In an upset (and close election) last night, Doug Jones (D) was elected to be the next Senator from Alabama, defeating Roy Moore (R/Pedophile). I am not exaggerating when I say that this moved me to tears last night. It felt like a small slice of redemption for last year’s general election. I’ll be honest — one of the reasons I was so glad to see Doug Jones win is because I was not looking forward to a bunch of “Franken shouldn’t resign!” diaries today if Moore was elected. That whole mess exhausted me mentally more than I know how to put into words.
One of the big reasons we won in AL yesterday is because of the ground game & turnout. Here’s a good twitter thread on the myriad of things the grassroots focused on in this election (click on the tweet and it will bring up the whole thread, even if you don’t have a twitter account):
To sum up, there was a large focus on turning out voters who didn’t vote in 2016 via phone calls & door to door efforts, organized efforts to offer rides to the polls, focused voter registration at churches, etc. Most of the $$ donated went to this sort of ground game activity, and not so much to TV ads. It worked. Efforts like this need to be made going forward in all 50 states. We know the GOP is trying to suppress voter turnout, and reduce the effects of voters who do turn out via gerrymandering. This is the way to combat that.
According to exit polls, 98% of Black Women and 93% of Black Men voted for Jones, and they were 28% of voters. 34% of White Women and 26% of White Men voted for Jones, and they were 66% of voters. There was a lot on twitter today about trusting, listening to, and supporting black women, and getting them into leadership roles in the grassroots and the party. I am fully on board with that. In relation to the above exit polls, I found this to be hilarious (regarding Omarosa’s firing as a White House aide):
Also, don’t miss Denise Oliver Velez’s excellent diary from this morning on this topic.
And to thank you all for putting up with my political thoughts tonight, have some cuteness:
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
As always, this is an open thread and nothing is off topic. What do you want to kibitz about tonight?