But now they had made common cause against an outrageous candidate. And against all the odds, they had beaten him. This could mean that blacks and whites would be willing to campaign together to raise Alabama from its tie position with Mississippi for the bottom of the list of the states in everything that should make life good. Maybe now Alabama could have good education, real medicine, museums, artistic achievement, a cultural life, a better income for its people.

Maybe there could be redemption from all the scars of fervid racism that has blinded and bound the South.  Maybe we could indeed all get along together, as Rodney King once said.

Good things can come from the seemingly bad. If the extremism and outrageousness of the Trump/ Moores of the world can provoke a reaction like that which occurred in Alabama, then the old saying is true: God is always busy transmuting evil into good.

I never thought I would live to see what I saw on the TV that night. As Rachel Maddow said, "It had the aura of a miracle." Miracle or not, it was truly wonderful.

And maybe it's only a beginning?

Next: How Did They Do The Impossible?