OPINION:
Roy Moore may have denied all the sexual misconduct and harassment charges that plagued his long and dark campaign — but apparently, voters couldn’t move past the shadows, and Democrat Doug Jones won.
Democrats are no doubt poised to spin the Moore loss as some sort of stunning commentary on President Donald Trump. But that’d be folly.
The final tally, according to widely reported Wednesday morning numbers, fell like this: Doug Jones, 49.9 percent; Roy Moore, 48.4 percent; write-ins, 1.7 percent.
There were 22,819 write-in votes, in fact, and it’s quite possible — quite probable, in fact — that these voters were simply unhappy with Moore. Not only were there widespread Republican calls for voting members of the GOP to get to the polls, but cast ballots for a write-in, but also Alabama is deeply conservative. Deeply, deeply conservative.
A sudden flip Democrat defies logic.
The state went for Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a 62.1 percent to 34.4 percent margin, and Alabamans, as a whole, haven’t voted into office a Democratic senator in 20-plus years.
Moore’s defeat, to put it mildly, was an embarrassment.
But it’s not a voter backlash to Trump’s first year in office.
“I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, in the lead-up to Election Day. “The state of Alabama deserves better.”
Apparently, voters felt the same. And that has nothing to do with Trump.
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