A few days after Doug Jones’ Senate win in Alabama, I read various assessments and offered some more refined thoughts about the significance of this remarkable event at New York:

The celebration among Democrats after Doug Jones’s unlikely victory in an Alabama special Senate election on December 12 was sufficiently extravagant that it’s wise to take a step back and examine what it did and didn’t mean for American politics going forward. Iconic political journalist Elizabeth Drew gave excited donkeys a bit of an ice bath in a piece for The New Republic warning against an over-interpretation of the results.

The two candidates we wound up with down in Alabama, notes Drew, were like a “planetary collision: We’re not likely to see another like it for a very long time.” She rightly observes that Roy Moore was very problematic to a lot of conservative business types in the state long before the sexual-misconduct allegations arose. And she’s also spot-on in observing that Jones threaded a difficult needle by being moderate enough for white voters while having a deep and authentic connection with African-Americans. And he won by an eyelash thanks to a fortuitous series of events. “[Jones] was the proverbial dog walking on his hind legs.”

But while we are not going to see “a series of Alabamas” in 2018, there are some significant and very real implications for the future, so long as one keeps in mind the very uniqueness of the situation that Drew points out.

A 2017 win in Alabama does not, for example, mean Democrats can suddenly stipulate that the 2018 Senate elections in similarly red territories like Wyoming or Nebraska will be competitive. There’s actually nothing that happened in Alabama that is especially relevant in highly conservative states with few minority voters and no huge controversies hanging over the GOP candidates. Yes, maybe Democrats will do several points better than they have done in the recent past, but not well enough to create a competitive contest.

On the other hand, Jones will be in the Senate until at least 2020, and no one can take that away from Democrats, who can now see a credible path to a Senate majority in 2018 without future Alabamas, since a net gain of just two seats will flip the chamber. Nevada and Arizona looked like promising states for Democrats long before the Jones/Moore contest. John McCain’s declining health could well mean there will be a second Arizona seat at stake next November. And yes, the Alabama results do mean Democrats can dream of an upset win in very red Tennessee, where former governor and Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen goes into the race in much stronger shape than Doug Jones did.

Even before Alabama, Democratic Senate incumbents facing voters in 2018 in relatively conservative states were doing well; none of them are in immediate danger of losing, and only a couple are highly vulnerable at the moment. Now it is more obvious than ever that partisan polarization has its limits, even in the most conservative states, if only because Republicans in places other than Alabama have their own internal differences that could prove fatal. It’s looking more and more like Democrats can play offense on a Senate landscape that looked so terrible for them going into 2017.

Beyond the lowered Senate target for 2018, there are elements of the Alabama results that are not necessarily a product of unique local circumstances. Yes, the identity of the two candidates had something to do with the impressive African-American turnout that won the race for Jones. But we saw similarly high African-American — and also Hispanic and Asian-American — turnout in Virginia last month. Similarly, Jones did very well among younger voters, as did Ralph Northam in Virginia. It looks like the so-called Obama Coalition of young and minority voters that usually fails to show up proportionately in non-presidential elections might well go to the polls next year, and that could be decisive in close races.

Should Democrats be excited about the renewed possibility of a 2018 wave? Absolutely. A Democratic House would throw a huge monkey wrench into any legislative plans for the GOP in the last half of Donald Trump’s term. And a Democratic Senate would be even more devastating to Trump, taking away his ability to stack SCOTUS and other federal courts with extremists enjoying life-time appointments. Taking away the GOP’s trifecta would also make it immeasurably more difficult for Trump and his allies to halt enforcement of, or further pare back, laws and regulations affecting the environment, the economy, or health and safety that corporations find annoying.

So the wrong lessons for Democrats to take from what happened in Alabama last week are that all states are now purple or that 2018 will be a cakewalk. A tough Senate landscape, gerrymandering of the House by Republicans, trench warfare involving 36 gubernatorial races and even more state legislative races, the seemingly endless cash available to the GOP, hard-t0-predict international and domestic events — all these factors could make the midterms an abattoir for Democrats and disappointment at the end of the road a real possibility. But just a year after widespread talk of Democrats being weaker than at any time since the Harding Administration, happier days seem to be here again.

At New York Magazine, Frank Rich explains “How Democrats Can Win the Spin War Over the Trump Tax Cuts,” and notes “Already, the GOP’s biggest donors, the bill’s biggest beneficiaries, have been pouring money into campaigns to sell it to voters. It’s up to Democrats to get into the trenches with tough and clever counter-messaging that will explain in concrete and un-wonky terms why the bill is a disaster for most Americans. Mere scare words (eg., Nancy Pelosi’s invocation of “Armageddon”) will not reach those turned-off-by-Trump suburbanites who have been defecting from the GOP in special elections this year, from Virginia to Alabama…The midterms could well be a wave election but not if Democrats fail to make their case and instead repeat the Clinton campaign error of expecting anti-Trumpism to do most of the work for them. In that regard, I have to confess to being baffled by the prevailing liberal political spot on television these days — the ad in which the Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer calls for Trump’s impeachment. David Axelrod was exactly right when he called it “more of a vanity project than a call for action.” What is the ad’s point after all? As long as Congress remains in GOP hands, there will be no impeachment. Period. What anti-Trump voter (now nearly two-thirds of the country) needs to be reminded that this president is unfit for the White House? This ad amounts to little more than a masturbatory diversion, wasting time, energy, and money that could instead be poured into the blistering economic argument required to flip one or both chambers to the Democrats.”

In his article, “The Double-Edged Sword of a Party-Line Victory” at The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein writes that “The tax bill likewise failed to win support from even a single Democrat. By historical standards, that’s even more striking than the ACA’s partisan shutout. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s sweeping tax cuts drew support from 25 Democrats in the Senate and 113 in the House. George W. Bush appealed more narrowly with his 2001 tax cut, but even then, 28 House Democrats and 12 Democratic senators voted yes. But not even the 12 House Democrats in districts that supported Trump last year nor the 10 Democratic senators facing 2018 races in states he carried felt compelled to support this latest measure…To pass their bill, Republicans ignored the hostile polls, the unified Democratic opposition, and a succession of independent analyses showing the plan would massively increase the federal debt while generating minimal additional growth.”

