Democratic nominee Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom’s narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations, and it will echo through the country as well. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats’ argument that their future runs through the American South.
It’s a common joke in the US, at least in the south. Sort of a “we would be the worst in the nation at [education | poverty | worker’s rights | etc.] if Mississippi weren’t setting the bar so low” kind of thing.
For proof, here’s the Wikipedia article about this.
never seen many sources in the summary, 26! it’s like 3 at the end of each sentence
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Damn, that’s brutal. Sorry for picking on you Mississippi, the reasons your government sucks are complicated and difficult to solve, largely because the power structures are so well entrenched at this point. It’s a similar situation up here in TN. I know a lot of y’all are cool. Apparently, as of recently, just over half :)
It’s not really that complex. The power structures were put in place by oligarchs to ensure their economic dominance and they enshrined racism in those power structures to divide the people and maintain political dominance.
It’s only that now people are waking up and the oligarchs have gotten lazy. And usually when those two things combine, the oligarchs turn up the fascism dial to 11. We should all prepare ourselves for the reactionary response to the blue wave. It’s not going to be pretty.
Tennessee is a cesspit. Justin Pearson got screwed out if his seat. It’s all so disappointing. This state is a hostile environment.
It’s brutal, but note that throughout the article, particularly in terms of education, the only path forward for Mississippi is up.
And they’ve seriously improved on education. Once you do that, the other things start to fall in place. Think about it like this: if you were 5 at the start of the Mississippi Miracle, you might have just cast your first vote for a US senator.
Educated voters consistently vote left.
That’s cool. Makes me hopeful that we can pull off something similar. Now we got GA, TX, KY, the carolinas, and MS making us look bad. We gotta get with the program.