All Eyes On Alabama

Roy Moore arrives to vote on his horse "Sassy"

Like millions of other people both here and around the globe, I'm anxiously awaiting the results of today's senatorial election in Alabama.

The last thing the Republican-majority in the U.S. Senate needs is a smug right-wing extremist who uses Christianity to cloak his tiresome and incessant moralizing in a self-righteous veneer to hide glaring personal flaws (multiple accusations of ephebophilia) that would land most people in jail. 

While I find Roy Moore's overheated conservative bluster, misogyny and unhinged bigotry against people of color and homosexuals repulsive, that kind of quasi-fascist nonsense isn't the biggest concern for America in my view.

Politically-speaking, if he is elected to the senate, the broader consequences for the Republican Party in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections could be severe.

And let's be honest, an-already controversial candidate who arrives to cast a vote on a horse (pictured above) is not about serving his or her constituents.

That kind of person is all about trite theatrics, stupid gimmicks and of course, themselves.

As if arriving to vote on a horse is going to make people forget that he is accused of initiating sexual encounters with multiple underaged girls, including with Leigh Corfman when she was 14-years-old.

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Personally I'm much more troubled by the prospect of another ideologically-archaic conservative southerner and former judge (we see you Jeff Sessions) coming to Washington, D.C. to bring an unhinged brand of right-wing theocracy to the floor of the U.S. Senate.     

The legal implications of Roy Moore adding his voice to senate votes for federal and Supreme Court judges is deeply troubling for a democracy founded on the principle of separation of church and state.

This is after all, a man who said the antebellum south, when the agrarian southern economy was fueled by enslaved African-Americans, was the last time that America was "great" - and yes, Moore said that in front of a live audience in September.

It should tell you something that reliably-conservative Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby is on record as saying that he will "probably write in a good candidate" rather than cast a vote for Moore to be his fellow Alabama senator.

The implications for the people of Alabama are pretty significant too.

After all, what will it say about the image of a deep southern state still trying to shake the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and the battle for civil rights if its citizens vote to elect a man who pines for the era of 19th century slavery and believes homosexuals are deviants engaged in illegal conduct?

We'll know the answer soon.

Anyway I gotta run to go check out the returns as the results come in, the polls in Alabama close in less than half an hour and according to ABC News the race is tighter than expected with voters almost evenly divided on the allegations of Moore's sexual misconduct -with underage girls.

How can voters be "divided" on that?

Anyway all eyes are on Alabama, where some folks can be remarkably forgiving for a man who rides to the polls on the back of a horse named Sassy.