Referendum

   The people of Alabama have spoken, and the message is loud and clear.
   They do not want an accused child molester, an ardent Trump supporter who defies court orders, to represent them in the U.S. Senate.
   For the first time in 25 years, Alabama voters elected a Democrat, a former prosecutor who tracked down and convicted Ku Klux Klansmen who killed little girls in a church more than 40 years ago.
   They rejected a bid by Roy Moore, a Republican judge who was ousted from his post on the state supreme court (twice) for defying federal court orders, and who was fully embraced by the president (himself an accused sexual predator) because, according to Donald Trump, any Republican is a better choice than a Democrat.
   Despite a strong endorsement of Moore by the president, voters chose Democrat Doug Jones.
   After hearing the results, the president said via Twitter that he knew it all along, that Moore could not win, and he started looking for someone else to blame rather than accept that he made a mistake in endorsing a loser.
   It's reminiscent of a kid who is passed over for a slot on a pickup baseball game and insists that he "didn't want to play that stupid game anyway."
   So was the vote a referendum on child molesters who defy court orders or an opinion of the president's attitudes and his embrace of a man who was banned from a shopping mall for his predatory behavior?
   Or was it a referendum on the president himself?
   Or was it a preference for a responsible, credible lawman? Or was it all of the above?
   A larger question is this: What does this special election in Alabama portend for the nation as a whole?
   We won't really know for another year, when Americans vote in the next regularly scheduled election for members of Congress -- all members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.
   Meanwhile, the escapades -- sexual and otherwise -- of government officials, corporate executives and entertainers occupy headlines in national newspapers and dominate TV news coverage as more and more women come forward with accusations of misbehavior by men who fancy themselves powerful enough to do as they please with women and think they are immune from prosecution of their predatory behavior.
   And this includes the president.
   No one is above the law.