Doug Jones can fill a big room.
The former U.S. senator can create excitement. He knows a thing or two about how to throw a political campaign launch party. And he’s not bad at public speaking.
By now, you’ve likely seen the photos and videos from Jones’ official launch for his gubernatorial campaign. The Theodore in Birmingham was pretty well packed. There were lots of familiar faces with well known names in Alabama political circles, and there was a definite feel that this thing could gain some momentum.
Yeah, that’s a bunch of fluff and window dressing. Important fluff and window dressing, mind you. But none of it answers the main question.
Can he win?
Can Doug Jones overcome the deadly sin (at least in Alabama of late) of having a D stand beside his name on a ballot in this state?
Yes.
But he’s going to need some help.
To put this in the parlance that his likely opponent (assuming they both win their primaries) can understand, Jones is going to need a few turnovers and to play a perfect game. He’s going to need an excellent ground game, play solid defense, rely on his teammates and hope his opponent makes a few mistakes. It’ll be tough, but it surely isn’t 4th-and-31 tough or returning-the-missed-field-goal-a-109-yards unlikely.
Did I football that up enough for everyone to understand it?
The fact is Tommy Tuberville has but one thing going for him – he’s a Republican in a state where the majority of the electorate marches like brainwashed zombies into the voting booth and checks the box beside the Republican candidates. They’ve been doing it for years, as they complain daily about the state of life in this state and the ineptitude of state lawmakers, somehow never tying those two things together with their blind allegiance to the folks who’ve placed us last in everything good and first in everything bad.
Regardless, though, that is Tuberville’s trump card, his ace in the hole. And it is the only thing he has in the hole.
Seriously, scroll through Coach’s website sometime. It leads with goofy rhetoric about men in women’s sports – because what Alabama parent doesn’t lie awake at night worried about that – and protecting the border – so those Mississippians don’t invade – and is filled with mentions of things other people have done, like relocating Space Force to Alabama, and how he was maybe nearby when those good things happened.
Now, all of that focus-group-tested rhetoric and mentioning Trump’s names a gajillion times would ordinarily be enough to push any R over the finish line in this state. But Tuberville has a problem.
The country, which has been firmly under Trump-ublican control, sort of sucks right now, and things are about to get much, much worse.
Prices are sky high. Trump’s tariffs have driven away jobs and jacked prices up even more. The Republicans’ “big beautiful spending bill” is going to send insurance prices, and the prices of health care in general, through the roof. And the job market is tanking.
The administration recently killed major union contracts. Trump sent $40 billion to Argentina to bail out their farmers while ours are going bankrupt left and right. (The proof of the negative effects of tariffs on farmers came last week, when Trump announced yet another farm bailout – this one for $12 billion – to offset the damage he’s done.)
And, oh yeah, the Trump administration just cut tens of thousands of Veterans Administration healthcare workers.
But don’t sweat it, working dude in Alabama trying to pay your bills and keep your kids clothed, Trump said “affordability is a hoax” and that rich people being able to write off the full cost of their private jets was more important than you being able to afford health insurance.
With that five-alarm raging fire as the backdrop, on the stage in Birmingham on Friday was a sane, rational man who has a plan. A plan that Alabamians have said out loud many times that they want. It includes Medicaid expansion and a lottery, protecting Alabama’s healthcare infrastructure and putting an end to the divisive rhetoric that continues to pit people against each other while ignoring the major issues.
“It’s not a game,” Jones said Friday of governing the state. “Our lives, our communities, our jobs, our wages, our kids’ education, our health care, our doctors, our nurses, none of this is a game. These are our communities.”
That will be a very popular message, and it will be heard by a whole lot of people in this state who are increasingly disgruntled and flat out unhappy. It will be a message challenging the most unprepared major party candidate for governor in this state’s history. And it will be a message delivered by a guy who many, many people who typically vote Republican have voted for in the not-so-distant past.
Will it be enough?
If enough people decide this isn’t a game, and if they take this more seriously than shallow rhetoric, it certainly could be.