From David Weigel’s article, “Democrats ready year-long assault against tax cut package” at PowerPost: “Democrats, routed but unified against the tax bill, plan to make it the centerpiece of a midterm campaign — one that may play out in a growing economy where the worst predictions about the tax cuts fall flat…Democrats are raring to point out the difference between what Republicans ran on and what they passed. The most memorable visual symbol of the tax-cut push, a hypothetical postcard to demonstrate the simplicity of the GOP’s tax plan, disappeared as Republicans put together a compromise that expanded the number of tax brackets and left many loopholes intact…The idea of the bill as a corporate giveaway was key to Democrats’ final pre-vote messaging, including a moment in the Senate debate when Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) flung open  one of the Senate’s doors and pointed to McConnell’s office to dramatize the influence of lobbyists…It will also be a key part of a 2018 campaign by the #NotOnePenny coalition, formed by progressives to oppose the tax cut. Next year, the coalition will up its media buy from $5 million to $10 million, hold 100 days of anti-tax cut events, and rally on April 15 in Washington “against tax policy that further rigs the economy in favor of the wealthy.”

Bryce Covert’s NYT op-ed “The Trojan Horse in the Tax Bill,” outs the Republicans’s long-term strategy: “…Now that they’ve succeeded in passing a tax package that will reduce government revenues so much, the ensuing cost will serve as the excuse to get everything else they want. They’ll count on our short memories to forget who created larger deficits in the first place. Those deficits will serve as the motivation to enact cuts they’ve sought all along. The tax bill isn’t just a regressive giveaway to corporations and the rich. It’s a Trojan horse with deep government reductions stuffed inside.”

“At least four senators are urging Al Franken to reconsider resigning, including two who issued statements calling for the resignation two weeks ago and said they now feel remorse over what they feel was a rush to judgment,” Edward-Isaac Dovere writes at Politico. “Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who urged Franken not to step down to begin with — at least not before he went through an Ethics Committee investigation — said the Minnesota senator was railroaded by fellow Democrats.” It’s not impossible that Franken could still retract his resignation. But it looks like it would be a sloppy mess, since his replacement, MN Lt. Governor Tina Smith, has already been named, spoke at a press conference about it and is working with Franken to facilitate a smooth transition, reports Dovere. The Washington Post reports that Franken will resign on January 2nd. But it appears that Democratic leaders and rank and file will remain divided about whether Franken was treated fairly.

At The New Republic, Jeet Heer’s “The Democrats’ Risky Pursuit of Suburban Republicans” includes this skeptical observation: “There’s one very compelling reason to be wary of this pursuit of disaffected suburban Republicans: Hillary Clinton tried it last year….The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reportedly found that in the 2014 and 2016 elections, suburban voters were “inching away from Republicans, but too slowly to flip many seats.”…Suburban ex-Republicans are worth pursuing, but not at the risk of diluting liberal policy commitments. While opposition to Trump is helping to swell Democratic ranks, the truth remains that excessive centrism will dishearten core voters. Watering down the party’s identity only ensures more defeats further down the road, when Trump won’t be around to scare up an ad hoc Democratic coalition.”

At The Nation, Anna Heyward spotlights one of the largest organized groups supporting Democratic candidates and policies, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and notes that “24,000 people—70 to 80 percent of them under 35—who have joined DSA since November 2016.” Further, Heyward writes that “DSA is now frequently referred to as “the largest socialist organization in the United States,” with 32,000 dues-paying members…Today, the median age of DSA’s membership is 33, down from 68 in 2013…There are now more than 300 local groups—are experimenting with doing their own electoral campaigns, some with running local candidates. In the state and municipal elections across the country on November 7, 15 DSA members won their races, bringing the total number of DSA members in elective office to around 35, as high as it’s ever been.” Founder Michael Harrington’s slogan, “the left wing of the possible,” still serves as a sort of unifying principle. Most current members strongly supported the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders and generally share a commitment to vote Democratic. But there is a sizable faction that is open to forming or supporting a third, more leftist political party.

Rachel Maddow reports on a promising way to fight against gerrymandering:

Democracy: A Journal of ideas is running a symposium, featuring six articles on the topic, “What Is Red-State Liberalism?” Here’s a teaser on the “importance of red-state liberals” from the introduction by the editors: “First, they’re trying to uphold our values in some places where doing that isn’t easy…Second, their liberalism, while rock-solid, is nevertheless a little different from yours. Mostly, these differences aren’t about issue positions but come down to questions of sensibility and lifestyle. How does it affect a person to be in the decided minority, to have many conservative friends, to live outside the blue bubbles many of us inhabit?…We’re delighted that the package includes an important piece by Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and agriculture secretary under President Obama. Vilsack offers up smart and specific steps progressives need to take to reconnect to rural voters and their concerns.”

Ronald Brownstein’s “Democrats have a new Southern strategy” at CNN Politics provides a solid update of Democratic prospects in the region. In the euphoric wake of the election of Alabama’s Doug Jones, however, a couple of adjustmentss may help Dems get a workable strategy on track.

Brownstein writes that “the coalition that Jones mobilized closely resembled the voter alignments that have powered other recent Democratic victories in governors’ races in Virginia, North Carolina and Louisiana.” Further,

…Above all, Jones demonstrated that Democrats could simultaneously inspire passionate turnout from their base supporters, led by African-Americans, and make inroads with centrist white-collar white voters — each of which, for different reasons, is recoiling from Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency. That combination allowed Jones to overcome Moore’s lopsided margins among blue-collar, evangelical, older and rural whites — the four building blocks of the Trump coalition…Keeping momentum and agreement among those groups won’t be easy, but Democrats see it as a possible pathway to majorities in the 2018 midterm elections.

…Jones’ victory was centered on minorities, millennial voters and college-educated suburban whites, especially women. That’s exactly the formula Democrats now depend on in most states. But even with strong African-American support, Southern Democrats until recently come up short, largely because they haven’t attracted nearly as many college-educated whites as their party does elsewhere.

