The seismic election in Alabama will be remembered as a repudiation of Trump and his master strategist: the night the Trump-Bannon train hit a brick wall

There is a limit to Trumpism in America and his name is Roy Moore.

The Republican Senate candidate’s defeat by the Democrat Doug Jones was a public humiliation for the US president – who endorsed him via tweet, robo-call and rally – and for the former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who sought to bring Moore back from the political dead.

It was also a seismic shock in Alabama, the Deep South state that has witnessed so many: Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus in Montgomery; four young African American girls killed in the bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham; hundreds braving police violence to march for voting rights in Selma.

Profile The Roy Moore file Show Hide Born Roy Stewart Moore, 11 February 1947, in Gadsden, Alabama, the oldest of five children of a construction worker and housewife.

Best of times He had a large slab of Vermont granite inscribed with quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the national anthem and the founding fathers installed in the Alabama supreme court. It was topped off with tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Worst of Times In Vietnam, Moore insisted his troops salute him on the battlefield. He was named “Captain America” and later recalled sleeping on sandbags to avoid a grenade tossed under his cot in retribution. What he says “I think it [America] was great at the time when families were united. Even though we had slavery, they cared for one another.” What others say After refusing to acknowledge same-sex marriage legislation, Human Rights Campaign said: “It is clear that Roy Moore not only believes he is above the law, he believes he is above judicial ethics...”

Photograph: Brynn Anderson/AP

As for the Republican party, it was an embarrassing setback in a Bible belt stronghold, but also a bullet dodged. Members of Congress will be breathing a sigh of relief knowing they do not have to spend years trying to explain and excuse an alleged paedophile in their ranks, a man who has said the last time America was great was during the era of slavery.

Play Video 1:56 Democrat Doug Jones wins Alabama Senate seat: 'this race has been about dignity’ - video

At first, when the Washington Post reported that Moore faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers, it did, according to all known political rules, render him a toxic figure. Trump kept his distance, Senate leader Mitch McConnell spurned him and even Fox News host Sean Hannity wanted answers.

But what made this different from past norms was the swaggering Bannon, perhaps seduced into believing he could work miracles after his success with Trump last year. Bannon kept faith with 70-year-old Moore and, slowly but surely, reeled Trump, Hannity and the Republican National Committee back in with a brazen appeal to political expediency.

Armed with Breitbart News at its propagandist worst, Bannon worked feverishly to portray Moore as a martyr and sow doubts about his accusers and the media outlets that reported them. “They tried to destroy Donald Trump, and they’re trying to destroy Roy Moore,” he told a closing rally on Monday night. “There’s no bottom for how low they’ll go.”

There isn’t enough money in the world to repair the brand of Alabama if it elects Roy Moore Steve Schmidt, Republican strategist

The breathtaking cynicism begged the question: had the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower truly become the party of Trump and Bannon? Were they the ones with no bottom, just constant freefall?

On Tuesday Alabama delivered its answer. Jones became the first Democrat to win a Senate race here since 1992, cut Republicans’ majority in Congress to an even thinner margin and declared to America that yes, there is still a moral line to be drawn.

Profile Who is Doug Jones? Show Hide Early life The 63-year-old grew up in the working-class city of Fairfield, just west of Birmingham, an area once dominated by the steel industry. His father was a steelworker and he spent time working in a mill when not in school Democratic roots and the KKK Jones got his start in government as an aide to the last Democrat to serve a full term in the Senate from Alabama, the late Howell Heflin. Years before running for the Senate himself, Jones became known for prosecuting two KKK members for the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist church in 1963 which killed four black girls. After his appointment as US attorney in Birmingham in 1997, Jones led a team of federal and state attorneys during trials that resulted in the convictions of Thomas Blanton Jr in 2001 and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002. Photograph: Marvin Gentry/X02859

It was poignant, and alarming for Republicans, that it should happen in Alabama, a ruby red state where the Ku Klux Klan has thrived, a radio DJ banned the Beatles after John Lennon said they were more popular than Jesus, and Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential election by some 28 percentage points.

