The weakest man in America is running for U.S. Senate in Alabama.
Jeff Sessions, surprising no one, formally announced his intentions to run for his old Senate seat during an interview on Fox News Tuesday night.
The interview was a pathetic, groveling surrender by the former attorney general, as he praised Donald Trump and repeatedly brushed aside Trump’s harsh and embarrassing criticisms of him. Sessions’ interview was preceded by his first ad, which was, somehow, even more pathetic than the interview.
In the ad, Sessions, seated by himself, attempts to win over the Trump sycophants by stressing that he didn’t “write a tell-all book” or say “a cross word about our president” after he was pushed out by Trump. He then went on to praise Trump and the job he’s doing “for Alabama.”
It was, to borrow a popular word from Trump, sad.
Who could vote for this guy?
Here’s Sessions, on the backside of a long life in public office and a few months removed from being U.S. Attorney General. He served 20 years in the U.S. Senate.
And he’s groveling on national TV like he’s a first-year staffer who was caught stealing pens out of the Oval Office.
This is your Senate frontrunner, Alabama.
Is that what we’ve become in this state? So weak and cowardly ourselves that we would elect a man who won’t stand up for himself even when he knows he was right?
Look, Jeff Sessions is an awful, ignorant, hateful public servant who has spent his decades in office ensuring that any and every minority group suffered just a little more and a little longer if he had any say-so whatsoever. But in this one specific instance — his decision to recuse from the Russia investigation — he happened to be right.
And everyone in America knows he was right. The only reason Trump is mad at Sessions is because Sessions refused to take a bullet for Trump and illegally block the investigation.
These are facts.
But Sessions is so weak he won’t just say that. He won’t stand up for himself, or for the rule of law that he proclaims to cherish so deeply.
Instead, he crawls back on his hands and knees to praise the con man and beg forgiveness.
Because he thinks that will get him votes.
Just like Bradley Byrne thinks that pretending he had an incomplete lobotomy will help him win GOP votes. And just like Tommy Tuberville thinks if he just keeps saying the word “folks” followed by the most offensive thing he can think of about any minority group it will help him win votes.
All three of them so completely and utterly turned to mush by a former reality TV star who has never worked a day in his life and has never served anyone other than himself.
But then, maybe this is the perfect GOP field for Alabama.
It is certainly the best illustration of the choice that has doomed us for our entire existence: Reality vs. The Facade.
On the one side, there is this group of groveling goobers selling people a line of total BS. Not one of them has a plan for actually helping working people in this state. Instead, they just travel around the state every day, calling into radio shows and jabbering in front of rotary clubs, telling anyone who will listen how much they love Trump and how they loved Trump before anyone else and how they will be the Trump, Trump, Trumpiest of them all.
Which is quite the tactic considering that Trump has KILLED this state. His tariffs and idiotic bickering with foreign leaders have crushed Alabama manufacturers and farmers.
Yet, not a peep from any of the GOP candidates about that.
On the other side, there is Doug Jones, just working away, helping average Alabama workers live better lives. Passing bipartisan bills left and right that protect workers’ pensions and benefits, that provide job training programs for workers who might lose their jobs to automation, that protect public education, that provide funding for rural health care programs.
Jones hasn’t run from a fight. He hasn’t placated anyone. He hasn’t backed away from criticizing both Democrats and Republicans at times.
That’s because he’s his own man. Which is something I thought we valued in this state.
The general consensus, though, is that Jones — the only man with a spine in this race — is toast against the Republican field. Which makes perfect sense.
Alabamians have been voting against their own interests for decades. Why stop now?
