THIS one is serious. That was the get-out-the-vote message from Barack Obama to Democrat supporters as Alabama went to the polls this week. On this, the former President and Roy Moore, the Republican contender for the Senate seat, were in agreement.

“This is a very important race for our country, for our state and for our future,” said Mr Moore, who had the backing of the current President, Donald Trump.

It is a race that Mr Moore lost – much to the relief not just of Democrats in the US but of many outside America. Had he won, the news would have been that voters in modern America had elected as a senator a man accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s. Mr Moore, now 70, denies this allegation and other claims of misconduct, some of them involving women who were teenagers at the time.

What the former judge does not deny are his views on “homosexual conduct”, which he believes should be illegal; or that he called his country a “moral slum” that was incurring God’s wrath. Nor is there any denying that his wife, Kayla, defending her husband against accusations of anti-Semitism, said: “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Mr Moore, in short, represents the kind of views best approached while wearing a hazmat suit. The question now is whether voters’ rejection of him in a state that has not elected a Democrat in one-quarter of a century, signals the beginning of the end for the President who supported such a candidate.

I sense a readerly sigh and an “if only”. True, if there was a machine fuelled by outrage over the Trump presidency it has grown accustomed to blowing gaskets at a rate of knots. Exhausted critics are running on the fumes of indignation. Even the late night comics seem more depressed than angry as they rouse themselves to riff about the latest tweet. Yet still this most controversial of presidents keeps on rucking. But to turn Mr Obama’s exhortation before the Alabama vote into an inquiry, might this one be serious?

Though Mr Moore was last night hoping for a recount, the President was quick to congratulate the new Democrat senator, Doug Jones, adding later that “Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him”. The new numbers in the Senate, now balanced just 51:49 in favour of the Republicans, are not looking good for a president who has had as much success pushing through his legislative agenda as Kim Jong-un has had winning the Nobel peace prize. If he moves fast he could push through his tax cut plans. After that, the road ahead could be blocked, even more so if Democrats add to the Alabama win in next year’s midterm elections.

Those midterms were supposed to be the moment of victory in Republican king-maker Steve Bannon’s war on his own party. Having castigated centrist Republicans as non-believers, Mr Bannon had taken to threatening incumbents with replacement. In that respect, Roy Moore was an advance guard, a look at what was coming down the pipe. Republicans who refused to back Mr Trump’s choice, and criticised him for it, can now feel vindicated. More importantly, those hitherto afraid to speak out against the President himself may feel emboldened. If the backing of Mr Trump is seen as toxic, it may not be long before his presidency as a whole is regarded in the same way.

Such is the ceaseless commotion generated around the Trump administration, his troubles never come alone. Most weeks a bus has to be hired. Just before Alabama voters went to the polls, three women who accused candidate Trump of groping and other inappropriate behaviour renewed their allegations on television and asked Congress to launch an ethics investigation. The three believe that while they were not heeded previously, the atmosphere after the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment may have changed enough to secure them a fairer hearing. Candidate Trump denied the women’s claims and President Trump does so still.

It was the President’s response to one of four senators calling on him to resign over the harassment allegations, however, that showed Mr Trump has not lost any of his talent to make a bad situation worse. In a tweet, he described Democrat senator Kirsten Gillibrand as “someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them)”. Consider those last six words. Ms Gillibrand certainly has, responding yesterday by calling the president a bully. She, too, believes the #MeToo movement could be a game-changer.

A note of caution should be wheeled in, one as hard to miss as the block of granite on which Roy Moore once had inscribed the Ten Commandments (it was later removed from the court building, as was Mr Moore). Though there may be elation in some quarters over Alabama, the margin of victory was thin, with Doug Jones polling 49.9 per cent to Roy Moore’s 48.4 per cent. Just 1.5 per cent separated the two.

Four factors made the difference in Alabama: the turnout among African-American, women, and Latino voters went up; many in the traditional Republican base stayed at home; the Democrats spent a lot of money ($12 million compared to the Republican’s $5m); and last, but far from least, Mr Moore was a walking, talking, horse-riding catastrophe of a candidate, the kind of Republican opponent that Democrats ask for in their letters to Santa. Two of those elements, getting out the vote and spending money, can be replicated elsewhere, though not easily. The others are tougher to bring about. Now that the Moore model has been found wanting, Mr Bannon will not make such an obvious mistake again.

A tricky 2018 lies ahead for Mr Trump, one that could see him visiting the UK, according to the US ambassador, Woody Johnson. The talk is of a “working visit” to open the new US embassy in London, rather than the state visit so rashly offered by Theresa May. Even before his backing for Mr Moore, the President could hardly expect a warm southern welcome here. The reception that now awaits is growing chillier by the day.