Republican arrogance just made Doug Jones a senator

“Republicans really have no way way to win tonight.”

That was Brit Hume’s pithy way of describing yesterday’s special U.S. Senate election in Alabama. In the end, by a razor-thin margin, Republicans lost in the traditional way – at the ballot box.

For the next three years, Democratic nominee Doug Jones will hold a U.S. Senate seat that Republicans had counted on to confirm President Trump’s judicial nominees and pass his agenda. Their margin is one seat smaller – and Democrats are already one seat closer to winning their own majority in 2018.

Moore was sunk by credible allegations that he had fondled a 14-year-old girl in the late 1970s, back at a time when he had a habit of high school girls who happened to be less than half his age at the time. And during the campaign, Moore offered inconsistent and contradictory defenses for his conduct, and otherwise strove to confuse the situation rather than protest his innocence forthrightly. In short, he was caughy lying. And that is a rather telling indicator about whether those old charges were true or false.

Even so, the Democrats had no margin for error. Their brand is so toxic in Alabama that they very nearly blew it anyway. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Republicans voted for Moore reluctantly, and that was almost enough to propel him to the Senate anyway.