Now, with Democratic constituencies energized and suburban swing voters uneasy about Trump, Southern Democrats are suddenly finding it more possibe to assemble the coalition that the party relies on in other regions. And that could create new opportunities for Democrats across the South, most immediately in suburban House districts in 2018, but potentially also in statewide contests such as the 2018 governor’s race in Georgia and Senate battle in Tennessee.

Brownstein acknowledges that “Jones benefited from the unique vulnerabilities of his opponent, Republican Roy Moore, who was a deeply polarizing figure even before he was besieged by allegations that he had pursued relationships with teenage girls, some of them underage, while in his 30s.” In addition, Jones was a uniquely well-qualified candidate in terms of the interracial bridge-building the south (and America) so urgently needs. As the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, who secured convictions of Ku Klux Klansmen Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, the perpetrators of the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church in 1963, which took the lives of four young girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, Jones had significant credibility with Alabama’s African American voters, particularly Black women.

Jones, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, did not just stumble into the case and do a competent job of securing a measure of justice for the victims of this horrific atrocity. He took real initiative and demonstrated extraordinary tenacity in winning the case. Alabama is somewhat unique in the south in that its African American activist community has carried forward the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement to a significant extent. Some veterans of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama are still alive and their children are carrying forward the acitivist tradition to a new generation. They  found a worthy state-wide candidate in Jones, whose track record merited the energetic voter mobilization in the state’s Black communities that won the day for the Democratic candidate.

That’s not to say that investing more resources in African American communities in other southern states won’t pay off for Dems; it probably will. But Jones’s victory in Alabama underscores the importance of Dems running really good candidates in the south, who have demonstrated credibility in terms of interracial bridge-building.

Jones and his campaign manager Joe Trippi also played a very smart hand with respect to white voters. They navigated a nuanced strategy that mined the vein of educated white voters who were ready to vote Democratic, without alienating Republican voters who were disgusted with Moore and who were likely to skip voting on election day. As Ed Kilgore notes at New York Magazine, “Jones threaded a difficult needle by being moderate enough for white voters while having a deep and authentic connection with African-Americans.” Jones and Trippi skillfully avoided the myriad booby traps awaiting a Democratic candidate in 2017 Alabama. Credit Jones and Trippi also with a tireless work ethic — Jones showed up everywhere in Alabama and put in the time needed to cement the critical personal relationships that can make a real difference in a close race.

Democrats should also note that, while white non-college voters, went overwhelmingly for Republicans in the special elections of 2017, there is not a lot of wiggle room left here. In close elections, Dems can’t afford to lose more of these numerous voters, who are about 45 percent of the electorate, nation-wide, perhaps more in the south. There is also the possibility that adept Democratic candidates can actually improve performance with white, non-college voters, without alienating African American voters. Even a small improvement could produce stable, enduring Democratic majorities in key purple states, especially FL, NC and VA.

Another problem with any unified field ‘southern strategy’ theory is that there are major differences in the demographics of southern states, particularly with respect to African American voters — who are 37.3 percent in Mississippi, but just 11.9 percent in Texas. Democrats aren’t going to get much traction in many southern states without making at least some headway with white working-class voters.

So Democrats should tread carefully in talking about a creating a new southern strategy. But Dems can certainly do better in the south with good candidates and well-crafted strategy — and the Jones campaign does indeed provide some instructive lessons.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

In a word, no. That is to say, if there is a decent sized wave the Democrats have an excellent chance of taking back the House, despite the fact they are disadvantaged by gerrymandering. And by a decent-sized wave, I don’t mean the Democrats carrying the House popular vote by a gaudy margin of 8-10 points or more. They can probably do it with considerably less.

Alan Abramowitz shows this in an elegant little analysis just published on Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz controls for the effect of post-2010 gerrymandering–which he does find is significant and large–and still finds that the Democrats could get a House majority with around 52 percent of the two party House vote (prior to 2010, the model indicates that slightly less than a majority of the popular vote–49 percent–would have sufficed).

And 52 percent looks like a pretty easy target to hit, based on results we have been seeing in the generic Congressional ballot polling. Abramowitz notes:

In recent weeks, Democrats have been averaging a lead of between eight and 10 points according to RealClearPolitics….that large a lead on the generic ballot would predict a popular vote margin of around five points and a gain of between 30 and 33 seats in the House — enough to give Democrats a modest but clear majority.

There you have it. Gerrymandering is bad….but it is far from an insuperable obstacle.

Among “10 Thoughts After the Alabama Senate Election” by Nathan L. Gonzales at Roll Call: “It was a good night for the polling average. Neither result should have been a surprise, considering Moore had a narrow 48 percent to 46 percent advantage in the final RealClearPolitics average. But that was much closer to the final outcome than late polling which showed Moore with a 9-point lead (Emerson College) and Jones with a 10-point lead (FOX News)…Even though turnout was higher than expected, about 35 percent of voting-age Alabamians chose to vote in the most highly-publicized election in the state in recent history.”

Alabama’s African American voters were instrumental in the election of Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate. But that does not mean that there was no voter suppression. As Brentin Mock writes at CityLab, “The Daily Beast reported seeing police set up near polling locations to check people for warrants in Montgomery, Alabama, one of the state’s urban centers where black voters helped send Jones to victory. There is a long history of this specific kind of police badge-sponsored voter intimidation in Alabama (and other states) to frighten black voters away from the polls…there were reports of long lines caused, in part, by voting machines that broke down throughout the day. Secretary of State Merrill also failed to deploy an adequate number of polling officials and resources…There were no shortage of voter ID problems in yesterday’s election, with poll workers questioning the validity of some voters’ IDs when not rejecting themoutright…Black voters helped Jones win despite voter suppression, not because they were spared from it.”

“Jones did win, by 2 percentage points. Which means we can quantify the Alabama swing as 24% toward Democrats,” notes Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium. “It should be noted that over 15% of this swing occurred before the Washington Post bombshell. A 15-point swing is consistent with other special elections this year. Yesterday’s election could only be made possible by Trump’s deep unpopularity…Exit polls showed that 91% of Republicans voted for Moore. The discrepancy between that and 82% suggests that turnout played a major role – see my Twitter feed for analytics from others quantifying this.”

