I guess Jenny Beth Martin just isn’t worth the 450k a year, because Cochran apparently won:
After a long and bitter fight, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi will manage to fend off a serious tea party challenge in Tuesday’s GOP Senate runoff, CNN projects, and move closer to a seventh term.
With 99% of the precincts counted, Cochran held a 51%-49% lead over state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who forced Cochran into the runoff after both candidates fell just short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a longer contest. In the primary, McDaniel edged out Cochran by less than 1,500 votes.
In a bizarre twist, it might be Democrats that helped push Cochran ahead at the finish line.
The race is one of two marquee contests featuring longtime lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York is also trying to beat back an inter-party challenge. That race is still too early to call with Rangel holding a 48%-43% lead over state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, who Rangel narrowly defeated two years ago, with about 81% of precincts counted.
To clinch the GOP nomination, Cochran’s backers turned to Democrats, especially African-Americans who make up 37% of the state’s population.
Cochran’s supporters actively reminded voters of the senator’s work to secure federal funds for programs relied upon by African-Americans, like Head Start and certain medical centers in the state.
It’s the kind of message that Republicans barely tout these days, given the renewed focus on fiscal conservatism. But Cochran supporters viewed Democrats as key to their strategy to knock out McDaniel after the incumbent barely kept his reelection hopes alive in the primary.
McDaniel basically refused to concede and was (not surprisingly) a total asshole and will probably run a write-in campaign, and I really do not know the dynamics enough to know if this helps the Democrats in the general. I do hope that the national Republican party will learn that African-American voters are not just ignorant fools who vote for the Democrats out of cultish loyalty to JFK and Clinton, but they are fucking people who are capable of thought and will vote in their best interest. Many of them probably made the calculus that a Democratic Senator would be best, McDaniel would be the worst, so they did what they did and we’ll see what happens between the best option and the not worst option.
I will never, ever, ever figure out why Republicans write off significant portions of the population, whether they be black, gay, hispanic, etc. Look what a little outreach did here. And I hope Cochran, should he win, goes all Lisa Murkowski and is just a total kick in the dick to the right wing and the teahadists.
lamh36
Amen!
This:
has always been true. African Americans for a long time have had to vote for the “lesser of two evils” especially in the South (and even for Dem candidates). Of course, I fully expect Cochran to totally go back to fuckin’ over Black folk in Mississippi (I mean shit, Stron Thurman had an actual Black child that apparently he actually cared for, didn’t stop him from voting against the interest of Black folks in his state) but it’s always best with the devil you know that the devil you don’t.
Also too, even if it’s inevitable that they will be defeated, maybe the Childers campaign and Southern Dems campaign in particular, can at the very least try to IDK get boots on the ground in the same Black neighborhoods that Cochran seemed to do in the past 2 weeks? I mean if he gonna lose anyway, what has he got to lose. Go out, and ask African Americans for their votes, don’t just assume you got them or they’ll come out. Go to the neighborhood and do it and who knows maybe just maybe you can galvanize that vote.
Doesn’t Mississippi have the largest percentage of African American votes in the south (or in the nation I thought). It’s better to try and fail, than to not even try at all…right?
⚽️ Martin
Eli Wallach died. Didn’t even realize he was still alive.
Sorry, Shorty.
Tommy
Look Republicans like pork for their state. I’d argue many of the red states couldn’t function without it. So you have Cochran or McConnell that appear to be good at bringing home the funds. Not sure you vote against them if you know a liberal can’t win in your state.
MikeBoyScout
Bring back dick punching Republicans!
http://youtu.be/mAZWA9mZ3aw
lamh36
Also too, in the previous thread, I posted some tweets about McDaniel’s “concession” speech that wasn’t. I also posted video. It was basically a complete meltdown, ungracious and downright nasty. Just what you’d expect from a dude who’s supporters break into nursing home of his opponent apparently sick wife…
pseudonymous in nc
Indeed. She’s going to be raising her rates, in best Teagrifter fashion, to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
But yeah, if you’re Childers, why not actually campaign? You might be worried that Whitey McWhiterson won’t vote for you if you’re pictured spending time with Those People, but you’re in fucking Mississippi.
SatanicPanic
Shit for 45K I’d fuck up a campaign for McDaniel. $45 bucks even. Just put it in my PayPal, I’ll promise to spend it on stuff.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@SatanicPanic: There is no fucking way I’d spend time with those people for less than $500 a day. Even then I’m not sure I could do it.
amk
rabid racist ratfucker vs racist ratfucker. No contest.
Judd Legum
To McDaniel’s credit, it takes an impressive amount of racism to make Cochran appealing to African-American voters
Punchy
Teatards gunna lose their shit if/when it can be shown that Thadeus J. Cochran utilized The Darkies to gank the win away from MickyD. Rush and Hannity better have 37 extra phone lines available tomorry…..
SatanicPanic
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Oops, should have specified that I’d be tele-commuting.
