For Democrats to abandon moderation would be to ignore quiet liberal progress, even in states as red as Alabama
, where Senator Doug Jones and his wife Louise arranged to meet your columnist, is the sort of place a glad-handing southern politician would love to frequent. A canteen-style institution in the middle of Birmingham, it serves catfish, liver and onions and turnip greens to a vast, fast-flowing lunch crowd.
His modesty reflects his unusual profile; but also how unloved elected Democrats are in Alabama. Donald Trump is more popular here than in any other state. Notwithstanding Mr Jones’s strong record as a prosecutor and civil-rights campaigner, he was able to become Alabama’s first Democratic senator in a quarter of a century chiefly because his Republican opponent was a scandal-plagued religious crank. And even then Roy Moore won 48% of the vote.
A leftward turn might not stop the Democrats winning the White House. But it might make it impossible for them to regain control of the Senate, given the disproportionate weighting it gives to relatively small and conservative states. Besides Alabama, they include Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina, which will hold Senate races next year that the Democrats must win to have a hope of unified government.
To do so in despair would also be to ignore much quiet liberal progress. Mr Jones won on the back of a rising coalition of non-whites and college-educated liberals, as well as disenchanted conservatives. A proponent of gay and abortion rights, he is also markedly more liberal than traditional Democratic moderates, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia. This suggests such positions need not be as implacably divisive as is often assumed. Beneath the Trump-related clamour, opinions are changing.
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