Also check out David Litt’s Daily Beast post, “How Doug Jones Destroyed Roy Moore’s Whole Shtick with One Well-Chosen Verb.” Exit poll analysis is revealing. But candidate message also matters. Litt, a former speechwriter, argues that Doug Jones delivered a master-stroke one-liner that revealed Moore’s essential phoniness: “When you see me with a gun, folks, I’ll be climbing in and out of a deer stand or a turkey blind, not prancing around on a stage in a cowboy suit.” Litt continues, “…Parse that phrase closely, and you realize it’s a body blow – not just to Moore, but to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and the politics they champion. Litt notes further, “instead of fighting on the culture warrior’s turf, Jones turned to ridicule. “Prancing around on a stage in cowboy suit.” Litt adds, “Look at the word choice in that sentence. Not “walking” or “marching,” but “prancing.” Not at a rally, but “on a stage.” Not dressed like a cowboy, but “in a cowboy suit.” These were precise, cutting words. They didn’t just make fun of his opponent. They went straight at the central conceit of his public persona – his toughness. Words like “prancing” and “cowboy suit” suggest the opposite of masculinity. Where Roy Moore presented himself as an alpha male, Doug Jones exposed him as a kind of right-wing cabaret act…in the age of Trump and Bannon, plenty of them will feature ersatz tough-guys eager to turn politics into a pissing contest. By making his opponent look ridiculous, Doug Jones reminded us that Democrats don’t have to play that game to win elections. With carefully-chosen words, and a healthy appreciation for the power of mockery, they can corral the pigs without getting mud on their hands.”

James Hohman explains why “Democrats risk overplaying their hand by pushing for Trump’s resignation” at The Daily 202: “Many veteran operatives and elder statesmen in the Democratic firmament worry that engaging in this fight is not the way to win in 2018. They think Hillary Clinton blundered by trying to turn last year’s election into a referendum on Trump’s baggage and boorish behavior. They worry that Democrats won’t fully capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity if they’re perceived as overplaying their hand. They’re nervous that the conversation over whether Trump should step down has sucked up too much political oxygen, possibly at the expense of the tax debate — which a lot of these Democrats believe they can win since so many voters already see the GOP bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the middle class…Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said it’s very hard to ask Trump to resign when all the accusations of sexual assault against him were out in the open before the 2016 election. “The American people knew this, and they voted for him anyway,” Rendell said in an interview. “If there were any new allegations, that might be something different. But they knew it, and they voted for him.”

Further, writes Hohman, “Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the center-left group Third Way and a senior official in Clinton’s White House, proposes an 80-20 rule for Democrats. “Our view is that every Democrat has to follow their conscience in how they discuss Trump and determine the proper call to action should be — resignation, investigation, impeachment, etc.,” he said. “But by Election Day 2018, with control of Congress now clearly in the balance, 80 percent of what voters hear from Democrats better be about what they will do to ensure that everyone, everywhere has the opportunity to earn a good life. That means they can talk Trump 20 percent of the time. But the focus should be on opportunity. Doug Jones and Ralph Northam didn’t win by calling for impeachment or resignation. Pretty soon, Democrats on the ballot in November will need to become laser-focused on their voters’ lives.”

At The Atlantic, however, Ronald Brownstein makes a compelling case that Trump is a disaster for 2018 Republican candidates, and it would be political malpractice for Dems not to take full advantage of it: “One of the clearest messages from 2017’s big contests is that other Republicans are now closely bound to their volatile and vitriolic president. Exit polls showed that among voters who disapproved of Trump, the Democrats won 82 percent in New Jersey, 87 percent in Virginia, and 93 percent in Alabama. Few congressional Republicans have tried to establish much independence from Trump, yet in most places he is even less popular than he was on Tuesday in Alabama, where exit polls showed voters splitting evenly over his job performance. After Alabama, Republicans up and down the ballot face urgent choices about whether they will continue to lash themselves to the mast of Trump’s storm-tossed presidency…“Anti-Trump fever is now so strong among Democrats, young voters, and independents that the GOP is likely to face a surge in turnout on the Democratic side that will make the 2018 midterms lurch toward the demographics of a presidential year,” says longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy, who advised Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he first won his Alabama Senate seat, in 1996. “That is a looming disaster that could well cost the GOP control of the House. We are in a Trump-driven worst-case situation now.””

Nate Cohn observes at The Upshot that “many red-state Democrats are favorites to win re-election, despite the steady national trend toward a tighter relationship between presidential and Senate vote choice. Polls show that red-state Democrats remain popular, and most hold a lead over many of their strongest potential challengers…With Mr. Jones’s victory in Alabama, Democrats need only two more seats to take control, and they could have other opportunities with possible vacancies in Republican-held Arkansas and Arizona…My sense is that Democrats would be favorites in Nevada and Arizona if 2018 turned out to be a so-called wave election like the 2006 or 2010 midterms. This year’s special elections and national political indicators suggest that development is likelier than not.”

Mark Murray reports at NBC News that “Democrats now enjoy their largest advantage in congressional preference in nine years, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, signaling a dangerous political environment for Republicans entering next year’s midterm elections….Fifty percent of registered voters say they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, versus 39 percent who want Republicans in charge…This past October, Democrats had a 7-point advantage on congressional preference, 48 percent to 41 percent…In this most recent poll, Democrats hold a whopping 48-point lead in congressional preference among voters ages 18-34 (69 percent to 21 percent), a 20-point lead among female voters (54 percent to 34 percent) and a 12-point lead among independent voters (43 percent to 31 percent)…By contrast, Republicans have a 2-point edge among white voters (46 percent to 44 percent) and a 12-point advantage with whites without a college degree (50 percent to 38 percent)…Notably, Democrats lead among male voters by 2 points, 46 percent to 44 percent, and among seniors by 4 points, 46 percent to 42 percent…The NBC/WSJ poll also shows Democrats with the intensity advantage, with 59 percent of Democratic voters saying they have a high level of interest in next year’s elections (registering either a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale), versus 49 percent of Republican voters saying the same thing.”

