How to Democrat Could Swipe a Seat Senate in Deep-Red Mississippi

As lawyers for Rick Scott and Bill Nelson begin litigating the resolution of their Senate race in Florida, Mississippi's Cindy Hyde-Smith, appointed by Mississippi's Cindy Hyde-Smith the governor in March to replace the Thad Cochran, failed on Election Day to earn the right to win the election for the right to serve out the remainder of Cochran's term, which expires in 2021. Thus, the top two vote-getters -Hyde-Smith, a Republican who took home 41.5 percent of the vote, and Democrat Mike Espy, a black form congressman, who finished just behind her at 40.6 percent-will head to a runoff on November 27.

Cindy Hyde-Smith to do this right now is not a great time

Hyde-Smith is not talking about Espy here. But even so, at best, are a thoroughly ill-informed attempt at folksy humor in the state that was the nation's lynching capital between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. It is a grim reminder of how deeply the vestiges of lynching culture are engrained in certain segments of the population, and of how little do they think or care about the meaning of their words for Americans who do not look like them. In any election, but especially one against a black man, one of the most popular approaches to the practice of racially-motivated mob killings is not recommended.

On Sunday, Hyde-Smith characterizes it as "an exaggerated expression of look," and dismissed "any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation" as "ridiculous." At a press conference on Monday, she responded to questions-among-many others, "Are you familiar with Mississippi's history of lynchings?" – by repeating, over and over, "I put out a statement yesterday, and I stand by the statement. " When reporters appealed to governor Phil Bryant for help, he conceded that "all of us in public life have said things we can have phrased better," and put out a statement. "

Cindy Hyde-Smith is not Roy Moore, and it is not inspiring the same brand of universal revulsion as does predation. But in a world in which someone with a (D) next to their name can win an honest-to-God Senate seat in Alabama, and after Democrats won control of a deeply-gerrymandered House by winning in both toss-up and long- shot districts, no outcome can be ruled out anymore. Besides, like Moore, Hyde-Smith is a weak candidate, he is a Democrat for the first decade of political career before switching parts in 2010, a dubious history that factored in to President Trump's decision to withhold his support until the end of the campaign. Trump, the presence of paleo-bigot Republican Chris McDaniel in Election Day's jungle primary-he finished with about 16 percent of the vote-helped prevent him which, frankly, she should have been able to walk away.

Espy, meanwhile, is about to become a Democratic candidate in the Deep South: In 1986, he became Mississippi's first black rep for Reconstruction, and went on to win three reelection campaigns. Beginning in 1992, President Clinton's Secretary of the Secretary-General of the United States of America, "Gift-giving Investigations", which is described as "scandalous" in the mid-90s. House. (He was acquitted of all charges.)

Democrat in Mississippi: He endorsed the Republican governor Haley Barbour in 2007, and made sure to profess his admiration and respect for Cochran when he announced his Senate bid. As a congressman, the National Rifle Associate bestowed on him its "Silver Rifle" award in 1988. In other words, if anyone can cobble together a winning coalition of Democrats and right-of-center voters who are not so sure about Hyde- Smith, Trump, or both, it's going to be someone like Mike Espy. Doug Jones won in Alabama on the strength of African-American turnout, and Espy has hired Jones' special election-winning team in the hopes of pulling off another upset.

The odds are still, to put it charitably, long. Espy finished less than one point behind Hyde-Smith, but McDaniel was the only other candidate to put up any numbers of note. If you assume that McDaniel fans begrudgingly line up behind Hyde-Smith they have no other Republican choice, they are going to win in the runoff. Purpose if Hyde-Smith is not exactly good in the state, and is not conducive to doing business. If some McDaniel people find it to be insufficiently MAGA-ish for their tastes, and decide to just stay home on November 27? And if Espy can chip away at the state's built-in partisan disadvantage by getting more people than usual to the polls, just like Jones did a year ago? Then maybe. Maybe.

Here is some interesting math: Between the two primaries in Alabama in 2017, Republicans earned almost 75 percent of the total number of voters. Last week, Hyde-Smith and McDaniel combined for only 58 percent in Mississippi. If Jones can come away with a seat in the first scenario, he has a chance of doing so in the second one-which means that Hyde-Smith would be well-advised to cut down on the racism sooner than later.