By Glynn Wilson –

MOBILE, Ala. — The Alabama primary election is only three weeks away on June 5. If one were to compare the level of voter participation and enthusiasm to a sound, it might be the sound of crickets.

“If a cricket was on the ballot he’d win without a runoff because that is what i have heard: crickets,” according to a comment from one of my prominent friends on Facebook a few days ago with nearly a month to go before the vote.

Since then, television ads from Republicans in the races for governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor have hit the airwaves, but there’s not much noise from the Democrats.

Governor Kay Ivey, who may be leading the pack to win election after ascending to the position when Robert Bentley was booted out of office in an embarrassing sex scandal, pretends to hit a target with a shooting gallery pistol and is called “a straight shooter” by another redneck with a gun. In another spot she says something incomprehensible about mountain oysters not being seafood, sending every Republican in the state over to Google to find out mountain oysters are actually bull or pig balls.

Somehow we don’t think that will actually help the Gulf Coast seafood industry, but you have to give her staff credit for humor. Everybody who actually knows Ms. Ivey knows she’s actually a stumbling drunk who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with bird shot.

Her most worthy Republican opponent, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, also has a TV spot running, but it is just more political boilerplate nothingness touting “responsible, conservative leadership” about a state with a “crisis” in leadership, with the budgets and in the schools. That’s nothing new. Since when has the no tax state in the Heart of Dixie not had a crisis in leadership, the budgets and the schools?

It’s not clear that more conservative non-leadership will do anything about any of that, but where is the Democrat willing to take on this laissez-faire philosophy of non government?

Then there is Twinkle Cavanaugh of the Public Service Commission, who wants to lead the state Senate as Lt. Governor, showing off a pair of running shoes she claims to have worn out while campaigning for Trump in 2016. She must be building her name recognition for November, since no one has ever heard of her two Republican opponents and the Democrats could not field a candidate in this race.

Attorney General Steve Marshal tells voters he is a Christian and a conservative who will support President Donald Trump’s agenda, whatever that is. Trump’s agenda seems to be to poke a stick on every hornet’s nest he can find, including the one with a billion Muslims in the Middle East who are now outraged that the United States has pulled out of a nuclear disarmament deal with Iran that will result in a loss of jobs even in Alabama. He also moved our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a bone headed move that even the editorial board of the “failing” New York Times said eliminates the U.S. as an honest broker seeking peace in the region.

This will not end well. Trust me.

During his campaign for president Trump won by stirring up every disgruntled Nazi racist in the country, and the mainstream media actually seems surprised when that leads to a backlash and violence at the Waffle House. This promises to be a long hot summer of violence at home and abroad. My advice? Head for the hills and batten down the hatches.

No Democrat running for statewide office even seems willing to say one contrary word about Trump, at least in public, taking the lead of Alabama’s newest U.S. Senator Doug Jones, who won an election over radical, right-wing, religious nut and former judge Roy Moore last year in part by seeking moderate Republican votes in the suburbs by not openly criticizing the president. Never mind that many of the women who supported him and carried him to victory did so precisely because they are appalled at the vulgarity of Trump.

The problem with this strategy now is the only thing that might actually fire up the Democratic base and get them to show up to vote on Tuesday, June 5, would be a real progressive Democratic champion who would pledge to oppose Trump’s radical agenda from Montgomery. I mean it never hurt anyone running for office in Alabama to take on the federal government or the president. That used to be a standard campaign tactic around here, but clearly we are living in a whole new world now, although I would not exactly call it a brave new world.

This is a world of quiet cowardice that seems destined to be like a default mode on a computer. In the absence of a real, progressive champion, Democrats will stay home and the usual suspects of Republicans who vote out of civic habit will carry the day.

Other candidates, like the two Democrats running for attorney general, Birmingham attorneys Chris Christie and former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s son Joseph, are making the rounds of county Democratic groups and shaking hands, sending out fund raising emails and posting bland political messages on Facebook and Twitter that are not garnering much in the way of engagement. The strategy seems to be to see who can safely limp across the finish line in the primary vote on June 5. Maybe we will get some real action come September or October.

