That is the First Congressional District of Mississippi

So what, you might ask? What do those 22 counties have to do with me?

Interesting questions.

As you probably know, MS-01 held a special election last night to replace former Rep. Roger Wicker, who became a US Senator following Trent Lott’s resignation (so he could spend more time with his hairpieces). 

Wicker was a Republican, in a district that went62-37 Bush in 2004. Wicker himself won reelection in 2006, despite the huge wave of Democratic wins in the House, by 66-34. The Republican douchebag who ran for his vacant seat is a guy by the name of Greg Davis. Democrat Travis Childers opposed him. 

AndChilders won. By54-46% of the vote. 

Uh, Wow. Mississippi now hasthree (of four) US Representatives who are Democrats.

And the Republicans didn’t roll over, either. They were trying out their strategies for the fall–tying Childers to Obama (I don’t think the two have ever met, Obama didn’t endorse Childers’ campaign, and, uh, this wouldn’t be an appeal to racists, would it?), mentioning Jeremiah Wright, as if he had fuck-all to do with anything, and even bringing in Dick “Dick” Cheney to stump for Davis.

Didn’t work. Didn’t work at all. 

106,590 people voted in this election–and it will only fill the seat until the end of the year. Now, theCensus Bureau tells me that, as of 2006, 734,271 people lived in the counties in that Congressional district. Overall, 26.1% of the population of Mississippi is over 18, and thus nominally eligible to vote (this of course excludes people in jails, prisons, or convicted felons who have served their terms, as they are excluded from voting in that state). I’m gonna assume, and I think it’s reasonable to do so, that the over-18 percentage for MS-01 is about the same as the rest of the state. Thus, we have 542,626 people over 18 in that district. And about twenty percent turned out for a special election runoff. That’s pretty good, especially considering that, nationwide, only about two-thirds of eligible voters are registered. In Mississippi, the fraction of eligible voters who are registered is even smaller, but we’ll be conservative here and assume that 67% of those old enough to vote in this district are registered. That gives 363,560 voters. And the turnout of registered voters under these assumptions would be 29%. And that’s a pretty damn amazing turnout for a runoff in a special election that only matters until the end of this year.

This, my fellow First Drafticans, is bad, bad, BAD news for the Republicans come November. Which means that it’s great news for the non-evil segment of the population.

The Republicans are FUCKED. They’re gettin’ fourteen-and-a-half with no lube.

This is northeastern Mississippi we’re talking about here. I looked at the county-by-county demographics (yes, I’m that much of a dork), did some calculating, and this district is, overall, 70.85% white. In the entire district, only one county is majority black–Clay county, where 56.8% of the people are African-American. If the GOP can’t win in rural Mississippi, among a 71% white population, even when making explicitly racist appeals, they are so fucked they’re not gonna know which end is up this November.

They got nothin’. Check out this bit, from the CNN article linked somewhere above:

While Childers attacked Davis for supporting trade deals the
Democrat blamed for costing Mississippi jobs and for raising taxes as
fees as mayor, the National Republican Congressional Committee
sponsored a television ad tying Childers to Obama and the Democrats’
2004 presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In the ad, Childers is shown next to Kerry and Obama while the Illinois
senator’s ranking from the National Journal as the most liberal senator
is noted.

In an ad paid for by Davis, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is shown and a
narrator chastises Childers for not publicly denouncing the pastor’s
controversial remarks. That ad also claimed Obama had endorsed Childers.

See? Nothin’. Fuck ’em. Childers is talking about shit that matters to people–jobs. How to eat. I’m not terribly happy with his anti-tax rhetoric (he’s not going to be a darling of us lefties, that’s for sure, but that’s a battle for another day), but he’s at least talking about actual policies that impact people’s lives. The Republicans, on the other hand, employed this “strategy:”

LIBRULS! NEGROES! CRAZY NON-WHITE PREACHERMAN! BAD BAD BAD BAD!

And that’s what they’ve got for November. If it ain’t working in Mississippi, people, it ain’t gonna play anywhere else.

I was born in Mississippi. I lived in Lowndes County, part of MS-01, for a couple of years when I was in high school. My mother’s mother grew up in Clay county, picking cotton during the Depression when she should have been in school. So this isn’t just an exercise in number-crunching for me. I really am amazed that the GOP is losing its grip on the rural, white South. 

And it just makes my fucking day. If you see me later, smiling, singing to myself, and walking down the sunny side of the street, you’ll know why.