One down...Mississippi dodged a bullet last Tuesday when Democrats turned out in strong enough numbers to save doddering Senator Thad Cochran from certain defeat at the hands of reactionary white supremacist Chris McDaniel. Cochran, who didn't even want to run, will probably retire after a respectable amount of time passes, allowing the state GOP Establishment to appoint a nebbish Chamber of Commerce-camp replacement. They are well aware that McDaniel's brand of Ted Cruz-style extremism isn't healthy for the party (not to mention the state or the nation). Mississippi is pretty red-- but probably not as forever in the pocket of the GOP as you think. In 2012 these dozen states gave Obama the smallest percentage of their votes. These are blood red hellholes:
• Utah- 25%• Wyoming- 28%• Idaho- 33%• Oklahoma- 33%• West Virginia- 36%• Arkansas- 37%• Kansas- 38%• Nebraska- 38%• Alabama- 38%• Kentucky- 38%• North Dakota- 39%• Tennessee- 39%
Mississippi voters gave Obama a better showing-- 44%-- not just than these, but in 5 other states as well: Texas, Louisiana, South Dakota, Alaska, and Montana. When states that are headed in a purple direction are tallied up, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana and Arizona are all on par politically with Mississippi. It won't happen in time for 2016 but if President Hillary does a great job, Mississippi could actually be looked at as a swing state in 2020!Confederate extremists like Chris McDaniel aren't part of Mississippi's future; he' and they are part of a dark past better left for historians, sociologists and psychologists to ponder. The news from Mississippi over the weekend has been all about McDaniel and his team of neo-fascists and racists running up and down the state screeching ominously about Negroes voting in the white party primary. They just can't get their heads around the concept. He won't concede and, like we predicted on election night, he has plenty of Sturm und Drang for the media to enjoy over the next few weeks. Always the racist scumbag, McDaniel accused Cochran of luring African-American voters to the polls with "pork and food stamps."McDaniel claims to have already found 1,000 illegal votes! His sick camp also claims the Republican establishment in Mississippi is responsible for the suicide of Mark Mayfield, the unhinged teabagger and McDaniel's operative who had been arrested for breaking into Rose Cochran's hospital room to take pictures of the deteriorating Alzheimer's patient. McDaniel's policy director, Keith Plunkett, tweeted "A good man is gone today [because] of a campaign to destroy lives. To all 'so called' Republican leaders who joined lockstep: I WILL NOT REST!" Another lunatic fringe McDaniel operative, Pat Bruce, president of the Madison County Conservative Coalition (a local Tea Party front group), insisted that Mayfield "was the finest man I know... They killed him," she said in a raised voice full of pain. "They sent a SWAT team to his office, six officers, just to arrest him."
Bruce knows Mayfield committed suicide this morning, but she shares a broadly held rage at the way the Madison Police Department brought Mayfield into custody. After all, none of the other suspects was treated in the same manner. While a SWAT team didn't actually go to Mayfield's office, several officers in multiple cars with lights on did.
That kind of treatment, in the eyes of Mississippi's unreconstructed racists, is reserved for Blacks Democrats and never for members of the white elite. Delusional teabaggers have been quick to paint themselves as the victims-- how many years have they been brainwashed by Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck?-- of the ghastly incident against Cochran's ailing wife. Plunkett:
“Mark was as level-headed and deliberate a person as I have ever met, never prone to histrionics,” he wrote from his iPhone. “His affiliation with the TEA Party helped lend the group credibility with a wide range of conservatives, Republicans and even many Democrats in Mississippi. That’s why so many were shocked when it was alleged that he had been part of some political shenanigans. It was out of character.”McDaniel allies have argued that the whole nursing home incident was politicized to get sympathy for Cochran in what became one of the nastiest races in memory.“The politicization of the incident was beyond the pale,” Plunkett said. “It was an attack on a good man that is well respected. I’ve never met a person that had a bad word to say about him. It’s shocking to those in the state who knew the demeanor and quiet dedication of the real Mark Mayfield. He wasn’t the character he was being cast, and he didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
Mayfield has regularly contributed substantial amounts to the RNC, to the NRCC and to Republican candidates like Romney. Team McDaniel is exactly the kind of garbage heap people working in DC do not need helping to gum up the works with Ted Cruz back there. Shame about that suicide; I wonder how many more teabaggers will do likewise when McDaniel's fantasy is officially over. Valhalla awaits! No Democrats there.