Let's honor this improbable Senator

Way back in the fall of 2017, when it was easy to believe our fellow citizens were hopelessly benighted dupes of racist Trumpian populism, the victorious Senate campaign of Doug Jones was a reminder that all was not lost. Behind a tidal wave of Black women's energy, the good people of Alabama voted to replace their neo-Confederate Senator Jeff Sessions, not with a crazy child molester, but this unprepossessing former U.S. attorney of moderate Democratic sentiments. To those of us in despair over Trump, it was the first breakthrough.

He's up for re-election this year against either the same Sessions or a Trumpian Auburn University football coach, Tommy Tuberville, depending on who wins the GOP primary. Nobody much expects Jones to have a chance. Trump is up 53-39 over Biden in Alabama -- less of a margin than in 2016, but daunting.

But here's Jones standing up for racial decency in his mild way. Responding to George Floyd's murder, he says "Across Alabama, folks are struggling with this ... The road to racial justice has taken far too long.”

Jones has some credibility: what fame he had before the Senate campaign was as the prosecutor of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African-American girls. He also indicted Eric Rudolph, the domestic terrorist who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics.

I suspect the target of this ad is not the good citizens of Alabama, but me and people like me. Jones needs national support if he's to have a campaign at all. But I'll take this from him; he deserves.