There were push and pull factors at work. Moore, a former Alabama supreme court chief justice twice removed for violating judicial ethics and a sworn foe of abortion and gay rights, was already hard for many Republicans to stomach even before the darkly disturbing allegations. Trump initially endorsed his primary opponent, Luther Strange (first evidence of the limits of his political influence); the Alabama senator Richard Shelby said he did not vote for Moore; and the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whose seat created the vacancy, declined to say whether he did.

Others, such as Senator Jeff Flake, were outspoken against the candidate. And there were many in Alabama tired of being the the laughing stock of the nation, the butt of Saturday Night Live jokes. The public affairs strategist and moderate Republican Steve Schmidt told CNN: “There isn’t enough money in the world to repair the brand of Alabama if it elects Roy Moore.”

Quick guide Gay bans and praise for Putin: the world according to Roy Moore Show Hide Homosexuality should be illegal In 2005, Moore said: “Homosexual conduct should be illegal.” In an interview televised on C-Span, Moore added: “It is immoral. It is defined by the law as detestable.” During a debate in September 2017, he went out of his way to bemoan the fact that “sodomy [and] sexual perversion sweep the land”. September 11 attacks as divine punishment In a speech in February, Moore appeared to suggest that the terrorist attacks of September 11 were the result of divine retribution against the United States and prophesized in the Book of Isaiah. In comments first reported by CNN, Moore quoted Isaiah 30:12-13, saying: “Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon ... therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance.” Moore then noted: “Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?” He added: “If you think that’s coincidence, if you go to verse 25: ‘There should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall.’" Praise for Putin In an interview with the Guardian in August, Moore praised Putin for his views on gay rights. “Maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.” The comments came after Moore suggested the United States could be described as “the focus of evil in the world” because “we promote a lot of bad things”. Moore specifically named gay marriage as one of those “bad things”.

'Reds and yellows’ At a rally earlier in September, Moore talked about “reds and yellows fighting” while discussing racial division in the United States. Moore justified this on Twitter by citing lyrics from the song Jesus Loves the Little Children. He wrote “Red, yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. This is the Gospel.” Tracking livestock is communism In 2006, Moore condemned a proposal for a national ID system for animals as “more identifiable with communism than free enterprise”. The proposal received attention after a cow in Alabama had been diagnosed with mad cow disease. Moore, who was then running for governor, was skeptical that the outbreak was real. Instead, Moore suggested it was a ruse intended to promote the tracking system.



This Republican apathy and antipathy contrasted with Democratic energy in a state where the party had been moribund and divided. Barack Obama and Joe Biden made robocalls and Senator Cory Booker hit the road. National Democratic groups poured in resources while judiciously keeping a low profile.

This was augmented, the New York Times reported, by a quietly effective coalition of progressive groups including: Indivisible, which held training sessions; Open Progress, which funded a big text message campaign to African Americans; the gay equality Human Rights Campaign, which had multiple paid organisers on the ground; and the Voter Participation Center, which reached more than 300,000 black voters with direct mail and text messages.

It worked. African American turnout may have returned to Obama-era levels. In his previous career, Jones prosecuted two Klan members for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist church that left four black girls dead. His election watch party in Birmingham, a crucible of the civil rights struggle, was joyously diverse. Black supporters punched the air and celebrated a measure of liberation from the state’s grim inheritance.

Roy Moore’s stunning defeat reveals the red line for Trump-style politics | Richard Wolffe Read more

The election also came at a moment of national reckoning in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein and a swath of prominent national figures. There was plenty of motivation for suburban women to take revenge on Moore – and Trump – for their past deeds and words.

When Democrats won recent governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, the Republican riposte was that those were states Clinton held in 2016 anyway. That explanation will no longer work. Now a Democrat has galloped deep into Republican territory and come away with the prize. It is the strongest evidence yet that a big blue wave is coming in the mid-term elections. Already 16 Republican members of the House and two in the Senate have announced they will not run again next year.

Indeed, some observers had seen in Alabama a metaphor for America in the Trump era. Above all, this was a repudiation of the president and his master strategist. It was the night the Trump-Bannon train hit a brick wall.