ABOVE all it was the African-American women who did it. They turned out and voted at 98% for Doug Jones, the Democrat who scraped a startling win in the senate race against Republican Roy Moore, a man accused of paedophilia, in the deep red state of Alabama. Last Sunday, pre-vote, as snow hit Birmingham, the state's biggest city, Jones marvelled: “We started this campaign back in May. It was a warm, sunny day. And people said, what are the odds? Folks said, ‘Well, the odds are as good as getting a 5-inch snow in December in Birmingham, Alabama.’ So it has come to pass.”

And so it did come to pass – the votes came in as unexpected as the snow for Jones. Behind that snowfall were those African-American women, but also African-American men, and some white women. Behind that snowfall were gathering forces around race and gender of the type we see welling up in #metoo and #blacklivesmatter. Behind it was anger and grievance, and a seemingly unstoppable force: African-American women, who, for instance, last year voted at a rate of 94% for Hillary Clinton and against Trump - compared with the 52% of white women and 62% of white men who voted for Trump. They were now making their statement by defeating Moore, and striking a blow at Trump himself.

Small though the margin was, Jones’s win was a momentous one, not just because a Democrat senator hadn't been elected there in 25 years, but because it seemed symbolic of the growing backlash against Trump, a sign of a historic shift. The senate election has already been described as a “watershed” and “a reckoning”. Alabama, the first election of the #MeToo age, is being seen by many as a referendum on Republican Party performance and Trumpism itself.

It wasn't, in other words, just Roy Moore who lost. It was Trump too. For it was Trump who endorsed Moore. He did so even after allegations, swiftly denied, emerged in November, that the senatorial candidate had, while in his 30s, engaged in relationships with teenagers, molested a 14-year-old and sexually assaulted a 16-year-old. Trump supported him, saying, "He denies it. Look, he denies it."

Trump - through his proxy Moore - lost in a state which last year voted for him by a 3-to-1 margin over Hillary Clinton last year. It was Trump who suffered defeat when the Senate majority of the Republican Party - the party which he leads - was reduced to 51-49.

But also, it was Steve Bannon, editor of the alt-right website Breitbart and ousted White House chief strategist, who lost hard, since it was he who first backed Moore, regarded widely in the Republican party as a fringe candidate.

There are several key forces and demographics involved in this shift in mood. African-Americans played a key role in voting in Doug Jones, a candidate who, while US attorney, prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963, and who ran on issues that concerned them: healthcare, police shootings, black unemployment. Their vote was, often, an anti-Moore vote. Few, if any, wanted to be represented by a Republican who, when he was asked when he thought America was last great, made the shocking reply: "I think it was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery."

Also key, in voting for the pro-choice liberal Jones over the alleged child-molester, were women. And not just African-American women. There was also a shift among white women – 34% voted for Jones, double the figure who cast their ballot for Barack Obama in 2008, a seismic lurch, though it remains shocking that 63% of white women who voted, voted for Moore. A lot of white Republican women simply chose to stay home and not vote at all - their disgust at their party's candidate enough to push the democrat over the winning line.

The allegations against Moore are believed to have played a serious role in his defeat. Moore, however, was unpalatable on multiple levels. Many accused him of hypocrisy for his condemnation of LGBT lifestyles, even as the allegations around his behaviour with underage girls surfaced. One striking moment in the election came when an Alabama farmer Nathan Mathis, whose lesbian daughter had committed suicide, held up a picture of her with the sign: “Judge Roy Moore called my daughter Patti Sue Mathis a pervert because she was gay. A 32-year-old Roy Moore dated teenage girls aged 14 to 17. So that makes him a pervert of the worse kind.”

The fact that in a post-Weinstein, #MeToo climate, in spite of the allegations around him, Moore remained a candidate, and was endorsed by Trump, was, for many, grotesque. Yet, sadly, it was also unsurprising. Trump, after all, in November last year triumphed at the polls in spite of multiple sexual misconduct allegations by many women, which he denied, not to mention the scandal of the Access Hollywood 'pussy grabbing' tape which he dismissed as "locker room" talk.

