Another Alabama Blessing for Democrats in Winning Senate Seat

Believe it or not, it has been two months since Deep South Alabama stunned the nation by electing a Democrat, Doug Jones, to a U.S. Senate seat instead of the repugnant Republican Roy Moore, the man who fancies 14-years-olds.  The outcome was a stunner because Alabama is probaby the reddest of the red states.

In past weeks, we have already looked at how grassroots campaigning made this win possible. Winning Political Campaigns With Virtually No Mone...  As explained in that posting, campaigns that have sufficient volunteers don't need big money for advertising on TV. Volunteers are a vital part of getting out the vote, and money and ads can't replace them in that job, the job that wins elections. No place has ever proven the truth of this as strongly as Alabama did in December.

And no segment of the population proved the value of get-out-the-vote more than did the black community in Alabama. In an interview broadcast on NPR a black leader explains the Alabama "ground game", how it worked in the African American community, and how it can work elsewhere. This segment also indicates how important a portion of the Democratic vote is represented by black voters. Jones Victory Credited To African-American Voters : NPR. The numbers in this story are stunning as to the percentage turn out by blacks and the 98% level of vote for the Democrat Doug Jones.

But one number may be more important than all the others: it's the number four. In a New York Times piece the writer explains the motivation for the get-out-the-black-vote. Black Voters in Alabama Pushed Back Against the Past  In recounting the iron-handed white attempts to suppress blacks in Mississippi for 150 years after the Civil War, he reminds us of the little girls who died in the terrorist explosion of a church in Alabama in the 1960s. Four girls died, the smallest number of which he writes. As small a number as it is, it is the most important number because the Democratic candidate Doug Jones is the district attorney who got their killers convicted. As one voter said as Jones won, “Those four little girls are on their feet tonight at 16th Street Baptist Church, celebrating,” he said. “They’re celebrating in spirit.”

The blacks of Alabama have a strong memory of this kind of evil. Even now Alabama is devising ways to deprive them of their voting rights. But the African Americans aren't going to let anyone push them backward. They will overcome.

The articles cited here in my posting do a good job of explaining the campaigning that will help us all overcome. It will help us all to get our country back from Trumpism and, among other things, silence the blatant racism he spews. We need to go forward. We shall go forward.