Not much has changed in Mississippi.
Most all of the white voters there are Republicans. The chances of a Democrat winning in a campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate are pretty much akin to the chance of a snowball lasting for more than one second in Hades.
But then, these are the days of the Trump Era.
Tomorrow, Mississippi voters will decide a runoff for the unexpired term of Sen. Thad Cochran, a Republican who resigned earlier this year for health reasons. Gov. Phil Bryant, also a Republican, appointed former State Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith to Sen. Cochran’s seat. Since being in the Senate, Hyde-Smith has voted with Donald Trump 100% of the time, and she got no nods of approval at all from the ACLU.
For special elections, Mississippi has a non-partisan system (how could that be in a nation so polarized, and all because of Trump?). It’s calleld the jungle primary system.
Hyde-Smith is the former elected Agriculture Commissioner for the Mangnolia State (which also styles itself as the Hospitality State — how ironic, in view of Mississippi’s long history of racial violence)
A person with a very loose mouth, Sen. Hyde-Smith said recently that if invited to a public hanging, she would love to attend.
Hyde-Smith’s opponent in tomorrow’s runoff is former Mississippi Congressman and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, who is African American.
Trump has campaigned extensively for Hyde-Smith, and he says that Hyde-Smith meant nothing bad when she talked about going to see a public hanging.
For all this, see https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/24/politics/cindy-hyde-smith-confederacy-mississippi-senate-race/index.html.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, who covers Congress for us, tells us that Espy will defeat Hyde-Smith easily, much to the consternation of Senator Obstruction (the senior senator from Kentucky).