Alabama is a reliably red state and the election of Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) was attributed mostly to his Republican opponent having a scandal involving underage minors. It's for that reason that many believe Jones won't survive reelection in November.
Writing for the conservative site The Bulwark, Matthew Stokes said that he's not so sure that Jones is going down.
"While Jones won’t be facing a tiny-gun-toting clown like Roy Moore, each of his potential opponents has a myriad of flaws. [Jeff] Sessions is weighed down by all his Trump-related baggage, while [Tommy] Tuberville is a political newcomer who has never held political office—nor, it seems, a coherent political thought," Stokes wrote.
The race between Sessions and Tuberville has turned into a state-based version of the debate between President Donald Trump and Sessions that has played out on Twitter and in the media.
"Tuberville attacked Sessions for abandoning Donald Trump in his great hour of need, a message that seems to have resonated with pro-Trump diehards. No matter how much Sessions may have helped both Trump’s candidacy and his early months in office, his failure to protect the president from Mueller has proven to be an unpardonable sin," said Stokes.
"Meanwhile, Tuberville has left himself open to a Trumpist attack from Sessions in the area of trade; the former coach is far more sympathetic to free trade—and, consequently, relations with China—than either Sessions or the president he is so eager to serve," he continued.
He closed by explaining that this is the way that parties collapse.
"When they lack the institutional strength to protect their own purpose and reputation—their own ideas—there is the corresponding risk that despite all reasonable arguments to the contrary, voters will abandon them. Every election that Republicans spend arguing over loyalty to Donald Trump is an election with the potential for voters to flee to a party that does not make such demands," he wrote. "It happened once before in Alabama. There is no reason to think it cannot happen again."