Cracks Showing in Alabama

Published in El Periodico
(Spain) on 13 December 2017
by Rafael Vilasanjuan (link to originallink to original)
Translated from by Lena Greenberg. Edited by Helaine Schweitzer.
Roy Moore or President Donald Trump. Who lost Alabama? It seems logical to believe that a man accused of having sexually harassed minors wouldn’t be the best candidate, but that’s not the reason columnists all over the world are talking about Alabama. The reason is that the stronghold Trump has built up is starting to wear down.

This isn’t the first significant Republican defeat since Trump has been in the White House. Florida, which held a gubernatorial election framed as a referendum on the president’s policies, was already hostile territory and finally fell into Democratic hands in November. But what happened in Alabama is an even bigger blow. Alabama is a bastion in the South for the Republicans; for decades it has maintained stable Republican loyalty. The vacancy now to be occupied by a Democrat is doubly important from a strategic point of view. First, because the Republican Senate majority, tasked with passing the president’s major bills, has gone from 51 to 49 at a critical moment in which the tax cut plan has to be passed. (One Republican senator has already announced he’ll vote against it, leaving its passage up in the air.*) Second, if the divisions in the Republican Party were already apparent during the vote to repeal Barack Obama’s health care law, this defeat will only divide the party even further.

This special election was so important for the president’s plans that he himself got involved, sending his former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and publicly attacking as false and as lies the testimony of the women who are taking sexual harassment claims to the courts. But this time, the Republicans lost the battle in a state where the Democrats’ victory, as one American columnist put it, is as improbable as Jamaica beating New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup.

That’s why the strategic importance of this defeat transcends the borders of an American state that over here we cannot even locate on a map. The important point is that on the Republican side, an internal debate that some are already calling a “civil war” is being re-opened. This “war’” is taking place between the populists who support the president, and those who see Trump as an opportunity to pass conservative-friendly legislation but who distrust a histrionic figure who reveals his decisions through social media, bypassing party channels.

The result of this election is a hard blow for both sides, but with a president who hates losing, we can only imagine the rage with which he’s had to accept defeat. Alabama isn’t the United States, and we can’t necessarily conclude from this election that there’s been such a decrease in support for Trump that we’ll avoid at least the beginning of his second term in 2020. However, it’s true that a loss in this Republican territory is very bad news for him and his supporters. On the other hand, for those of us who are uneasy waking up every morning to a new threat, perhaps this is the first crack in Trump’s wall.

*Editor’s note: The GOP tax bill was passed in Congress and President Trump signed it into law on Dec. 22, 2017.




Roy Moore o el presidente Donald Trump. ¿Quién ha perdido Alabama? Parece lógico pensar que un candidato señalado por haber acosado sexualmente a menores no era la mejor propuesta, pero si ahora mismo nos preocupa Alabama hasta el punto de escribir esta columna y llenar páginas de internacional en los diarios, es porque el muro que ha tejido Trump empieza a mostrar fatiga.

No es la primera derrota importante que los republicanos sufren desde que Donald Trump ocupa la Casa Blanca. La elección del gobernador de Florida, planteada como un referéndum a la política del presidente, ya fue territorio hostil que por fin cayó en manos demócratas en noviembre. Pero lo que ha ocurrido ahora es un castigo aún mayor. Alabama es un bastión en el sur, que ha mantenido durante décadas una fidelidad republicana inalterada y la silla vacante que ahora ocupará un demócrata tiene un valor estratégico doble. Por un lado porque la mayoría republicana en el Senado, encargada de aprobar las principales leyes del presidente, queda ahora en 51 a 49 en un momento crítico donde hay que aprobar entre otros el recorte de impuestos, para el que ya un senador republicano ha anunciado que votará en contra, dejándolo en el aire. Por otro lado, si la división en el partido republicano ya se hizo evidente en la votación para liquidar el seguro médico de Obama, esta derrota agrandará aún más la brecha.

La elección de esta silla vacante era tan importante para los planes del presidente que él mismo se implicó, enviando a su antiguo jefe de la Casa Blanca, Steve Bannon, y acusando de mentiras y falsedades en los medios el testimonio de las mujeres que sustanciaron el acoso sexual. Pero esta vez han perdido la batalla en un estado donde la victoria de los demócratas, por ponerlo en los términos de un columnista americano, es tan difícil como suponer que una selección de Jamaica le ganara la Copa del Mundo de rugby a Nueva Zelanda.

Por eso esta derrota tiene un valor estratégico que va más allá de un estado americano que aquí nos costaría incluso colocar en el mapa. La cuestión es que en el bando republicano reabre una disputa interna que algunos ya califican como una guerra civil entre los populistas que apoyan al presidente y los que solo ven en Trump una ocasión de pasar legislación favorable a ideas conservadoras, pero que recelan de una figura histriónica que ventila decisiones a través de las redes, ignorando los circuitos del partido.

El resultado es un golpe duro para ambos, pero con un presidente que odia perder podemos imaginar la rabia con la que ha tenido que asumir la derrota. Alabama no es EEUU y se hace difícil establecer paralelismos que apunten a la caída en el apoyo a Trump para evitar al menos un segundo mandato a partir del 2020, pero perder este feudo republicano es muy mala noticia para él y sus seguidores. Para quienes nos inquieta, en cambio, despertarnos cada mañana con una nueva amenaza, tal vez esta sea la primera grieta en el muro de Trump.

This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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