I made it through my Mississippi analysis yesterday, wherein I mentioned that Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith's daughter graduated from a "segregation academy" in Lincoln County, without making the obvious joke about it being somewhat surprising that there is a Lincoln County in Mississippi. You'd think they could do something about that. Here in south Minneapolis, where I live, the local middle school was recently renamed, on the initiative of students, from Ramsey Middle School (after Alexander Ramsey, first territorial governor and renowned slaughterer of the Sioux Indians) to Justice Alan Page Middle School, Page being the first African-American state supreme court justice (and a pretty good football player for the Vikings).
I love the way that "Justice" made it into the official name, presumably to indicate that athletic excellence is beside the point. My stepdaughter was among the activists and I remember her saying that there was some thought, too, that the inclusion of the first name and honorific would help steer clear of the unfortunate acronym for Page Middle School.
And, of course, we no longer have Lake Calhoun, which was named after John Calhoun, the 19th-century South Carolinian known for his service as vice president, United States senator, cabinet member, member of the US House of Representatives, and indefatigable defender of slavery. In one of his official capacities, Calhoun oversaw the first government land surveys of our area, and in this way got his name attached to the lake. The new name, Bde Maka Ska, which is what the Sioux always called the lake, does not roll trippingly off the tongue and is sort of a bummer for local businesses that deploy in their name the neighborhood's most notable topographical feature. To retain the currency accruing to the familiar name, they're mainly sticking with Calhoun. The past is still with us, in south Minneapolis as well as Mississippi.
Just for the record, Mississippi has, in addition to Lincoln County, a Jefferson Davis County. Again, I like the way that the first name is in there, Davis alone being too common and thus leaving in doubt whether or not the intent is to honor a famous traitor.
The result of the election in Mississippi last night was like a good golfer making a 2-putt par. I noted in my preview that ninety percent of sixty percent--60 for the approximate percentage of Mississippians who are white and 90 for the approximate percentage of white Mississippians who prefer the Republicans--makes fifty-four percent, and that's exactly what Hyde-Smith got. There was a wee bit of drama early in the night. I was watching on MSNBC, where, "at the big board," Steve Kornacki was looking a little squinty-eyed at the first returns from two counties. Warren County, on the Mississippi River near the southwest corner of the state--Vicksburg is the biggest town--reported its complete county tally within about a half hour of the polls closing. Espy won 53.4% of the vote there. When trying to read the early tea leaves, an obvious strategy is to compare a complete county result to what happened in the same county in the last big statewide election. Two years ago, Clinton lost Mississippi, 40-58 percent, and she lost Warren County by 46.6 to 51.5. So Espy, instead of losing by about 5 points, won by about 7, and a 12-point turnaround is about two-thirds of what he needed. Meanwhile, in the early returns from DeSoto County, Espy was trailing Hyde-Smith by 46-54. DeSoto is in the northwest corner of Mississippi. It's basically part of greater Memphis, Tennessee, and almost the only place in Mississippi bearing a demographic resemblance to the suburban areas in which Democrats have been making large gains in support. Clinton had lost DeSoto County by 31-66. Kornacki opined that if Espy could stay at 46 percent in DeSoto, a populous county by Mississippi standards, Hyde-Smith might conceivably be in trouble. As the night wore on, however, Espy's number kept slipping, landing finally at 41 percent, still a 10-point jump from Clinton's 31 but not enough. Clinton won 40 percent statewide, so a 10-point jump is what Espy needed across the whole state, and, as results trickled in from the interior parts of rural Mississippi, it was clear that Hyde-Smith was winning these areas by the same wide margins that Trump had--zero slippage. In the end, the shift in Warren County, roughly midway between the shift in DeSoto County and the zero shift in lots of sparsely populated counties east of the heavily African-American Mississippi delta region, was representative.
So maybe Mississippi isn't that different after all. There, as almost everywhere else, the fault lines are
white/nonwhite
rural & small town/metropolitan
--and, for Democrats, there just isn't enough metropolitan in Mississippi.
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