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 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.