In a stun­ning upset, Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Sen­ate hope­ful Doug Jones has pre­vailed in Alaba­ma’s spe­cial elec­tion to pick a suc­ces­sor to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions, deal­ing Don­ald Trump, Steve Ban­non, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty a sting­ing defeat that will rever­ber­ate across the coun­try as 2018 approaches.

Sen­a­tor-elect Doug Jones of Alabama

Jones, six­ty-three, is an Alaba­ma native who attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma and Cum­ber­land School of Law at Sam­ford Uni­ver­si­ty pri­or to becom­ing a Unit­ed States Attor­ney. Jones is known for hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed two mem­bers of the Ku Klux Klan who had per­pe­trat­ed the hor­rif­ic 16th Street Bap­tist Church bomb­ing, which trag­i­cal­ly result­ed in the deaths of four young black women.

“I am tru­ly over­whelmed. I am tru­ly, tru­ly over­whelmed,” said Jones in his vic­to­ry speech.

“But, you know, folks, and you have all heard me say this at one point or anoth­er in this cam­paign. I have always believed that the peo­ple of Alaba­ma have more in com­mon than to divide us. We have shown not just around the state of Alaba­ma but we have shown the coun­try the way that we can be unified.”

“Con­grat­u­la­tions to Doug Jones on a hard fought vic­to­ry,” read a tweet post­ed to Don­ald Trump’s account. “The write-in votes played a very big fac­tor, but a win is a win. The peo­ple of Alaba­ma are great, and the Repub­li­cans will have anoth­er shot at this seat in a very short peri­od of time. It nev­er ends!”

Sources close to Trump’s oper­a­tion are describ­ing Jones’ incred­i­ble vic­to­ry as a huge blow to Trump. “It’s dev­as­tat­ing for the pres­i­dent… this is an earth­quake… Vir­ginia but on steroids… the pres­i­dent has egg on his face,” the sources told Jim Acos­ta.

Exit polling sug­gests that a whop­ping 98% of black women vot­ed for Jones, while over 90% of black men also vot­ed for Jones.

Turn­ing out the black vote was a major objec­tive of Jones’ cam­paign, which sought to stitch togeth­er a win­ning coali­tion by appeal­ing to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic base in Alaba­ma while reach­ing out to bicon­cep­tu­als. That strat­e­gy appears to have paid off in a vic­to­ry that few pun­dits had imag­ined was even possible.

(Bicon­cep­tu­als, for those read­ers who have nev­er heard the term, are vot­ers who use both the pro­gres­sive and con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues sys­tem in dif­fer­ent areas of their polit­i­cal think­ing. Most Amer­i­can vot­ers are bicon­cep­tu­als to some degree.)

Jones was able to win despite his pro­gres­sive posi­tions on such issues as repro­duc­tive rights, which pun­dits had sug­gest­ed could sink Jones no mat­ter what else he did with his cam­paign. Tonight, though, they were proved wrong.

For much of the night, the count showed a tight race between Jones and his Repub­li­can oppo­nent Roy Moore, a mil­i­tant fun­da­men­tal­ist evan­gel­i­cal who was embraced by Don­ald Trump and Trump’s oper­a­tives despite cred­i­ble evi­dence that he is a sex­u­al preda­tor. But as the night wore on, Jones was able to erase Moore’s lead. He cur­rent­ly leads by over eight thou­sand votes.

Spe­cial Elec­tion for U.S. Sen­ate, Alabama
Results as of 8:30 PM Pacific
Doug Jones (Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date): 643,626 votes (49.5%)
Roy Moore (Repub­li­can can­di­date): 635,076 votes (48.8%)
Total Write-Ins: 22,258 (1.7%)

If Jones’ lead holds and he goes to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., he will nar­row the Repub­li­cans’ U.S. Sen­ate major­i­ty to just fifty-one. Ses­sions’ unex­pired term runs through 2020, so he will not have to face vot­ers until the next pres­i­den­tial election.

Moore opt­ed not to con­cede, hold­ing out hope that he might even­tu­al­ly pre­vail and telling his sup­port­ers that “we know God is always in control.”