Come on McDaniel, hire me. I promise the same results, but cheaper! SPENDING CUTS SOLVE EVERYTHING
⚽️ Martin
@Tommy: Mississippi effectively has no main economy. The largest private employer is Nissan, 6300 workers, which is about how many the federal government employs there. 4th largest private employer are the Choctaw Indians with 2500. The University of MS medical center employs 8,000. The whole university more than that. The public school systems more than that. The state of Mississippi more than anyone.
The whole state is dependent on public dollars. I respect that the people there dislike that reality, but they’re not doing a goddamn thing to actually change it and if anything they continue to make it worse.
Comrade Dread
I’m sure there are plenty of awesome, wonderful folks who live in the South, but every time Republicans say they want a border fence, I’d be willing to agree if we built it along the borders of the old Confederacy and sealed them all in.
Tommy
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Who knows. I fired a client a few weeks ago. Sold a health care/insurance product. I never talk politics with a client. But he asked me to handle his social media and blog. Hard not to talk about the ACA. When I do work for clients I don’t promote my political views. Does not pay. His views were so far to the right I said I didn’t think I could continue to work for him. He seemed stunned by this.
David Koch
And the hits just keeep coming:
Citizen Alan
I don’t think God loves me enough for Him to let Chris McDaniel run as a write-in candidate. Ultimately, it’s probably a moot point because unless something big happens in the next week or so, Childers will shut down his campaign for lack of money. All the big Dem donors basically made support conditional on a Childers-McDaniel contest.
lamh36
OT, but speaking of the South, I went ahead and applied for my dream job at CDC last Saturday. I applied for 2 position, both the same, except one is for a higher grade than the other. (one is for GS9 and the other for GS12). The GS9 would be the bare minimum of what I currently do as a Microbiologist in a hospital. The GS12 position is for the same job, just higher pay grade and therefore I supposed higher criteria. One job I can do with my eyes closed, the other I could do with my eyes closed if given the chance.
Also too, the GS12 position is about $25,000 more salary than any of my past or current positions. The GS9 position, is the same salary as before, but I’d only be willing to consider the highhest pay rang for it, which is about $10,000 more. Essentially, from my reading, if I qualify for the GS9 position, then it’s just a hop, skip and jump from GS9…so who knows.
Both job announcements I applied for have officially closed and no other application will be accepted. So now I wait!
Bubblegum Tate
I don’t think this quite counts as outreach. If Cochran can maintain a good percentage of the black vote when his opponent is not a stark raving lunatic, then the GOP might have something (not that I expect them to learn the lesson, of course), but this? Like you said, it’s just a rational tactic to try to make sure said stark raving lunatic has no chance at winning a seat.
boatboy_srq
It’s all entitlement, fauxtrage and general d!ckishness on that side of the aisle.
David Koch
Because that was the whole point of the Southern Strategy.
The calculus was they could net more votes by appealing to racists, even if that meant writing off blacks.
But because the white vote keeps shrinking, from 88% in 1992 to 72% in 2012, the calculus has turned against them. Making matters worse, the party has now been taken over by the racists they were invited into their tent.
Tommy
@⚽️ Martin: I live in a pretty blue state. Large state. My state pays more in Federal taxes then we get back in Federal dollars. I look at many of the deep red states and the opposite is true. I want to yell at the top of my lungs don’t you get this. You scream you want lower taxes. Well fine. You take the hit.
boatboy_srq
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, whether the Tea Party bigwigs are doing it for the principle – or the grift? Because that level of grift is expensive, and I’m not sure $450K would be enough to offset all the batsh!ttery you’d have to put up with.
⚽️ Martin
@Tommy: I let a temp go once because she literally could not take an instruction or do a task without finding some way to complain about liberals or government waste or whatever. She was working for the fucking government, and her constant complaining was causing everything to take twice as long as if she just shut her piehole and did the job. I let her go after 4 hours, told her why, so she blamed me personally for ruining this country.
GregB
Looks like Cochran had a few more boots on the ground than McDaniel’s had shitheels on the ground.
Looks like the ratfucker lost to the sheep fucker.
AnotherBruce
Mississippi black voters, I cannot love you enough. This is why we should never count the southern states out, there are too many good people there.
Tommy
@⚽️ Martin: I guess at times I do talk politics with clients. But long term clients. Months or years. That temp you fired, I can’t wrap my mind around that thinking. If I am asked to do a task that isn’t against my morals, and that has never been the case, I just do it. It is just work.
BruinKid
Is it paranoid of me to think that some of McDaniel’s more unhinged supporters may be angry enough that black Democrats were responsible for pushing Cochran over the top that they’ll resort to “Second Amendment remedies” on black people in Mississippi?
AnotherBruce
I know that Mississippi is unusual with it’s primary voting laws, but I wonder if a worm has burrowed in the heart of the Teapublican party. What Cochran did was turn everything upside down. And the black voters were smart enough to help him do that.
Fuck I’m as happy with this election as I have been with any in a long time.