After sorting through the Alabama results and comparing them to other 2017 special elections, I figured it was time to look ahead, so I did just that at New York.

[T]he [Alabama] results were entirely consistent with the pro-Democratic trend that has persisted throughout 2017’s special and off-year elections. That would have been the case even if Roy Moore had eked out a narrow win. Republicans can, as Donald Trump has done, rationalize this or that 2017 defeat as being an anomaly. But it is impossible to take an honest look at the overall pattern of 2017 contests without hearing the not-so-distant rumbling of a likely 2018 wave for Democrats.

Harry Enten conducted a comprehensive analysis of 2017 special elections — all 70 of them — taking into account the established partisan “lean” of the jurisdiction being contested.

“The Democratic margin has been 12 percentage points better, on average, than the partisan lean in each race. Sometimes this has resulted in a seat flipping from Republican to Democratic (e.g. in the Alabama Senate face-off on Tuesday or Oklahoma’s 37th state Senate District contest last month). Sometimes it has meant the Democrat barely lost a race you wouldn’t think a Democrat would be competitive in (e.g. in South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District in June). Sometimes it’s merely been the case that the Democrat won a district by an even wider margin than you’d expect (e.g. in Pennsylvania’s 133 House District last week).

“The point is that Democrats are doing better in all types of districts with all types of candidates. You don’t see this type of consistent outperformance unless there’s an overriding pro-Democratic national factor.”

The best elections to examine in order to figure out whether Democrats can win back the U.S. House in 2018 are the seven congressional special elections of 2017. Republicans won five and Democrats two (a winning percentage that’s not surprising since all but one of these elections were triggered by members of Congress joining the Trump administration). But as Enten notes, the average vote-percentage swing to Democrats from prior established partisan levels was 16 points. In a polarized electorate, that’s a large swing indeed.

In thinking about this pattern, keep in mind that the demographic groups most likely to vote Democratic typically don’t proportionately turn out for non-presidential elections, and particularly for special elections. There is a powerful trend under way.

While any single special congressional election is not necessarily predictive of future election results, in larger batches they are highly correlated to the next election coming down the pike. Enten looks at special elections prior to the last six midterms and finds that on average the partisan swing in the former is within three percentage points of the partisan swing in the latter. That would suggest a double-digit Democratic swing (or something close to it) in 2018.

If that seems extravagant, look at the congressional generic ballot (a simple polling question about which party the respondents would like to control the U.S. House), itself highly correlated with the national House popular vote. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Democrats currently have an 11-point advantage, the highest they’ve enjoyed since last year’s elections.

The question of exactly how big a margin in the national House popular vote Democrats would need to gain the 24 net seats required for control of the House is a difficult one. Political scientist Alan Abramowitz has just published an analysis of House elections dating back to 1946, which also takes into account the impact of GOP-controlled redistricting after 2010, and concludes that a Democratic win as small as four points could do the trick. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report thinks a seven- or eight-point win would be necessary.

Despite the clear trends, there remain a lot of unknown variables as we head toward the midterms, most notably presidential approval ratings and retirements. But the current occupant of the White House has a highly polarizing approach to politics that almost certainly caps his approval ratings (which have never been above 46 percent in any event). And Republican retirements are definitely outpacing those of Democrats; 26 House Republicans are either calling it a day or running for other offices. There’s no telling where the much-rumored investigations of sexual misconduct by large numbers of congressmen will lead. But as Jonathan Chait points out, there are 219 Republican men in Congress as opposed to just 132 Democratic men, so the odds of net damage to the GOP (and to a GOP-controlled institution) are high.

There is more at stake next year, obviously, than control of the U.S. House. Thirty-six states will hold gubernatorial elections, and all but a few will hold state legislative elections. Partisan performance at the state level could have a crucial effect not just on the public policies of the jurisdictions involved, but on positioning for the next redistricting cycle, which will begin between 2020 and 2022. And even in Washington, Democrats now see an opportunity to win back the U.S. Senate, which would have seemed laughably impossible a year ago.

All in all, we will probably look back a year from now and see 2017 as a harbinger of a strong Democratic performance in the midterms. Its precise strength will determine whether Donald Trump enters the second half of his presidential term merely embattled or fully caged and cornered.

The timing of net neutrality repeal may well be a deliberate effort to distract voters from the brutal Republican tax bill. But net neutrality repeal may nonetheless make the GOP and its corporate supporters rue the day that they linked their images to this ill-considered measure. As John Nichols writes in his article, “Gutting Net Neutrality Is the Trump Administration’s Most Brutal Blow to Democracy Yet: This cannot be the end of a free and open Internet. Activists must fight on in the courts, in Congress, and in the streets” in The Nation:

…Despite overwhelming public support for a free and open Internet, the CFC’s Trump-aligned majority engineered a 3-2 vote to overturn net-neutrality rules that have required Internet service providers to treat all online communications equally—and, in a related move, the commission majority rejected the authority of the FCC to protect a free and open Internet.

Commission chair Ajit Pai, the telecommunications-industry lawyer who has done Donald Trump’s bidding in debates on a host of media and democracy issues, has cleared the way for service providers to establish information superhighways for political and corporate elites, while consigning communications from grassroots activists to digital dirt roads…Pai and his associates have moved to create what former FCC commissioner Michael Copps refers to as “a gatekeeper’s paradise,” where “our civic dialogue—the news and information upon which a successful self-governing society depends upon—would be further eroded.”

…Much of the debate about overturning net neutrality has been focused on the damage the move will do to consumers, and there can be no question that clearing the way for unprecedented profiteering by telecommunications corporations barters off our digital future to the same grifters who have turned broadcast- and cable-media platforms into vast wastelands of commercial excess. “ISPs want to turn the internet into cable,” says Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA). “[They] want people to pay for every application.”

