What Lessons Will Democrats Learn from Alabama?

Roy Moore’s defeat in Alabama has taught the Republican party a number of things about the current political environment: (1) That no state is impregnable, no matter how red. (2) That there is, at least for now, a limit to what Republican voters are willing to forgive in a bad candidate. (3) That Republican turnout numbers are grim everywhere there’s been an election since November 2016. The big corollary to those lessons is pretty clear: There’s a storm coming in 2018.

But the Democrats may learn an interesting lesson from Alabama, too.

The most salient fact about Doug Jones is that he was not a classic Blue Dog conservative Democrat. He was as pro-abortion as Nancy Pelosi. Look at the placards held up at his victory party: They’re from the Human Rights Campaign, which has as its mission pushing same-sex marriage and the transgender program. It isn’t just that a Democrat has no business winning state-wide in Alabama—it’s that a Democrat like Doug Jones has no business even getting the nomination. He’s a liberal’s liberal.

The last time Democrats won a midterm wave election was 2006. Rahm Emanuel ran the DCCC and his theory of the election was that Democrats had to go out and recruit candidates who looked like their districts. This meant abandoning litmus tests and running conservative-ish—even pro-life—Democrats in winnable races. I would encourage you to go back and read this excellent Chicago Tribune piece on how Emanual waged his war.

Since the mid-aughts, however, liberals have taken control of the Democratic party and have consistently argued that reaching out to the center is a fool’s game. Instead, they want to run candidates from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.