If you thought the Alabama special Senate election couldn’t get any stranger, you were wrong. The race has been upended by a remarkably boneheaded move on the part of Democrat Doug Jones’s campaign. The Jones campaign is being accused of racism:
[Jones is] now embroiled an upsetting controversy of his own: Black voters across Alabama are calling out a campaign flyer with extremely racist underpinnings.
The Doug Jones for Senate Committee ad, which has gone viral on Twitter and was previously reported on by the Root, shows a picture of a Black man staring at the reader. Above reads, “Think if a black man went after high school girls. Anyone would try to make him a senator?”
This obviously was an attempt by the Jones campaign to play the race card, but it seems to have backfired.
As Michael Harriot explains for the Root, the committee’s flyer relies on an “oversimplifciation of the black mind as only caring about black issues.”
“Part of the reason the Democratic Party has been marginalized as a party that only exists on the coasts and in urban areas is whitemannery like this,” he explains. “The Democratic Party is trash. It is the reason Hillary Clinton lost. It is the reason Donald Trump is president.”
As Steve likes to say, get out the popcorn. The best thing about the Alabama Senate race is that it will be over in five days.
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