Kellen Jones wears a Confederate battle flag belt buckle during what was supposed to be the Montgomery election night party of Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. (Kevin D. Liles/The New York Times)"Alabama has thrown off the dead hand of George Wallace," said Howell Raines on Tuesday night after Roy Moore's stunning senatorial defeat.
Raines, a renowned American journalist, former New York Times executive editor and native Alabamian, was both profound and correct. But he missed a deeper point.
Alabama women slapped away - before it could take hold again - the nasty hand of Roy Moore, saying enough is enough.
In the most stunning upset since our presidential race in 2016, Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in a state that's been beyond red for a quarter of a century - a state where for centuries, being black and being female was like being invisible unless someone needed a mark or a scapegoat.
Moore is a twice defrocked judge who recently was dogged by credible allegations of child sexual predation on teens as young as 14 when he was an Etowah County prosecutor in his 30s. Add to this, that Moore openly talked of his nostalgia for a time when slavery remained. He also openly espoused bigotry toward Muslims and talked of his hope to see homosexuality criminalized.
But last week, Alabama women joined our awakening nation to say no. They donned the awareness of the #Me-Too movement that began the moment Donald Trump was elected. They picked up the defiance that took form with a Women's March on the day after his inauguration.
These Alabama women, in their own quiet but thundering way, just went to the polls to say no to perpetuating the racist, sexists sins of the stereotypical South. Not since the fictional Scarlet O'Hara marched defiantly onto the dance floor in her war widow's black mourning garb to gayly waltz with Rhett Butler have so many women determinedly bucked what was expected of them.
On Tuesday, many an Alabama woman who called herself a conservative demurely nodded to friends, families and pollsters, then bopped right into the polling booth to vote for anyone other than Moore.
If the presidential election of 2016 was polled to go to Clinton but went to Trump because people didn't want to say they really supported him, then this election was one where women did the same thing.
And look who won. By the election results, Jones squeaked out a victory by more than 21,000 votes - 49.9 percent to Moore's 48.4 percent. Write-ins took 1.7 percent of the votes.
But it really was women who won. Diversity won. Integrity won.
Altogether, 58 percent of Alabama women voted for Jones, including 35 percent of white women and 98 percent of black women, according to exit polling. While that one-third-plus of white women might not sound like much, it's more than twice the 16 percent of white Alabama women who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012.
Enough was enough.
It helped that Jones was a good candidate. As a former federal prosecutor, he won convictions of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls.
It also helped that Donald Trump, who like Moore has lived his life amid a wave of accusations of improper behavior toward women, can't get out of his own way.
Bright and early on that Alabama Senate election Tuesday, Trump tweeted without thinking. He attacked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who has called on Trump to resign for his own past behavior. (You may recall that our so-called president bragged on tape that he grabbed women by their genitals, and he could get away with it because he was "a star." At least 17 women have accused him of grabbing, kissing or harassing them.)
Gillibrand, no stranger to women's advocacy, also has said in the past that Bill Clinton should have resigned after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But on Tuesday morning, the tweeter-in-chief didn't stop at just referring to Gillibrand as a "lightweight" and a "total flunky." He also made lurid insinuations, writing that when he was a New York real estate developer, she "would come to my office 'begging' for campaign contributions" and "would do anything for them."
Way to pour gasoline on a fire, Donald. Happy Election Day, Roy Moore.
When the smoke had cleared and the polls had closed, the Democratic Party had a new senator in Alabama for the first time in 25 years, and women - along with Democrats - were picking up steam.
Women, diversity, integrity and logic turned 12 counties in Alabama blue - counties that were red in November 2016.
Roy Moore lost. So did Donald Trump - just one year after he'd won so big.
To borrow from another scene in "Gone With the Wind": Frankly, Rhett, Roy and Donald, we don't give a diddly about your sorrow.
We do care, however, about decency, integrity, community and country. That's why you lost, and women won.