Your Cochran-McDaniel thread

by liberal japonicus

As a former son of the Magnolia state, the fight between Cochran and McDaniel has been filling up my facebook news feed. If you've not heard, Democratic African-American voters basically pulled Thad's bacon out of the fire.

The evidence is in the maps and numbers. Turnout was up statewide compared with the June 3 primary in which McDaniel narrowly beat Cochran, but fell just shy of the 50 percent share necessary to avoid a runoff. But the spike in turnout tended to be the greatest in the state’s heavily black counties, as this graph by election-data guru Charles Franklin shows. As the New York Times's Nate Cohn notes, the county with the largest share of black voters in the entire country, tiny Jefferson County, saw its turnout jump 91 percent. In larger Hinds County, which Cochran won by fewer than 6,000 votes on June 3, turnout jumped so much that he won it by nearly 11,000 votes yesterday. As the NBC First Read crew put it, “In a race that Cochran won by 6,000 votes, that’s pretty much your ballgame there.”

There is some gnashing of teeth among Democrats, wondering why Mississippi African American Democratic voters didn't stay away and let McDaniel win, thereby allowing the GOP to implode and have a Democrat run. Well, given that the Democratic party never really made much of an effort to recruit plausible candidates, the possibility of a McDaniel election was a distinct possibility. In addition, I like the conclusion of this post:

Cochran will no doubt crow all the way to November about how Black voters appreciate his constituent service and reasonable policies. But clearly, many African American voters who cast ballots for Sen. Cochran felt strongly that McDaniel would be an even more reactionary opponent of their voting rights and reforms that produce jobs and educational opportunity.

It's an ambivalent outcome for Democrats. On the one hand, as Cohn notes, "Mr. Cochran's victory eliminates whatever slight chance Democrats would have had if Mr. McDaniel had been the Republican nominee. Mr. Cochran is all but assured of winning re-election in Mississippi, one of the most Republican states in the country."

On the other hand, a show of political strength by African American voters as a pivotal force in Mississippi is good news. It might embolden a stronger Black turnout in the future, if not in 2014. If it signals a new era of African American political upsurge in the south, it could set the stage for a blue wave in 2016.

I also love 'there's got to be a pony in here somewhere' comment by Haley Barbour:

“No doubt independents and Democrats helped put us over the top,” Mr. Barbour says in an e-mail. “And I am convinced many of those Democratic voters who voted for the first time in a Republican primary now see the GOP a little differently. A lot of them are quite conservative on many issues – it’s a fascinating development.”

TPM has articles about Beck and Palin's reaction as well as an excellent piece by Ed Kilgore about the Mississippi dynamicsFor my part, I am really going to enjoy when folks like Beck and Palin get labled as carpetbaggers and get run out of town on a rail. There's also Limbaugh's use of 'black Uncle Tom voters'. Pair that with Barbour's observation and you might understand why Cochran winning is actually a much better outcome than making the seat a D for a cycle or two.  

Comments

[sapient]

Gosh, lj, sometimes I forget that you're from there. I respect all the more for it.

[wj]

I have to wonder if Sen Cochran will be sufficiently grateful that he makes more of an effort to legislate on behalf of those who kept him in office. If it makes him less reflexively extremely conservative, that might be a plus for those who want the Congress to function as part of the government.

[Countme-In]

To put a finer point on lj's Beck link, here's a picture of the now standard response of the 27% and the growing, violent, murderous, terrorist base of the Republican Party, which is to say, the "modern" Republican Party created and funded by the Republican Party.

Subtitle it "Dispatch From Mosul".

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/25/glenn-beck-got-so-fired-up-about-tuesdays-election-results-he-just-had-to-take-a-break-from-his-radio-show-to-do-this/

If Cochran faces a credible Democratic candidate this fall, expect he and Barbour to court the murderous, racist, Republican base once again, touting their mutual intention to defund Obamacare, as one example, for "those people" who just crossed over and voted for Cochran in the primary.

Their armed, vermin base will be counted on to double down on voter suppression efforts this Fall against "those people" who voted for them the other day, but who might vote Democratic, excuse me, "Democrat", in Barbour's right-wing Goober-mouthed parlance, this Fall.

I wish I worked for the IRS so I could order harassment of all groups funding McDaniel and Cochran, just as one would investigate and harass the money sources for international terror organizations.

