

Doug Jones waves to supporters after his victory in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama. (John Bazemore/AP)

Washington awoke Wednesday to a biting cold snap and the dizzying news that a Democrat was elected in the crimson kingdom of Alabama. There were chills, prayers, elation, relief and that dusty feeling of yesteryear: hope, warmed over again.

Hope, yes, for Democrats, thrown from the White House and outnumbered in Congress, but hope also for the city's establishment Republicans, who were hardly thrilled that someone such as Roy Moore — an accused child predator with an Old Testament mouth — might be bound for their prim company.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) hopped around as if he had just kicked a winning field goal as he disembarked the Senate tram Wednesday morning with Sen. Richard C. Shelby, who had made a rare appearance on the Sunday talk shows to tell his fellow Alabama Republicans that they need not vote for their party's nominee.

"Way to go, Shel!" Corker bellowed to Shelby. "Whoo!"

Was that about. . . what we think it was about?

Corker, who has emerged as President Trump's most stubborn GOP critic, cut to the chase in a gaggle that morning with reporters.

"I know we're supposed to cheer for our side of the aisle, if you will," Corker said. "But I'm really, really happy with what happened for all of us in our nation, for people serving in the Senate, to not have to deal with what we were likely going to have to deal with should the outcome have been the other way."

"It bodes well for '18 for us," Shelby said. "Roy Moore would've been very toxic. . . . We dodged that bullet."

Even as some signs were beginning to look positive for their candidate, Doug Jones, earlier in the week, the Beltway's professional liberals had remained in a protective crouch, braced for doom.

"Since November 8, 2016, I've adjusted my inner political forecasting machine to be in abysmal pessimism mode," said Ben Wikler, D.C. director of ­MoveOn.org, who just last week attended the doleful speech by his former boss, Al Franken, as the Minnesota Democrat resigned from the Senate. Tuesday night found Wikler not at a Democratic watch party but home with two sick kids, running up and down the stairs to dispense Robitussin while trying not to miss any breaking news on cable.

Even while Democrats had found fleeting hope in the crowds that amassed for the Women's March on Washington after the inauguration, their emotions crashed again in June, after a photogenic young progressive lost a special election despite the $23 million gavaged into his campaign.

Cut to: Virginia and New Jersey last month, when Democrats won the governorships and gained at least 15 seats in the House of Delegates in Richmond.

And now, after Alabama?

"It takes a lot to warm the permafrost of my soul at this point," Wikler said, "but the Jonesquake of 2017 has made it extra hard to adhere to my commitment to expect the worst."

Tuesday night, at the Sheraton in downtown Birmingham, Ala., there was salami and smoked Gouda, bite-size chicken cordon bleu — and grown men in tears when the race was called at 10:23 p.m., said Lisa McNair, the sister of one of the girls killed in the racially motivated 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

"Being a black person in this country — and, Lord have mercy, being one in this state — is almost like you're used to being oppressed," McNair said on the phone, as she greeted ecstatic well-wishers who popped into her Birmingham workplace Wednesday morning. "And even when you have a victory, you've seen so much disappointment, hate and racism that you're thinking, 'This'll be just another day.' The emotion instead was 'Oh, thank God. God has not forgotten about us. It's going to be okay.' "

President Trump, who forcefully endorsed Moore, watched returns Tuesday night at the White House with his chief of staff; many of Trump's advisers who were skeptical of Moore were at a holiday party in Georgetown thrown by Gary Cohn, chief economic adviser and a registered Democrat.

On Capitol Hill, Jones's soon-to-be colleagues were busily divining meaning in the strangest Senate race in years. The Jonesquake was a rebuke of Trump and the tax bill, Democrats said. The Jonesquake proved anything was possible — from winning again in the South to retaking the Senate in 2018.

"Don't count anything out," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said as she strode into the Russell Building.

"Jones's win," Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said as he clutche briefing folders on the platform for the Senate tram, "makes it harder for Republicans to pass the tax bill."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) had spent Tuesday night in his office watching the returns ("because I don't have a TV at home"). Running his own numbers, he said, he had determined a full two hours before the race was called that Jones would win.

"I was doing the happy dance in the office," he said, pantomiming a Charlie Brown-like jig. "And Louie, who works on my team, was there, and I was making him extremely nervous because he thought it was bad karma and I was going to cause us to lose."

"We always said this was a decision in the hands of the Alabama voters," said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). He sounded upbeat. "And they spoke loudly about the direction they want to go."