Nichols adds that “Net neutrality’s defenders will fight on in Congress, in the courts and at the ballot box to overturn this wrongheaded decision. Groups associated with the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition—led by the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Free Press Action Fund, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and 18 Million Rising—intend to fight on for net neutrality with legislative and legal strategies…State attorneys general will also be suing. California, New York and Washington have all announced plans to sue — and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says he expects to that many more states will join the initiative.”

It’s hard to imagine any other initiative that would do more to piss off young voters. David Shepardson and Ginger Gibson of Reuters explain how “Net neutrality repeal gives U.S. Democrats fresh way to reach millennials,” and observe that “Democrats are hoping to paint the repeal of the rules by the FCC, which is now chaired by President Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai, as evidence Republicans are uninterested in young people and consumer concerns at large.” Further,

Studies show young people disproportionately use the internet compared with older Americans and polls have shown they feel passionately about fair and open internet access. Democrats believe the issue may resonate with younger voters who may not be politically active on other issues like taxes or foreign policy…Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist, said polls have found young people are favouring Democrats in the most recent elections and that the net neutrality issue could be used to gather support in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.

He said while older voters tend to care about Medicare, polls are finding that younger voters are motivated by net neutrality…”Net neutrality is the latest data point for voters that the administration is more interested in doing what big companies want them to do, than what people think is in their interest,“ Ferguson said. ”That’s a narrative that is politically toxic for Republicans.”

Gibson and Shepardson note that “Democrats facing difficult election battles next year are already weighing in strongly in favour of net neutrality rules…Senator Bill Nelson likely will face a difficult battle in Florida and sent a letter earlier in the week opposing the change in net neutrality rules. Several Democratic candidates are sending campaign fundraising appeals citing net neutrality…The changes could also become issues in a number of House races across the country, where Democrats will need to win more than 25 seats to control the chamber.”

Harper Neidig writes at The Hill that “More than 80 percent of voters oppose the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) plan to repeal its net neutrality rules, according to a new poll from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation…The survey presented respondents with detailed arguments from both supporters and opponents of the repeal plan, before asking them where they stood on the rules. It found that 83 percent overall favored keeping the FCC rules, including 75 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of independents.”

Regarding congressional action to challenge net neutrality repeal, Don Seifert writes in the Boston Business Journal that, “Just minutes after the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal rules intended to bar internet service providers from blocking or slowing down specific websites, Sen. Edward Markey said he’s filing a bill to put it back in place…Markey authored a resolution, which was signed on by 14 other Democratic senators and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, that would rescind FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s vote to repeal the 2015 net neutrality rules.” Expect that Markey’s bill is going to get a lot more Democratic sponsors in short order.

As for protest against coporations behind the repeal of net neutrality, it’s clear that three companies more than any others, are spear-heading repeal. As Lee Drutman and Zander Furnas note at the Dot,  “Going back to 2005 (when the phrase “net neutrality” first shows up in lobbying disclosure reports), the principle’s biggest opponents (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and their allies) have lobbied against net neutrality about three times as hard as the biggest proponents of neutrality…” These three companies are highly vulnerable to boycotts and stockholders campaigns.

After watching the astonishing results from Alabama this week, I refreshed an old argument I’ve been making for decades about the need for a new strategy among southern Democrats, and wrote it up for New York:

If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times leading up to yesterday’s special Senate election in Alabama: If only Democrats had nominated a more conservative candidate than Doug Jones, they might have a chance to win an unlikely Senate seat. This argument was generally combined with an attack on the alleged ideological rigidity of Democrats, and specifically focused on abortion policy. Doug Jones, you see, held the standard pro-choice position of Democrats nationally, which meant support for abortion rights as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court more than 40 years ago, including the right to a (rare) late-term abortion in certain limited circumstances.

That doomed him, said a lot of people on both sides of the partisan aisle….

It turns out that Jones’s position on abortion was no impediment to victory. According to exit polls, Jones won 34 percent of the votes of the one-fourth of Alabamians who thought abortion “should be illegal in most cases,” and even 18 percent of those who want to ban abortion “in all cases.” Given the partisan dynamics of the abortion issue, it’s unlikely he would have done better with those voters even if he had been a solid opponent of abortion rights.

Now, some would argue that Roy Moore’s status as an alleged sexual predator made everything else irrelevant, including everything to do with Doug Jones. But exit polls also showed that most votes for or against either candidate did not turn on the Moore allegations alone, or even principally. And lest we forget, polls were showing Jones to be a viable candidate long before the allegations broke — and indeed, a viable candidate against the more conventional conservative Luther Strange.

Jones seems to have defied the old formula for Democratic victory in the Deep South, which meant choosing a partisan differentiator or two and displaying resolute conservatism on everything else. That made sense when a lot of white conservative voters were up for grabs. But after a generation of ideological and partisan polarization, many of the white folks who might have voted for moderate-to-conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn or Zell Miller (two former bosses of mine) in Georgia or Howell Heflin or Fob James in Alabama are now straight-ticket Republican voters. And it’s no accident that Miller and James ended their political careers by becoming Republicans themselves.

As Jones showed, however, there is an increasingly viable route to the age-old southern Democratic formula of securing nearly all of the African-American vote and just enough white voters to get across the line. Instead of appealing to rural conservatives, Democrats can, in many cases, successfully appeal to just enough urban and suburban moderates to reach parity. The exit polls showed Jones winning 30 percent of the white vote and well-above 90 percent of the African-American vote — close to the age-old criteria for winning in a southern state with a sizable black electorate (a bit larger than Virginia’s, a bit smaller than Georgia’s, Mississippi’s, or Louisiana’s). As New York’s Eric Levitz noted today, Jones’s biggest area of improvement over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance was in suburban areas. If this can work in Alabama, whose economy and culture remain very traditional, it can work in other parts of the South as well under the right circumstances, even without a sitting duck like Roy Moore on the ballot.