Darrell Issa will find my hard drives intact, my emails fully backed up and presented in triplicate and an invitation, in person, before his tribunal, to allow me to shove the lot of it up his Republican fundament.

I will be disappointed to report that neither Barack Obama not any other cowardly White House official ordered the investigations and harassment, but someone had to do the dirty work of defending this country against its internal enemies, so I acted alone as my conscience dictated, and as a last peaceful gambit before entertaining the use of the Republican Party's and al Qaeda's favorite fall-back position to solve all problems in the polity -- gunfire.

[Countme-In]

More from John Fund at NRO, writing on behalf of William F. Buckley, who couldn't be troubled to rouse himself from the family vault, spit the salt packing his dead, gentlemanly mouth, and wince one more time over Brown versus Board of Education.

Read the comments, too.

[Countme-In]

link: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/381187/flier-got-thad-cochran-elected-john-fund

[cleek]

that Beck clip so nicely illustrates the childishness and insecurity of "conservative" gun owners.

i'm mad! i'm gonna go shoot something! then you'll see! you'll all see!

[Countme-In]

Somebody asked:

Degenerate Gandhi @Bro_Pair

@GroverNorquist What is your favorite song by Janis Joplin and Jimi?

Norquist answers:

Norquist ✔ @GroverNorquist
Follow

@Bro_Pair Hendrix: "Hey joe..where you going with that gun in your hand." pro-family, pro-2nd amendment. Janis: anything. Everything.
6:53 PM - 25 Jun 2014

I fully expect the Republican Supreme Court to begin advancing novel Constitutional theories regarding the penumbras surrounding the commas in the Second Amendment.

For example: If money is political speech, then ipso f*ckso, bullets are protected speech spoken by guns bought with money. Bullets are words merely spoken at political events. Words don't kill. Therefore, bullets spoken in the direction of liberals and government employees at political events, rallies, armed standoffs, etc will be considered protected speech, merely political donations uttered to advance Republican objectives and discourse.

[russell]

There's also Limbaugh's use of 'black Uncle Tom voters'.

Making friends, the Rush Limbaugh way.

[cleek]

There's also Limbaugh's use of 'black Uncle Tom voters'.

if only we had someone here to tell us that Rush had to say this because liberals are the real racists.

[Tony P.]

The Cochran-McDaniel race proves once again that American politics can be a lifelong subject of harmless fun -- if you're a Martian watching it from a safe distance.

What made that night's laugh-fest possible, of course, was the open primary combined with the run-off rule. A curious Martian might reasonably ask a few questions about those things.

For instance, and in the first place: why should government, of all people, provide the facilities for party primaries? Political parties are private associations. Why should Democratic taxpayer money pay for GOP primaries, or vice-versa? Why should "independent" taxpayers fund either one? Why shouldn't political parties have to organize and fund their own candidate selection process, and be entirely free to run that process any way they like? If a political party wants to select its general-election candidate by lot, or by a single-elimination arm-wrestling tournament, or by open-outcry auction, why should the rest of us care?

So okay: maybe there's some practical reason why we treat political parties as quasi-governmental organizations. Maybe we minimize fuss and bother by sociably lending, to political parties, the polling places, poll workers, and other government facilities that would otherwise lie fallow until the general election. And by doing that, "we" get some say in the primary election rules.

But how the hell did "we" (in some states) decide that "open" primaries are a good idea?

Back in 2008, when El Rushbo was calling on Republicans to vote in the Democratic side of "open" primaries, I drew a certain amount of scorn, here at ObWi, for suggesting that the Barack vs Hillary contest should be decided by actual Democrats -- i.e. people whose preference order was either Barack-Hillary-McCain or Hillary-Barack-McCain, but NOT people who (whether they meant it or not) proclaimed their preference order was either Barack-McCain-Hillary or Hillary-McCain-Barack.

Even if the Big, Fat Idiot has flipped on the open primary question, I have not. I would even endorse the McDaniel position that only voters who are pledged to vote for the party's eventual nominee in the general should be allowed to vote in its primary. If I had my way, I'd go so far as to create a legal mechanism by which that pledge could be enforced.

I don't know whether the bemused Martian would have more fun, or less, if I had my way.

