The Alabama primary was called for Joe Biden early, part of a general sweep through the southern states that was central to the 72 hours in which he became the unquestioned frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden brought out enough voters to outpoll Bernie Sanders by 63 percent to 17. Meanwhile, ominously, the president* piled up 708,000-odd votes in a primary in which he had no particular opposition at all. Both results may directly impact the long-shot re-election campaign of the state’s Democratic senator, Doug Jones, because the Republican Party seems prepared once again to light its own head on fire.

To oppose Jones, former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is trying to win back the Senate seat he gave up to become a White House punching bag. Unfortunately for this grand design, Alabama Republican primary voters decided to exercise their independent streak again. From AL.com:

With 85% of precincts counted, Tuberville held onto a slim 33.6%-31.4% lead over Sessions. Neither man was anywhere near the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. That’s because three-term U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne of Fairhope was in third place with 24.5%. Former Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, the Republican nominee during the 2017 special Senate election, placed a distant fourth.



In short, Sessions will now have to go through a run-off with Tommy Tuberville, whose only qualification for political office in Alabama is the nine years he spent coaching football at Auburn. (He beat Alabama six years in a row, which makes his showing Tuesday night all the more remarkable.) There followed two more coaching stops and, most recently, a transformation into a more-MAGA-than-thou politician.

Tommy Tuberville, formerly of Cincinatti and Auburn, is competitive in the Alabama Republican Senate primary. Icon Sportswire Getty Images

As a candidate, Tuberville enlivened the debate by crusading against those communities in Alabama plagued by sharia law, and that’s not a typo, either. From the Washington Post:



Trump hasn’t endorsed a candidate in the primary, and he isn’t expected to; in the 2017 primary, he endorsed Luther Strange, who lost to Roy Moore. Still, this month, when Tuberville started his tour, he made sure to get Trump’s name on the bus. Then, during one of his first stops, he said that communities that practice sharia law make it so “you can’t drive through a neighborhood.”

“Why?” he went on. “Because terrorism has taken over.”



So the Republican runoff will be conducted between one guy that the president* considers an ur-turncoat and another guy who thinks the president* is a gift sent straight from god, and that isn’t a typo, either.



“God sent us Donald Trump,” Tuberville says in a television ad that began airing this month, “because God knew we were in trouble... “They told me we got more Middle Easterners coming across the border than we do Mexicans,” Tuberville told a gathering of Alabama Republicans in June. “This was before the caravans started coming. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said they’re coming all over the Middle East. They’re coming across the border, and they ain’t leaving. They’re coming for a reason. Folks, they’re taking over, and if we don’t open our eyes, it is going to be over with.”

If, as happened in his race against Moore, Jones gets turnout from African-American voters at the same level that Biden did on Tuesday night, and the Alabama Republicans continue their impressive streak of dick-stepping, and the president* decides to come galumphing into the runoff, Jones might just hang onto his seat, which would make Democratic control of the Senate more of a possibility.



The presidential part of the evening has been chewed to a fine pulp by now. Late last night, Bernie Sanders won in California, Joe Biden carried Texas, and he came out of Super Tuesday with a lead in pledged delegates that would have sounded lunatic 10 days ago, and which apparently made Sanders so desperate that he’s running commercials in Florida tying himself to...Barack Obama. That was not something I anticipated. Hardly anything is.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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