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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, was not in a talking mood on Wednesday as he sped through the corridors of the Capitol. It had been roughly 12 hours since Doug Jones, a Democrat, had won election to the Senate — a victory that for Mr. McConnell spelled both bad news and good news. “It was quite an impressive election,” Mr. McConnell, of Kentucky, said tersely. “It was a big turnout, and an unusual day.” The election of Mr. Jones — the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years — will have significant consequences on the national level, making it more difficult for Republicans to enact their legislative agenda and opening, for the first time, a possible — if narrow — path to a Democratic majority in the Senate in 2018. For Mr. McConnell, it has very immediate consequences: It reduces his already razor-thin majority in the Senate to 51 from 52 votes. But it also relieves Mr. McConnell of a huge problem: having to deal with Roy S. Moore, the unpredictable Alabama Republican nominee whose candidacy was tarred by allegations that he molested a 14-year-old girl and made sexual advances toward other teenagers. Mr. McConnell called repeatedly for Mr. Moore to abandon his campaign and had pledged that Mr. Moore would face an Ethics Committee investigation the moment he arrived in the Senate — an inquiry that could have put the Senate on a torturous path to expel him. Mr. Moore, a deeply polarizing former judge who is aligned wi... Link to the full article to read more