News Coverage

Googling around trying to find any newspaper reporters writing anything halfway intelligent about what’s going on in this election is sort of like an old fashioned, summer camp snipe hunt.

Old long-haired hippie Tommy Stevenson retired from the Tuscaloosa News about 10 years ago, but still sometimes pops out of retirement to write a free column. In his latest attempt, he may as well have remained in his hammock down by the Alabama River, since it seems to have just dawned on him that the two major qualifications for seeking election in Alabama are being a “Christian” and a “conservative.

AT LARGE: For GOP candidates, it’s religion and Trump

This has been standard fare in Alabama elections for three decades, and worked for the most part until Doug Jones came along and upset the apple cart and showed Democrats a different path to victory.

Old Steve Flowers, who touts himself as “Alabama’s premier columnist and commentator,” is so downright insightful that he predicts a low voter turnout in the primary. Ya think?

When I got him on the phone and interviewed him about this, he let me know he doesn’t really know how to use Facebook or Twitter and is not keeping up with what people are saying on social media. He just has someone to post his old fashioned weekly newspaper style columns on those platforms.

This just makes me sad. But as I have been saying for about 18 years now, we can do better on the web — when people come around to the realization that they will have to pay something for it.

Until then, there is of course the Newhouse would be monopoly press at Al dot com. They have a couple of funny bloggers and a throwback cartoonist on the case, mostly making fun of former Attorney General Troy King for all the wrong reasons and Democrat Sue Bell Cobb for hiring and then firing a staffer who turned out to be a convicted sex offender. So much for an all woman governor’s race.

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox seems to be the front runner here, although there are not exactly a lot of public opinion polls to back that up. Good public opinion data is as hard to come by these days as “real journalism.”

The local television news stations are covering the campaign fund raising as if this was a horse race, with lines like this: “Kay Ivey is still leading the way in fundraising…”

This makes me want to visit the infield at the Kentucky Derby and throw up the mint juleps.

Sorry if I sound a tad jaded. But after last year’s amazing special election that transcended just about everything anybody thought they knew about Alabama politics, I was hoping for a little more of a courageous display from Alabama Democrats.

Of course there are still a few activists holding meetings mostly in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Shelby County and Huntsville and posting stuff on Facebook about a Blue Wave coming in November.

When I interviewed a former union leader about this, he said people in those places are still fired up and engaged and working hard. But he admitted that all the major labor federations have already endorsed Republicans even before the primary results are in. This is not the brave new world where unions supported Doug Jones for the Senate. This is bizarre-o-world at the county fair.

Sorry folks, but I’m headed back to the Washington, D.C. bureau for the summer where we hope to have a front row seat for Trump’s downfall. That is if they don’t give the son-of-a-bitch a Nobel Peace Prize for peace on the Korean peninsula. That seems less likely than it did a few weeks ago, now that we are headed for World War III with Iran and Russia in the Middle East.

How bizarre will this be? As much as Trump loves Russia and dictator Vladimir Putin, and after all the Russian spies and hackers did to get Trump elected on Twitter and Facebook, we end up at war with them in Syria and Iran?

There is not a single writer for reality television or Netflix that could have written this script in advance. Only Trump on the fly.

Now it not only seems nearly inevitable that he will win reelection in 2020 — if he is not arrested or impeached — but he hinted in a recent speech that he might somehow extend his presidency beyond two terms.

Please, God — or intelligent life forms on another planet — say it ain’t so. I don’t think humans or Earth can take much more of this.

Ballot Amendments

There are a couple of controversial constitutional amendments on the ballot for Nov. 6 that Democrats might consider saying something about, if they want to make a little more noise than the crickets.

One would declare Alabama an anti-abortion state, never mind that allowing women to choose abortions for birth control is settled federal law and, if passed, this will be unconstitutional. The other would allow the display of the Ten Commandments on state property, ground Alabama has covered before. If it passes, it will be challenged in federal court and struck down as unconstitutional.

This measure does not even include funds to enforce it, so it is clearly a symbolic effort to try to get former Judge Roy Moore’s voters to show up at the polls to vote for Republicans.

To see if the Democrats have a chance in November, check out the numbers on June 5. We will see if the Democrats can match the Republicans in voter turnout.