Can Alabama Be The 2018 Dem Playbook?

Senate races in Tennessee and Texas next year will be the best places to test the lessons of the party’s surprise Southern victory

- Arit John, with Jennifer Epstein

Even before his upset win in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race, Doug Jones had already pulled offthe improbable. His campaign had managed to build up Alabama’s Democratic Party infrastructure from almost nothing and had quietly funneled millions of dollars of outside money into a state wary of both outsiders and Democrats. On the eve of the election, two things were apparent: Jones had cobbled together a diverse coalition of black, independent, and moderate Republican voters, and his fundraising totals were more than double those of opponent Roy Moore, $11.5 million to Moore’s $5.2 million.

Jones’s win, along with Democratic victories in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, gives Dems momentum heading into the 2018 midterms. To win back both chambers of Congress, they’ll have to flip 24 seats in the House of Representatives, protect 10 Democratic senators in states Trump won, and gain two Senate seats. Doing that depends largely on whether they can transfer what worked for Jones in Alabama to other historically red states.

Some things will be impossible to replicate. It’s doubtful other Democrats next year will enjoy the kind of fundraising advantage that Jones had. It’s also unlikely they’ll face an opponent quite like Moore, whose poor performance, compared with how well Trump did in Alabama in 2016, is “an anomaly of an anomaly,” says Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. “There isn’t going to be another Roy Moore on the ballot. There’s not even anything close to that.”