IF DOUG JONES becomes the first Democrat in a quarter of a century to win a Senate seat from Alabama on December 12th, the state will have followed his own political evolution. The grandson of a coal miner and a steelworker, Mr Jones was born into a family of Democrats. But when the South went Republican, after Lyndon Johnson ended segregation in 1964, most of the Joneses went too. “Most everybody voted Republican more than they voted Democrat in recent years,” reflects the avuncular 63-year-old, during a recent campaign pit-stop in Mobile. In other words Mr Jones, who cast his first vote for Johnson’s Republican successor, Richard Nixon, is a Democrat by choice, not cultural inheritance, which in turn gives him an unusual grasp of the passions aroused across America’s political divide. Given that he must woo thousands of Republican voters to have a prayer of victory in a state that picked Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 28 percentage points, this is a useful advantage.
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