In the hours after major news outlets declared that a Democrat would win Jeff Sessions’s vacated Alabama Senate seat, a wide range of reactions rolled in from the right. Donald Trump tweeted an uncharacteristically gracious concession to Doug Jones, warning that Republicans would eventually take back the seat, but congratulating him on a “hard-fought victory.” Sean Hannity blamed Mitch McConnell for shutting out his favored candidate, Mo Brooks. Senator Cory Gardner, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, put out a statement congratulating Jones on the win, and expressing the hope that he would switch parties and caucus with Republicans. But Steve Bannon, perhaps Moore’s most loyal backer, who had seen him through a child-molestation scandal and emerged defiant on the other side, was silent.

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Breitbart News, the media outlet he has transformed into a rabid anti-establishment machine, carried on: on Wednesday morning, the front page blared that Jones’s win was a “UNIPARTY VICTORY” while suggesting, rather lamely, that military votes had yet to be counted. (Lee Stranahan, the site’s former White House correspondent, predicted that if any dissent existed behind the scenes, it would be masked out of “pure fear.”) Fox News, too, sought to spread the blame for Moore’s loss, spinning it as a “referendum on Harvey Weinstein” and noting that Jones “caught a break when all these allegations came out against Judge Moore. . . . it was hard for women especially to go to the polls and vote for him even though those allegations were just allegations, and even though it happened so long ago.”

Bannon’s political critics, meanwhile, were ecstatic at seeing the self-professed mastermind of Trump’s 2016 victory with egg on his face. Steve Law, the president and C.E.O. of McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, issued a blistering statement noting that “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco.” He added, “This is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running.” G.O.P. Rep. Peter King said on CNN that Bannon “looks like some disheveled drunk” and should see himself off the national stage.

Bannon’s personal enemies, too, danced on his grave. “Luther Strange would have won in a landslide,” tweeted Matt Drudge, the former employer of the late Andrew Breitbart who nurses a grudge against Bannon. (The headline of the Drudge Report was less subtle, declaring “BANNON BUSTED”.) Ben Shapiro, the former editor-at-large of Breitbart and noted Bannon critic, called it “horrifying that a pro-abortion fanatic” won in Alabama “because some morons decided to make an ego play. Looking at you, Steve.” Others in the conservative world were less measured:

Though publicly Bannon continued to stump for Moore in the days leading up to the election, even appearing at Jones’s last rally on Monday night and predicting a wide margin of victory, Bannon’s allies were still hedging their bets, telling me last week that they continued to wish Brooks had won. In the wake of Tuesday’s election, however, those close to Bannon told me that he was perhaps identifying too closely with the reckless honey badger, refusing to back down. “If we lose, it’s actually worse for McConnell,” Bannon insisted to The Atlantic before votes were tallied. “They will come for McConnell like you've never seen before and [Senator Richard] Shelby will be finished down there.” The next morning, he still seemed undeterred. “You have to grind it out,” he said on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio show. “This is going to be 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Every day. If we’re prepared to do it, we win.”