Moore’s defeat - as many other mens' heads roll in other industries following sexual misconduct allegations - stands as a warning sign for Trump. The #MeToo movement has him in its sights. Last Monday, three of the 19 women who accused the President of sexual misconduct held a press conference saying they want Congress to investigate the alleged incidents. “Women have found strength in one another and the courage to come forward, leaving many powerful men to suffer the consequences of their actions,” said Rachel Crooks, one of the accusers. “Trump, however, has escaped this path unscathed.”

The White House made a statement denying the claims, but the voices demanding that these women be listened to grow louder. "Women who accuse anyone should be heard," said US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. "They should be heard and they should be dealt with. And I think we heard from them prior to the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up."

A momentum is building. Tomorrow, one of Trump’s accusers is suing him in the New York courts. Last week, Trump engaged in a spat with Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand, one of six senators, five of them Democrats, who have called on Trump to resign, and more than 100 House Democrats who have signed a letter calling for an investigation into the allegations against him. In yet another new low for the supposed leader of the free world, Trump was accused of 'slut-shaming' Gillibrand when he tweeted she had come "begging" him for donations and "would do anything" for the cash.

Following the Alabama election last week, Gillibrand said, “As we just saw in Alabama, women are not going to be silenced. African-American women are not going to be silenced and they came out in great numbers. Trump has often berated women and made them feel that they cannot be heard as well. And what I’m seeing today and what this election of Doug Jones is about is a statement by particularly American women, African-American women, and the African-American community, coming out and saying we are going to vote on our values.”

The #MeToo movement, she said, was playing a key role in this change. “This is a moment in time, unlike any other, with the #MeToo movement. Women are feeling the ability to tell what happened to them, some of the worst moments they’ve lived and tell it publicly, and that is powerful and it is affecting everything. People are looking for justice.” As so many other heads roll, it’s hard to see how Trump can remain there, uninvestigated.

And Democrats are not the only voices pushing forward the right of women to be heard. Back in November Ivanka Trump, the first daughter, said, in an interview regarding Moore, "There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children… I've yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims.”

But the backlash is also fragile. A significant 72% of white men - as well as that 63% of white women - voted for Moore. Alyssa Rosenberg writing in The Washington Post noted, “Moore’s defeat is not exactly a sign that the battle is over. If allegations of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and sexual assault were truly the political career-enders they ought to be, Moore wouldn’t have pulled in 649,240 votes – 48.4 percent of the total.”

In other words it’s nowhere near over for Trumpism yet. Nor is it over for partisan politics, racism, sexism and homophobia. A headline in Newsweek for a piece by Ryan Sitt summed up the situation. “White people,” it read, “almost single-handedly elected a homophobic, anti-Muslim accused child molester in Roy Moore”. Of course, many of those white voters didn’t think he was a child molester – they believed he was smeared – but the point stands.

Nevertheless, chickens are coming home to roost. Trump has waged a populist war on political correctness, making it a scapegoat for many ills. But behind political correctness lies people, and those people have a vote. Only 63% of the US population are white - some 52% are women. Demographic groups are starting to recognise that they have power, and in turn starting to exert their solidarity. Movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter are channelling anger and tapping into grievances. Their votes really do count.

Though the victory for women’s rights that happened last week when Doug Jones was voted in, happened primarily because of black voters – and only to a small degree because of a shift among white women - the wider #MeToo moment is claiming it as a triumph. And rightly so. #MeToo has changed the way we look at everything.

But the black voters who made it happen need to be properly acknowledged. The three major black voter turnout operations – Black Pac, #WokeVote and Black Voters Matter – were led by black women. “I’m very proud of black women,” wrote feminist Ijeoma Oluo, following the vote. “But I wish that non-black people would stop treating the resiliency and strength that we’ve been forced to cultivate through generations of trauma and abuse as a natural resource they can mine whenever they need to. Real “appreciation” of black women looks like action.”

Ends often have many beginnings. Alabama looks like it could be one of those moments for Trump. A storm is brewing. Those Trump sexual misconduct accusers are not going away. The mid-term elections augur more chipping away at Republican seats. Voices, until now silenced, are determined to be heard. A fight is on. Soon, it's possible rather than saying me too, we could be declaring "him too", as Trump and Trumpism falls.