--TP

[shirt]

I can't help but think that the threat of poll watchers aided the decision for many blacks to turn out.

I would have laid in wait for that!

Shirt

[wj]

How did we, in some states, decide that open primaries were a good idea?

Well, we observed that, between the way that legislative districts are drawn and the way that people tend to cluster into relatively like-minded groups, in many cases the general election had become effectively a rubber stamp. That is, the winner of one party primaries was pretty much a lock for the general election.

That had two problems. First, it meant that those who were not members of that party, whether because they were members of another party or merely were not aligned with any party, had no say in choosing their representative. Second, it put a premium on candidates who were closer to the center of a single party, rather than to the center of their district overall.

With an open primary, everybody gets a say in who will be selected. And, because the top two vote-getters in the primary move to the general election, there is a premium on being near the center of the whole district, not just of a single party.

In a perfect world, a open primary might not be necessary to get a legislator who was representative the whole district. But in the world we actually live in, it seems to be proving a better approach than party-only primaries were.

As for requiring, somehow, that party members support their party's nominee**, why should they? If the nominee of another party turns out to be closer to my preferences than the nominee of my party, why not let me vote that way? Specifically, why should the state restrict my vote in that manner?

Far fairer to just let everybody vote for whichever candidate they prefer. And then, after winnowing down the pool of possible candidates, let them choose among them. Which, be it noted, is exactly what an open primary system does.

** And how, exactly, would you do that? Not bother to let people vote in the general election, just show up at the voting location and check their name -- counting that as a vote for whomever their party nominated in the primary? Surely you can see the problems with that....

[Berial]

If I remember correctly the reason MS has an open primary is that sometime in the 70's the Republicans wanted it that way so they could interfere with the Democrat's primary.

I was just a child in the 70's so I could be wrong, but that's what I remember being told.

Also if primaries aren't part of the public election process, then they are private affairs. If they are private affairs, and the constitution holds 'freedom of association' as the rule of the land you've effectively let parties set up 'all white' primaries, or 'all landed gentry' primaries. So I think the courts decided that primaries were part of the election process so that minorities couldn't easily be excluded from the process.

[CharlesWT]

[...]
...In 2005, Mississippi received a jaw-dropping $2.02 in federal money for every $1 of taxes its residents sent to Washington.

By 2010, that had jacked up further still to $2.47. That same year, the Tax Foundation calculates that fully 49 percent of Mississippi’s state general revenue comes from federal taxpayers who will never step foot in Morgan Freeman's and William Faulkner's beloved stamping grounds.
[...]
The GOP is so far in the crapper with voters (just 25 percent of whom cop to affiliating with the Party of Lincoln), it may not be able to salvage itself. Certainly if it doesn't kick red-state socialists such as Cochran to the curb, it's got no hope whatsoever.
Thad Cochran, the GOP Establishment, and the Scourge of Red-State Socialism

[Countme-In]

The thieves in red states give socialism a bad name.

At least when I favor spending, I favor being taxed to raise the revenue to pay for it, for example, Medicare Part D mentioned in the link.

Why didn't this writer include the fact that Mississippi deadbeats also refused, through their thieving Republican representatives, to pay for the travesty of a debacle of a piece of sh*t in Iraq?

I can't think why. I expect the writer's favorite part of that bloodbath was that it was free to him.

Mississippians could unlock their slavering pit bull jaws from the federal titty if they would tax themselves sufficiently at the state and local levels, but to say that is unlikely is an understatement and unlike me, not to mention the fact that Grover Norquist will show up to have state and local representatives sign eternal pledges to never raise revenue at those levels either should the attempts ever be made.

Bullsh*t.

[Countme-In]

Mississippi has so many extra "s"'s and "p"'s and "i"'s that could be taxed to provide for themselves, but no, Ronald Reagan said if you want fewer letters and shorter names for your states, tax the alphabet, so we can't do that.

Cut taxes and you can hog all the s, p, and i's you please.

[Tony P.]

wj, Berial,

Allow me to make a distinction between "preliminary" and "primary" elections.

A primary election, in current parlance, selects each party's nominee. If we had three or four major parties, the general election would have three or four candidates. As it is, our general elections usually amount to one-on-one run-offs between a Democrat and a Republican.

