COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
Roy Moore loses to
Doug Jones in humiliating Senate result for Donald Trump
For British readers unfamiliar with politics in the American
South, this may be helpful.
All the Deep South was once solidly Democratic, but it was
always a subtle battle with principles to keep it so.
It was Democratic, not out of any principle about social
welfare, but because of Republican Lincoln and the Civil War. Grudges last a
long time in this part of the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt once approached Franklin after another
lynching in the 1930s, asking him to speak out.
In this neck of the woods, they actually used to hold family
picnics when there was to be a lynching. It was treated as free public
entertainment.
FDR explained that he couldn't speak without bitterly
alienating Southern Democrats.
And he was right. The term "Southern Democrat"
actually named a special sub-party group that had its own party rules. All that
changed after Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Bill put an end to Jim Crow laws
and suppression of voting.
The Southern Democrats became Republicans, almost overnight.
Public school integration - a topic of big publicity in the 1960s - was put an
end to in novel fashion, by opening private "Christian" schools and
academies all over. The public schools became black.
The South's new Republicans have pretty much remained that
way since.
So, this victory is a pretty big deal, just in case you are
influenced to think by the relatively small differences in total vote
percentages that it was not.
It is important too because Trump staked a great deal of his
very scarce (both with his own party and the opposition - he is still regarded
as an outsider and a party hi-jacker by many big-shot Republicans) political
capital on this nasty Republican candidate, and Trump won this state in his
election.
