You likely know this already, but I'm going to restate it again for reasons that should be obvious to all of us: Tommy Tuberville is running for the United States Senate, and he has a good chance of winning.
The former Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati head coach is in a heated battle with Jeff Sessions for the Republican spot on the ticket in the November elections, and you know it's gotten heated because the heavy handed football metaphors have started coming out.
A poll of likely Republican voters conducted May 7-10 showed Tuberville holding a commanding 55-32 lead among 607 respondents ahead of the July 14 runoff. In response, Sessions has asked the Tuberville campaign for five debates, and Tuberville has responded by trotting out his 4-minute offense.
"If coaching taught me anything, it's that you don't let the losing team dictate the game when you're sitting on a lead," Tuberville said in a statement Tuesday.
Sessions responded by hitting Tuberville right where it hurts: the win-loss column.
Since both combatants represent the same party, the competition in the campaign has not been about who has the correct position on the issues, but who is right harder -- who is more opposed to immigration, who supports the military more, and who is more supportive of the President. And it's on that front that the political newcomer Tuberville has scored a massive victory. Sessions has one of the most distinguished resumes on the Alabama political scene: U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama from 1981-93, Alabama's Attorney General from 1995-97, and then two decades representing Alabama in the Senate. Sessions was one of Donald Trump's earliest champions on the campaign trail, and for that he was rewarded by becoming Trump's Attorney General after the 2016 election. Due to his involvement in the campaign, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation before ultimately resigning under heavy pressure in November 2018, and Trump has never forgiven him for it. And so that is the backstory that led to this tweet over the weekend:
The winner of this summer's runoff will square off against incumbent Doug Jones, the first Alabama Democrat elected to the Senate in 25 years, and will thus become a heavy favorite to ascend to Capitol Hill in January.