A non-partisan preliminary election could easily produce a run-off between two Democrats, or two Republicans. But even when the run-off candidates end up being of the same party, they represent "two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable post-war environments" alternatives. They would hardly be running against each other, otherwise.

I know just enough about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem to recognize that ANY voting system CAN result in perverse outcomes. So I am not inclined to argue the relative merits of "non-partisan preliminary", "open primary", or "state-sponsored closed primary" elections on a theoretical basis.

What I do argue is that We The People, most of who are NOT "members" of any party, should leave our fellow citizens who ARE party members entirely free -- and entirely unaided by us -- to pick their own candidates to compete for Our votes in the general. Not because the outcomes are guaranteed to be less perverse in all cases, but because We (as individual people) seem to value our own freedom of association.

Would the Mississippi slugfest have played out differently under a non-partisan-preliminary system? Who knows? Faced with a conservative Democrat, a very conservative Republican, and an ultra-"conservative" teabagger in the same preliminary election, Mississippi liberals (there must be dozens of them) would STILL not have had a shot at electing a senator to their liking. Would the general still have come down to a Cochran-Childers run-off? Probably. But one thing is for sure: McDaniel would look even more like an ass than he already does, if he still complained that the "wrong" people voted for his opponent(s).

--TP

[liberal japonicus]

I didn't mention, but in the run-up to the election, which was very divisive, Cochran's wife, who suffers from dementia and is in a nursing home, was made into an issue by the McDaniel camp/supporters. While I won't go into the whole thing, this was in the news

[wj]

Tony,
I take a rather different view. Possibly because I am living under an "open primary" system.

Sometimes, we do end up with two candidates from the same party in the general election. But that usually means two very different candidates, with very different points of view. And someone who is very conservative (somewhat the local equivalent of very liberal in Mississippi) can indulge in tactical voting in the primary, in order to get the choice which is least-bad-and-still-electable thru to the general election.

Certainly it is true that someone who is far outside the norm for his state (or distirct or whatever) will frequently not have a choice he actually likes in the general election. But it is also true that, if he did have that option, his preferred candidate would have no chance of getting elected. As has been demonstrated in California elections for a couple of decades now, before we switched to open primaries.

Freedom of association is all very well. But the ability to actually influence who will represent us seems far more important. In our less than ideal world, that makes the choice obvious IMHO.

[Countme-In]

lj, Obama operatives shot Mayfield, assisted by shadowy Benghazian Muslim moles deep in the IRS bureaucrazy, with establishment Republican hippie elitists like Cochran at best turning a blind eye.

Since we've chased away the finest forensic political scandal investigator from our forum here, let me fill in and conclude that the only remaining unanswered question is the choice of melon for the crime scene reenactment: cantaloupe or casaba, the crenshaw rejected as stand-in for Tea party corpses on account of its high IQ.

[liberal japonicus]

I count myself lucky that they haven't, unlike Oklahoma, had a 'body- double' argument.

[McKinneyTexas]

Barely on topic, I had a case a few years back in which we were opposite Chris McDaniel. He didn't strike me as a bomb thrower. Being an out of state attorney, he had local counsel, an African American friend from law school. Chris, other than his inability to evaluate his case or to negotiate coherently, seemed like a fairly reasonable guy. From what I saw on TV, his current style is pretty much the raw meat outsiders feed to the TP to beat whoever the incumbent is. It struck me, as do many TP candidates, as opportunism.

[liberal japonicus]

Being an out of state attorney, he had local counsel, an African American friend from law school. Chris, other than his inability to evaluate his case or to negotiate coherently, seemed like a fairly reasonable guy.

If you happen to run into your friend again, I'd love to have his feelings about the race. To me, it seems like the MO of these TP candidates is to hit the pavement and say anything to whip up the crowd, take the primary and then wait for the money train to roll in. I wonder how long this business model can work.

[McKinneyTexas]

If you happen to run into your friend again, I'd love to have his feelings about the race. To me, it seems like the MO of these TP candidates is to hit the pavement and say anything to whip up the crowd, take the primary and then wait for the money train to roll in. I wonder how long this business model can work.

Somewhere on my 'to do' list is looking him up, if I can ever find his name. I am curious as well. I agree with you, pretty much, on the TP MO. We're seeing it a lot down here: opportunists who are no more on board with the TP agenda than you are pushing all the buttons and getting on the general election ballot.