My God, Quin Hillyer, what would it take for you to acknowledge that the people who pointed a finger at the Chris McDaniel campaign and called it racist had a good goddamned point? Sometimes, when people say someone or some thing is racist, it’s because they or it are racist. Why spend all this time excoriating Haley Barbour for supporting attacks on the McDaniel campaign and their Tea Party supporters and then come right out in the end and admit that the McDaniel and his campaign are racist pieces of shit?
If we inverted Hillyer’s column and put the second half at the top, the whole thing would make no sense whatsoever. That’s because the first half of the piece is devoted to the idea that people erroneously and unfairly maligned McDaniel and his supporters as being racists. Then in the second half, Hillyer is begrudgingly forced to admit that the McDaniel campaign actually went to court and specifically complained not about Democrats voting in the Republican primary but about blacks voting in the Republican primary.
Based on scientific, reliable methodology, a comparative analysis of county-by-county increases [in votes cast from the first primary to the runoff] indicates that Cochran’s vote increases were correlated to the percentage of blacks that live in each county. A regression analysis of county vote results from both the June 3 and June 24 elections with the percentage of blacks and non-blacks who make up each county’s population shows that, without the predominantly Democratic voter participation in the Republican runoff, Cochran would have lost the runoff election by about 25,000 votes.
Things are still bad enough down in Mississippi that there are lawyers who think this is a winning argument in court. “Your honor, the statistics clearly show that my client won the non-nigger vote and should be awarded his rightful victory.”
I’ve never met a lawyer who would make that argument in a legal filing. It’s incomprehensible unless you understand how conservative Mississippi judges are apt to be.
They even prepared a press release that specifically complained only about blacks voting. Someone had the good sense to nix that, but it was good enough for the Mississippi court system. Unbelievable. What further proof would someone need to understand the racism involved in that primary? If anything, Cochran and his allies were too soft on the issue for fear of alienating some of their own supporters.
Let’s get something straight. Black folks down in Mississippi have a very good reason to prefer Thad Cochran to Chris McDaniel, and they made sure to express their opinion. That is as it should be. It’s how it always should have been.