The best thing about being able to deploy a relatively progressive Democrat like Doug Jones rather than a conservative like Fob James isn’t just that Jones won’t be a functional Republican in Congress (though that’s a large bonus). It’s that Democrats can stop asking African-American voters to loyally support the Donkey ticket despite it featuring so many white pols who take them entirely for granted. The robust African-American turnout in Alabama on December 12 was attributable to many factors, including heroic local organizers, nationally prominent black politicians and celebrities, and the powerful antipathy both Trump and Moore aroused among nonwhite voters. But it didn’t hurt that Alabama’s black voters were turning out for a candidate who had performed a significant service to their community by successfully prosecuting the murderers who perpetrated the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, and who gave every indication that he would vote with left-of-center Democrats in the Senate.

In time, you can envision southern white Democrats returning the favor by running and supporting African-American politicians with views similar to those of Doug Jones and attracting the same kind of biracial coalition. (There’s some precedent for this, particularly in Georgia, where two moderate African-American Democrats held statewide office from 1998 until 2010). That will be both morally and politically essential as white voters represent a significantly smaller percentage of the Democratic electorate. But in any event, the days of southern Democrats being hard to distinguish from Republicans other than by an absence of overt bigotry should be over.

From “Democrats see road map for 2018 in huge turnout among black voters in Alabama” by David Weigel and Eugene Scott at PowerPost: “The Alabama race, like last month’s elections in Virginia, saw Democrats outperform expectations and polling thanks to a surge of nonwhite voters. A year that began with hand-wringing over President Trump’s victory ended with routs and upsets powered by the party’s most loyal supporters. Democrats in Alabama and elsewhere spent Wednesday thanking black voters — and studying what had been so successful in getting them to the polls….“Let me be clear: We won in Alabama and Virginia because black women led us to victory,” said Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez. “Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we can’t take that for granted. Period…Perez highlighted the DNC’s quiet strategy in Alabama, a $1 million investment in millennial and black voter turnout that was not advertised until the election was won. That was just one of the efforts that paid off for Democrats in Alabama, where new third-party groups including Woke Vote and BlackPAC engaged in weeks of voter persuasion and targeted messages…“They are underneath the radar, and that’s why they work so beautifully,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns who has warned Democrats that younger black voters feel taken for granted. “They didn’t just come in at the end and treat black voters like get-out-the-vote targets. They treated them like persuadable voters. They actually engaged on the top issue for African American voters, which is criminal justice reform. And they didn’t dance around the issue of police brutality.”

“Election Day defied the narrative and challenged traditional thinking about racial turnout in off-year and special elections,” writes Vann R. Newkirk II at The Atlantic. “Precincts in the state’s Black Belt, the swathe of dark, fertile soil where the African American population is concentrated, long lines were reported throughout the day, and as the night waned and red counties dominated by rural white voters continued to report disappointing results for Moore, votes surged in from urban areas and the Black Belt. By all accounts, black turnout exceeded expectations, perhaps even passing previous off-year results. Energy was not a problem…As the Cook Political Report editor Dave Wasserman noted on Twitter, turnout was particularly high in the counties with the largest black populations. In Greene County, a small area that is 80 percent black and that Martin Luther King Jr. frequented in his Poor People’s Campaign, the turnout reached 78 percent of that of 2016, an incredible mark given that special elections and midterms usually fall far short of general-election marks. Perry County, also an important mostly black site of voting-rights battles of old, turned out at 75 percent of 2016 levels. Dallas County, whose seat is the city of Selma, hit the 74 percent mark.”

In her HuffPo article, “Democrats Quietly Pumped Resources Into Alabama To Boost Doug Jones,” Amanda Terkel credits the Jones campaign with effe3ctive management of media coverage of their strategy. “For months, Democrats have stayed quiet about what, if anything, they were doing in Alabama to help Doug Jones in the state’s special Senate election. They’d insist they were helping, but they wouldn’t say how…“The Democrats have been doing a lot, but focused on the fact that Doug Jones has put together a really good campaign,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who is leading the Democratic Party’s campaign efforts in Senate races this cycle, told HuffPost last month…This reticence was strategic. They didn’t want Jones, who was running in a state that is heavily Republican, to be burdened by his association with the national Democratic Party. The focus was supposed to stay on him and his Alabama message. So there were no TV ads paid for by party committees and no high-profile transfers of funds to the campaign. ”

At CNN Politics, Eric Bradner explains how “How 2017’s elections gave Democrats a recipe for big midterm wins“: Bradener writes, “The party is turning out minority voters in huge numbers. It’s also winning big with millennials and — in a turnaround from 2016 — has closed its gap with college-educated white voters, particularly women, who are turning out in droves in the suburbs…That Democratic base is also much more energized than Trump’s coalition of older, blue-collar, white supporters in rural America. One especially stark figure that shows the enthusiasm gap: Jones got 93% of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 raw vote total in Alabama on Tuesday, while Moore got just 50% of Trump’s raw vote total. That gulf made up for Jones only getting 8% of Republican voters to cross over and support him…More evidence that points to a blue wave that’s about to crash into 2018: Monmouth University released a new poll Wednesday that showed 51% of registered voters preferring a Democratic candidate for House and just 36% favoring a Republican…That 15-point gap in what’s known as the generic congressional ballot is a full-blown disaster for the GOP.”

Niall Stanage of the Hill notes that “Even Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and a fervent Moore backer, paid tribute to the capacity of Democrats to get their voters to the polls. “One thing you’ve got to give a hats-off to: The [Democratic National Committee] came in here, slipped in here underneath the radar, and did an amazing job of organizing. What’s my favorite word? Ground game. Nice ground game,” Bannon told Breitbart’s editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Daily” on Wednesday.”

Charles Pierce has an eloquent summation of the significance of Jones’s victory in Alabama in hsitorical context at Esquire: “I choose to believe that Selma put Doug Jones over the top because I believe that the country owes that particular place a debt that it only has begun to repay, a debt on which it reneged for decades. His entire campaign was based on getting repayment of that debt back on schedule. Indeed, his entire public career has been dedicated to that. He’s smart enough to recognize what a small miracle his victory actually was for the disenfranchised people on whose behalf he fought and won, and decent enough not to turn his back on them.”

