This is an opinion column.

If you care for two-party politics in Alabama, the good news is that after years of neglect, the Alabama Democratic Party has again learned to use its Twitter account.

The bad news is that the Alabama Democratic Party has again learned to use its Twitter account.

And after years of silly, embarrassing internal conflict, Alabama Democrats stopped fighting with each other long enough to fight with me.

Last Friday, I publicly reminded Alabama’s other party that day was the deadline for certifying candidates for the November ballot, something that it had not yet done despite having more than enough time to do so.

The Alabama Republican Party lollygagged, too, but had filed its paperwork the day before.

This was odd, as the Democratic National Committee had gone to significant lengths to ensure Alabama, among other states, had more time to file its certifications.

But no, the state party waited until the last day and then insisted on Twitter that this was the plan all along and that all the parties in the party had been in agreement on this.

“The paperwork has been filed and the entities involved were all in agreement as to the filing occurring on this date,” the state party said from his Twitter/X account. “There’s no nefarious or negative reason.  All parties i.e. VP Harris, the DNC, and the AL Democrats, were on the same page.”

Case closed. All is well. There’s nothing to see here, folks.

That tweet was 10:40 Friday morning, minutes after the party handed in the first version of its certification forms to the Alabama Secretary of State.

Yes, I said first version, because later that afternoon — the state party that supposedly had all of its ducks in a row, parties in agreement, etc, etc — then had to go back to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office and re-file the whole thing all over again.

The fact that there was anyone in a government office late on a Friday afternoon to accept the amended filing speaks better for the Alabama Secretary of State than it does the Alabama Democratic Party.

The differences between the first filing and the amended filing are subtle and mostly stylistic.

First, the amended forms put Alabama Democratic Party chairman Randy Kelley’s name below the names of approved electors. That’s instead of putting it on a coversheet above the electors.

Second, the party had the state stamp each of its pages as “received” (just as the Republican Party had done a day earlier) and not just the top page.

Third and finally, the amended forms included two more names on a list of candidates to be added to the Alabama general election ballot who had been left off the list in the first filing.

Those candidates? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

That’s right, a party that says the candidates were “on the same page” left the party’s top two candidates off of its pages of candidates this fall.

In fairness, the first document recognized Harris and Walz as the party’s nominees elsewhere in the filing, and I don’t think Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen would have dared make an issue of it. But all of this goes to show that when the party insisted it had its business together, it didn’t have its business together.

Also, Republicans didn’t make that mistake.

It’s worth remembering why Alabama’s filing deadline was last Friday in the first place.

Alabama was one of two states that had statutory filing deadlines after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The other was Ohio. Both states’ legislatures later moved their filing deadlines back to accommodate the Democrats, as they have for the national parties in previous years, but the DNC wasn’t taking any chances.

This time the DNC decided to have a “virtual roll call” the first week of August just to be safe and to give everyone time to fend off Republican shenanigans.

Let’s bear down on that point: The DNC expended resources to hold a virtual roll call — making its nationally televised roll call, and really its convention, all but symbolic — so Alabama and Ohio would have time to get their paperwork in.

How did the Alabama Democratic Party make use of these extra two and half weeks?

Mostly fighting with the DNC.

The same Alabama Democratic Party, that now says everyone was on the same page, only a week before said in a press release that it would send two competing delegations to the Democratic National Convention.

The chairman of the nothing-to-see-here state party accused the DNC of racism and threatened to sue the national party if he didn’t get his way.

This is the same Alabama party that DNC officials warned officials to keep an eye on” in DNC documents obtained by the Birmingham Times’ Barnett Wright.

“[T]he delegation process in Alabama has been governed by a number of bad-faith actors who have made very clear they will not be cooperating with us,” the overview of delegations read. “We should continue to pay very, very close attention to this state before and during the convention in Chicago.”

But yes, remember, this is a party “on the same page” as those it is publically feuding with.

The good news is that the papers were filed and the forms accepted. Alabama will have two sets of candidates to choose from this fall. It’s a far cry from a functional second party — one that inspires confidence in its candidates instead of conflict, one more concerned with its rivals outside than in.

But a party on paper, filed — and refiled —  in the nick of time.