“The evening is not over yet,” argued a Moore cam­paign oper­a­tive.

“A lot of the votes are in but they’re not all in yet. You know there’s a law in Alaba­ma that requires a recount if a vote is with­in a half a per­cent… at this point, we do not have a final deci­sion on the out­come tonight.”

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Fox Noise Chan­nel, CNN, and oth­er net­works, how­ev­er, have called the race for Jones, hav­ing pro­ject­ed that he is almost cer­tain­ly the winner.

And Alaba­ma’s Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State John Mer­rill threw cold water on the notion that Moore could erase Jones’ lead, not­ing that absen­tee bal­lots have already been count­ed and mil­i­tary bal­lots could not affect the outcome.

Asked by CNN’s Jake Tap­per in a live appear­ance: “Do you expect any­thing oth­er than Mr. Jones being the next sen­a­tor from the state of Alaba­ma?”, Mer­rill respond­ed: “I would find that high­ly unlike­ly to occur, Jake.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers and pro­gres­sive activists were jubilant.

“Hope lives! Nev­er give up on this gor­geous mys­tery called Life. A Demo­c­rat from Alaba­ma? Hope lives,” tweet­ed Ava DuVer­nay.

“Tonight, Alaba­ma vot­ers elect­ed a sen­a­tor who’ll make them proud. And if Democ­rats can win in Alaba­ma, we can — and must — com­pete every­where. Onward!” tweet­ed Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton after net­works called the race for Jones.

“Doug Jones. Thank you, Alaba­ma,” tweet­ed Joe Biden. “You’ve elect­ed a man of incred­i­ble integri­ty, grit, and char­ac­ter. A fight­er for work­ing class and mid­dle class Alabami­ans. He is going to make you proud in the Senate.”

“Doug Jones wins!! In spite of sup­pres­sion efforts. In spite of Trump. In spite of Ban­non. In spite of fear mon­ger­ing. Vir­ginia, New Jer­sey, Alaba­ma = trend. See you in 2018 —- in every race in every part of this great nation,” tweet­ed Eric Hold­er, who served for six years as Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Attor­ney General.

“Alaba­ma has demon­strat­ed that Amer­i­ca is bet­ter than Trump, and bet­ter than House and Sen­ate Repub­li­cans who have jumped into the swamp Trump has cre­at­ed,” added for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of Labor Robert Reich. “Con­grat­u­la­tions, Doug Jones. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Alaba­ma. Con­grat­u­la­tions, America.”

“By elect­ing Doug Jones, Alaba­ma reject­ed Roy Moore’s anti-woman, anti-Mus­lim, anti-immi­grant, Trump-backed, hate-filled agen­da,” tweet­ed the coor­di­na­tors of the nation­wide Indi­vis­i­ble move­ment.

“It’s been just over twen­ty years since a Demo­c­rat held a sen­ate seat in Alaba­ma,” not­ed Kyle Grif­fin. “How­ell Heflin was the last Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor from Alaba­ma, leav­ing office in Jan­u­ary ’97. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Heflin men­tored Doug Jones while Jones worked with Heflin on the Judi­cia­ry Committee.”

“I’m real­ly just proud of the peo­ple of Alaba­ma,” Charles Barkley told ABC News. “They’ve been beat down for so long…They rose up tonight.”

“Doug Jones should be seat­ed imme­di­ate­ly — before we vote again on the tax bill,” opined Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris, reject­ing Mitch McConnel­l’s asser­tion that Jones’ swear­ing-in ought to wait. “Alaba­ma vot­ers deserve to have their voice heard in this fight,” she added.

The Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, mean­while, embar­rassed itself by urg­ing Jones to pledge feal­ty to Mitch McConnell and join the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus. Basi­cal­ly, they are urg­ing Jones to com­mit an act of polit­i­cal treach­ery and turn his back on the very peo­ple who have pro­pelled him to vic­to­ry tonight.

What their state­ment demon­strates is that the Repub­li­cans still don’t under­stand who Doug Jones is or why his can­di­da­cy res­onat­ed with voters.