Looking toward the future, McKay Coppins writes in “The Republican Nightmare is Just Beginning: In 2018, party strategists fret, they’ll face a tough electoral landscape—and a bumper crop of fringe candidates” at the Atlantic: “Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon has already pledged to field challengers for every incumbent Republican senator up for reelection next year (with the exception of Ted Cruz). And even if Bannon fails to deliver on his threat, many in the GOP worry that experienced, fully-vetted candidates are going to struggle to beat back a wave of rough-edged Trump imitators who lean into the white identity politics that the president ran on in 2016.”

Republicans arer already scrambling to figure out how to minimize the effects of Jones’s election. As Ali Rogin reports at ABC News, “While his election has powerful political repercussions, Jones’ becoming the 47th Senate Democrat (two independents caucus with the Democrats) will likely have only a modest impact on Republicans’ ability to accomplish their legislative goals, although his joining the Senate will be a strong catalyst for Republicans to finish their major agenda items before he is sworn in…The biggest difference that Jones can make, in terms of Senate votes, is on bills and nominations requiring only a simple majority of 51 votes, like budget-related measures and judicial nominees…On taxes, Jones’ victory could vex Republicans’ count if he is sworn in before Congress sends its bill to Trump’s desk. Jones is expected to be sworn no sooner than Dec. 27, and GOP leaders insist they will have the bill done by Christmas…But if they fail to advance the bill before Jones is seated, Republicans can afford to lose only one of their 51 votes in the Senate and still pass the bill on a party-line vote, with Vice President Mike Pence acting as a tie breaker.”

Alan Abramowitz has some good news for Democrats in his Sabato’s Crystal Ball update on their 2018 prospects in the House of Reps: “…We can estimate the share of the national vote and, therefore, the number of House seats Democrats would be expected to win depending on the Democratic margin on the generic ballot in early September of 2018…According to the data in this table, Democrats will need a margin of at least four points on the generic ballot in order to win a majority of seats in the House in the 2018 midterm election. In recent weeks, Democrats have been averaging a lead of between eight and 10 points according to RealClearPolitics…That large a lead on the generic ballot would predict a popular vote margin of around five points and a gain of between 30 and 33 seats in the House — enough to give Democrats a modest but clear majority.”

Just a few days ago Steve Bannon was a GOP kingmaker who had the President’s ear in his hip pocket. Today his cred as a Republican strategist lies squandered in the fading wake of Roy Moore’s humiliating defeat. As Paul Farhi explains in his article, “Alabama was supposed to turn Steve Bannon and Breitbart into kingmakers. Now what?” at The Washingon Post:

The election of Democrat Doug Jones was a stunning rejection of Bannon and the right-wing news-and-commentary website that pushed Moore’s candidacy despite questions about his moral character — he is accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls while in his 30s — let alone his ability to win an election long assumed to be a slam dunk for any conventional Republican candidate.

The Alabama results suggest that a reckoning is due for both Bannon and Breitbart, whose influence and audience grew exponentially during Trump’s presidential campaign. Since then, as support for Trump has declined, so has Breitbart’s traffic, settling back to the 15 million people a month it drew before a spike around the election last year.

Farhi quotes former Breitbart editor and frequent Bannon critic Ben Shapiro, who says,

“Steve Bannon lost an unloseable race…He thought [Moore] was the best pick of his life. His ego is so wild and his incompetence so large that he brought about the Kama Sutra of political debauchery. Every wrong move in the book was on full display here.”

Bannon stuck with Moore even when a more prudent strategist would have assessed the candidate as fatally wounded and urged a replacement like Jeff Sessions, who gave up the seat in January to become Trump’s attorney general, Shapiro said.

Instead, he said, Bannon doubled down, persuading Trump to throw his support behind Moore, which reluctantly drew the Republican National Committee back into supporting him. Shapiro, excoriating his old boss, said Bannon “grabs onto power with both hands, and he doesn’t let go. But he has so little to show for it and has earned so little of it himself.”

If Trump still feels he owes his election to Bannon, he may now refocus and see Bannon as a reckless ideologue. Trump likes to divide humanity into two camps, winners and losers, and all of a sudden Bannon is looking more like the political equivalent of “The Cooler.” Republican candidates who want to win would now be wise to pay attention to what Bannon advocates — and do the opposite.

Despite President Trump’s proclaimations about how he prizes loyalty, his record is more one of dumping associates in trouble, usually right around the moment that they have become a liability. Now for example, it’s “Roy who?,” instead of “Roy Moore will always vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!” The pattern is a few nice words about the associate about to be dumped, followed by acrid denunciations within a few weeks.

Callum Borchers writes, also at The Post,

“Trump’s direct involvement in the race was almost certainly orchestrated by Bannon, and you would expect Trump, who cares more about winning and losing than anyone, to place the blame at Bannon’s feet,” added Kurt Bardella, president of Endeavor Strategies and a former Breitbart spokesman…

Nevertheless, Bannon could find a way to keep the president’s ear, Bardella said…“Bannon will spin to Trump that last night is the result of a biased media and that Moore is the victim of the ‘fake news,’ the same way Trump is,” Bardella said. “He will try to play to Trump’s worst instincts to preserve his influence. Trump is susceptible to this, as we have seen repeatedly.”

Breitbart and Bannon will still have their die-hard supporters, and gullible primary challengers may seek their counsel now and again. Bannon is already involved in supporting Catherine Templeton in her Republican renegade run for Governor of South Carolina — against Trump’s favored candidate, Governor Henry McMaster, “which could mirror the GOP contest in Alabama that led to Moore’s nomination and ultimate defeat,” notes Meg Kinnard in her AP post, “How Does Alabama Loss Affect Bannon’s S. Carolina Gov Role?”

Jonathan Allen writes at NBC news that Bannon’s latest ploy is to blame Moore’s defeat on Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. Despite McConnell’s tanking approval ratings, that’s going to be a tough sell outside Bannon’s shrinking circle of supporters.

No matter what Bannon undertakes in the near future, however, the very last thing most competitive Republican candidates want to see is Steve Bannon getting off a plane in their states. “I think we got this, but thanks anyway.” As far as Democratic strategy is concerned, the prudent thing to do is just get out of the way, and enjoy the GOP’s demolition derby.