Discussion for article #224414
This will certainly inspire deep south local governments to start building new voter-suppression walls. They will be registering Republicans and closing those open primaries in Mississippi before 2016, you can bet on that.
6 Likes
I fear you are right.
1 Like
Voters will be pledging political parties like a fraternity without the beer, before this is over
1 Like
I guess a 49 state strategy is better than nothing, but this Republican primary should really be a wake-up call to complacent Democrats. If the second worst Republican can really turn out 35,000 votes just like that, there’s no excuse for fielding a token candidate. When the incumbent comes that close to being knocked off, there’s no reason Democrats should be resigned to defeat.
1 Like
It wasn’t just like that. Face it Mississippi is a the poorest state in the nation and it’s survival depends on the largess of the federal government. McDaniel gets elected that dries up and there was no chance the D was going to get elected no matter the strategy. So what do the leaders of the Mississippi black community do? They encourage their constituents to vote for the guy who isn’t a white supremacist and who has consistently brought home the bacon.
4 Likes
That might work once or twice - but if the GOP don’t drop their KKK robes - it won’t work again.
Won’t happen.
1 Like
In Texas, we Democrats call it choosing between the evil of two lessers.
2 Likes
what I see is Mississippi changing everything and saying one must register as a democrat or a republican. after that, no crossing over.
so, I suppose that is a form of voter suppression. but they better think twice about it.
as the law stands now, it benefited the white republican cochran. I doubt many white republicans will vote for a democrat, regardless of color.
1 Like
With blacks and sore losers Teabaggers they will toss the Rino out
1 Like
So far much of the power in Mississippi is still with the conventional GOP. There are a whole lot of baggers, but they aren’t high up enough to legislate too much change. The republican mainstays would be fools to mess with voting in Mississippi now. Big fools–but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
What many don’t get is that every time a republican Sec. of State
messes with the voting rights of minorities we hear our parents and grandparents stories of what was–and a new slew of voters are born who will stand in voting lines for days if they have to.
2 Likes
Your political instincts seem on the money in this case, JEP, as they usually are. However, some small part of me wonders if this might play into what President Obama called his “coalition of the sensible” or some such – the idea that moderates, liberals and independents can rally around an issue or candidate and overwhelm the numbers of more-motivated extremists.
Maybe I’m naive, but there are things to be encouraged about. Democrats, who have been deemed less enthusiastic than Republicans, actually stepped up and voted their self-interest in this low-turnout race. The less-extremist Republican reached out to Democrats and blacks to defeat a neo-confederate. And Republicans are realizing that at least in this case a minority outreach initiative worked.
If we can duplicate similar GOTV efforts in November, perhaps we can make a difference.
I know, it’s still a hugely uphill battle, but it’s something that can be built on.
1 Like
That was my first reaction as well.
1 Like
A return to “black and tan” instead of lily-white Republicans in the south…what year is this? 1890?
Makes sense but as JEP07 said, the baggernuts will scream for a harsher crackdown on voting. I can see a modified “grandfather clause”… you can vote in the baggernut primary if you can prove your daddy voted for Big John Connally OR Saint Reagan in the 1980 SC primary. Of course it won’t be quite that crude…
Actually, Cochran could now be vulnerable in November… IF the Dems get out the votes.
Travis Childers, was uncontroversial but has almost no chance of winning
Only lightening rods need apply?
I feel like it signals that blacks will now be used by white republican politicians like they have been for years by white democratic politicians to help during elections, only to be ignored the rest of the politicians term…just sayin’…
African Americans, AKA Americans, are out reproducing the whitey’s just like Hispanics, this is their biggest leverage, just like the Hispanics.
The Repubs will diminish the minorities as long as they can before acknowledging their impending doom. But it will be too little, too late.
The Blacks, Browns and the unbigoted will celebrate for eternity as the Dinosaur whites are replaced by their captives and there will be no sweeter tears than those of the disgusting racists as they gasp and flail and die.
I wish I didn’t disagree with you, Professor Franklin, but I think that I do. It doesn’t really mean that mainline Republican candidates are going to track farther left to get the black vote. I think it means they can go as far right as they want, so long as they stay microscopically left of the other guy. Cochran’s no klansman, to be sure, but he’s really not a civil rights crusader by any means, either. The fact that he got black votes isn’t a measure of the appeal he has to the black community or a new era in interracial cooperation in the Republican party. It’s more a measure of how repugnant McDaniel is. Ordinarilly Democratic voters in this situation would vote in the primary for the person least likely to be electable in the general. That didn’t happen in this case, because even the chance that McDaniel would get through was completely unacceptable. If McDaniel is a little less overtly repulsive, I don’t think Cochran gets these voters. They didnt’ vote for him, but instead voted against McDaniel. It might not be a consistent trend.
2 Likes
This strategy probably won’t work in the long run. Most likely is that, in Mississippi, this is something that only the incumbent could pull off. Thus, it’s just part of the incumbent advantage.
Basically, the author is theorizing that maybe this could set a blueprint for a new coalition of black and center-right white voters in Mississippi. I can’t see it. In Mississippi, and most other Confederate states peoples race, not their politics, determine how people vote.
If a Republican non-incumbent politician in Mississippi comes along and communicates the message of “I’m going to win with a coalition of whites AND blacks” then that politician is going to lose his nomination, and if he were to be nominated he would lose his statewide election.
Cochran could pull it off because he is an incumbent that has already won several times with white voters so they know him.