Of course the GOP won’t seat Jones until next year
The petty, partisan and blatantly hypocritical move to try and save Trump's tax plan by blocking the will of the Alabama voters should come as no surprise.
On December 12, 2017, Alabama voters picked former prosecutor Doug Jones over rightwing Trump supporter (and alleged pedophile and rapist) Roy Moore as their next U.S. senator by 22,000 votes, 50–48 percent.
Voter analysis shows that this upset wasn’t the result of white, Republican voters in Alabama defecting over allegations that Moore pursued, harassed and sexually assaulted underage women. Rather, it was because Black voters—especially women—and millennials turned out and overwhelmingly supported Jones. Why? Because Jones campaigned on values and policies that resonate with these core constituents: access to affordable education, access to affordable healthcare, defending a woman’s right to choose, defending social safety net programs and opposing the Trump Administration’s corporate agenda—in particular its trickle-down tax plan.
Urban areas, where many Black and minority voters live, decidedly rejected Moore. In Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, Jones captured more than 68 percent of the vote. And in Madison County, home to Huntsville, Jones won 57 percent of the vote. The contrast of Jones’ civil rights track record against Moore’s proxy for the anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-women policies and appalling rhetoric of the Trump Administration was enough to overcome minority voter apathy in heretofore red-dominated Alabama politics.
Besides an historic upset in a Republican stronghold state, the loss of a Republican vote in the senate and the subsequent addition of a Democratic one could make for a serious roadblock for the Trump Administration’s agenda of privatizing public goods, opening tax loopholes for wealthy donors and corporate buyers, and dismantling the social safety net made increasingly necessary by the socioeconomic imbalance created by the greed of those same wealthy donors and corporations.
Republicans rammed through the Senate version of the Trump tax plan in the dead of night a few weeks ago with almost no time for senators to review the document, even hand-writing some of the edits in the margins. The committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of the bill could release its next version any day now, and the Senate could vote as early as next Monday, December 18. Seating Jones is, therefore, a matter of extreme urgency.
However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s says he will not seat Senator-elect Doug Jones before the end of the session, denying the will of the voters in Alabama in order to keep a reliable vote in the Senate for the Trump tax plan in the coming weeks. But this should come as no surprise given the GOP’s complete lack of integrity and decency. GOP leaders have clearly demonstrated that they care more about maintaining ideological control, wielding power and collecting donations from their bankrollers in the corporate oligarchy than they care about building a strong, prosperous and just country.
In 2010, when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s seat in a special election after Kennedy’s passing, then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Brown’s election a referendum on the ongoing congressional deliberation to pass healthcare legislation and argued that the Senate should not finish voting on healthcare legislation until Brown was seated. Then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid honored that request and decided not to hold a vote until the Senate had sworn Brown in.
Democratic Senator Jim Webb supported the move, saying “It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on healthcare legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated.”
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, held a Supreme Court seat open for an entire year before the 2016 election just to prevent then-President Obama from appointing a liberal judge to the bench. Now they want to rush through a vote before their majority shrinks. The hypocrisy is palpable.
Roy Moore is an alleged pedophile. And while some in his party refused to support him after women came forward to report how he had harassed and even assaulted them as teenagers, the Republican National Convention renewed its support for Moore by pointing to his policy positions. They made it about the issues, choosing to skirt around the moral character of the candidate.
Doug Jones ran on a pro-choice, pro healthcare platform. He voiced his opposition to the Trump Tax Scam during the race. Republicans must now accept that voters did not just reject Moore’s appalling behavior, they rejected his policies as well. The Senate must not hold a final vote on the Trump tax plan until Alabama’s new senator is able to vote on it. That seems only fair.
True to the GOP M.O., Roy Moore is refusing to concede, and the Alabama secretary of state will not certify the results until after Christmas or even after the new year. The people of Alabama elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 25 years. They deserve to have their voices heard, especially when sweeping legislation that will affect them and the rest of the country is at stake.
