By The Editorial Board, December 12, 2017<\/p>\n
That Alabama\u2019s voters chose Doug Jones for the United States Senate is cause for celebration. A triumph for decency and common sense in a state that seemed for a time at risk of abandoning both, Mr. Jones\u2019s win narrows the Republicans\u2019 Senate majority and delivers a deeply deserved rebuke to President Trump. It is hard to get too intoxicated by a slim victory over an atrocious candidate, a suspected sexual abuser with bigoted politics, but Alabama, the Senate and the nation will be a whole lot better off with Mr. Jones than with Roy Moore.<\/p>\n
Alabama\u2019s deep-red politics<\/a> argued against Mr. Jones\u2019s chances. A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Jones won convictions of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham\u2019s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls, and no Democrat had won a Senate race in two decades. But a report in The Washington Post in which four women accused Mr. Moore of sexually harassing or abusing them as teenagers turned the race into a close contest. Mr. Jones\u2019s victory came thanks to overwhelming support from Alabama\u2019s African-American voters.<\/p>\n Mr. Jones received support from various luminaries, including Barack Obama, as well as an unexpected assist from Alabama\u2019s senior senator, Richard Shelby<\/a>, a Republican. \u201cI couldn\u2019t vote for Roy Moore,\u201d Mr. Shelby said. \u201cThe state of Alabama deserves better.\u201d Maybe it shouldn\u2019t count as statesmanship to oppose a cartoonishly unfit candidate, but during the degrading and hyperpolitical Trump presidency, it does.<\/p>\n Mr. Moore\u2019s campaign has been a shame for Alabama, one of the nation\u2019s poorest states, whose need for better-paying jobs, health care, education and infrastructure he almost entirely neglected<\/a>. He did not abandon the race even as the sex abuse charges multiplied; instead, aided by the political nihilist Steve Bannon, he doubled down, insisting the women were lying, part of a plot by the \u201cestablishment\u201d and \u201cfake news\u201d to prevent him from changing Washington.<\/p>\n Mr. Moore was twice removed from Alabama\u2019s Supreme Court, once for flauting a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he\u2019d commissioned for the court building, later for ignoring the United States Supreme Court\u2019s protection of gay marriage by ordering Alabama probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses, saying it was their \u201cministerial duty.\u201d<\/a> After that uproar, he decided to run for the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, when Mr. Trump appointed him attorney general.<\/p>\n Mr. Moore repulsed many Alabamians even before the campaign<\/a>. He has referred to Native Americans and Asians as \u201creds and yellows,\u201d<\/a>called gay people \u201cperverts\u201d and homosexuality \u201can inherent evil,\u201d<\/a> and falsely claimed that Shariah law exists in Illinois and Indiana<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until Mr. Moore (and Mr. Trump) came along, it was difficult to find many candidates so unfit that credible charges of child molestation could seem only the latest disqualifying feature. Their popularity underscores some Christian conservatives\u2019 seeming determination to apply the law, constitutional or moral, only to their opponents.<\/p>\n Some Republicans have taken to describing Mr. Moore as a type of biblical plague<\/a> visited upon them. That ignores the complicity of a party in thrall to its extremists. At every pivotal moment, Mr. Moore was aided by party leaders unwilling to take a united, moral stand against him.<\/p>\n \u201cRoy Moore will always vote with us,\u201d Mr. Trump tweeted on Election Day<\/a>. Alabamians said there was more at stake in this race, choosing a candidate whose record was cause for pride, not shame, one who spent his career battling bigotry, not exploiting it.<\/p>\n