SFAW
And I hope:
1) The Mets win the World Series this year
2) The Jets win the
Stanley CupGrey CupStupor Bowl this coming season3) I wake up next week with a full head of (my own) hair
4) I lose 60 lbs in a month without diet or illness (exercise is not proscribed, however)
5) I win PowerBall
6) My daughter and I row in the HOCR and finish in the top 10
Amazingly enough, I don’t think any of those things will happen. At least, not in this plane of existence.
Anoniminous
@lamh36:
A Cochran win is not inevitable. Mississippi had a 37% voter turn-out in 2010 or roughly 790,000 total votes. In 2012 Obama got 1.285 million votes. The votes are there. They have to be fought for.
If Childers runs the same old tired bullshit ConservaDem campaign he’ll probably lose.
If Childers runs the right campaign with the right messaging with a GOTV operation to max the Democratic vote he’s got a chance. A TeaBag/Establishment faction fight in the GOP suppressing their turn-out, in a couple of different ways, would be gravy.
ETA: got my fingers crossed for you on the CDC job thing
⚽️ Martin
@Tommy: She wouldn’t refuse to do it, but it was almost a though she was certain that we just sat around doing nothing. Every task I gave her she asserted was a waste of money. Well, fuck dear, you’re a temp with no relevant work experience and no college education. You think I’m going to ask you to perform surgery or something? No, I’m going to ask you to deliver this stuff that needs to be received ASAP. And complaining that I make you look up the persons address in the staff directory rather than just telling you where their office is (because then I would have to look it up, and my time is much more expensive than yours) isn’t part of some liberal money-wasting conspiracy.
BruinKid
@lamh36: In a similar position. Applied to and actually got an interview with my dream job a few weeks ago. I was actually the first one they interviewed. But I have no idea how many others I’m up against for the job. They plan to make the hire by the end of July, so I’ve still got a few more weeks of waiting on pins and needles.
amk
@Anoniminous: Yup. The dems everywhere just need to develop the balls to do it.
Joey Maloney
@BruinKid: I’m reading Twitter right now where the Mississippi Teatard meltdown is epic, including threats to find out who “those people” were that voted for Cochran. So no, no you are not.
⚽️ Martin
@Anoniminous: I don’t understand why you would run a conservadem campaign in Mississippi when there are probably enough african american votes in the state to win just on them alone. Just go full-on John Lewis/Elizabeth Warren.
AnotherBruce
@SFAW: I don’t think you should count it out. Cochran is an old man, this is very likely his last election. I don’t know enough about him to know how this will turn out, but he has to be pissed enough to take be taking names. And also remembering who brought him to this victory. I’m guessing a guy like this who has been a loyal Republican for decades is probably not going to give a shit about loyalty anymore. I could be wrong, But I know who’s asses I would want to kick in this situation.
Tommy
@⚽️ Martin: I am not remotely putting down temps. But if I hire you as a temp I don’t need you arguing with me about my firm’s business model. I want you to do the job.
Elmo
Totally, shamelessly OT, but this community chips in and I want this boy to have a chance:
https://www.booster.com/xander?share=2491403673813724%3Fshare%3D2491403673813724%3Fshare%3D2491403673813724
David Koch
David Corn is the greatest
Tommy
@Elmo: Are you sure this is a total class cause. Honestly I am skeptical of a lot of stuff like this. But I am in a giving mood if you think it is.
Yatsuno
@lamh36: A little advice from a gubmint wage slave: take the 9 unless that is the highest grade the position goes. Even then still take it. Often 12 positions require either a shit ton of outside experience or an equivalent to the 11 position for 1 year. if you get a 7-9-11 at the 9 level you could be a 12 simply by sitting pat. Or making as much money as one. Plus the health bennies are just WOW.
SFAW
@AnotherBruce:
Continuing a long tradition of old Republicans having late-career changes of heart, no doubt. I would have believed that of George Wallace, possibly (although unlikely), but not someone who’s been a part of of the last 35 years of Rethugs.
SFAW
@⚽️ Martin:
You apparently have not learned The Truth About Meritocracy: for Rethugs, it’s “them rules apply to the darkies and Libs, not me.”
Or, put another way: I(N)OKIYAR.
David Koch
I guess Putin is the “manly” bare chested dreamboat the GOP thought
lamh36
@Yatsuno: the GS9 position is the highest. It asks for at least 1 year specialized experience plus education.
I have had my Biology degrees since 2002, got my med tech degree in 2003, and I have been working in clinical Microbiology labs since 2004, including a 1 year stint at an actual state wide public lab. The GS12 is the highest for that position. aside from maybe not having as much lab supervisory experience, my paper credentials are pretty darn good (if I do say so myself, also too, I’ve been told it’s good). neither position is a supervisor position, it’s just that one has higher pay grade. what I lack in graduate education, I more than make up for it in skill and experience.
boatboy_srq
@⚽️ Martin:
Says it all right there. She probably thought you got where you are by seniority and bribery. And it almost sounds like she was p!ssed that she wasn’t the one sitting around doing nothing: there’s a lot of the “cushy Big Gubmint
not-job” fantasy running through the Teahad, and she probably bought into that. Makes you wonder whether she filed for unemployment after you showed her the door.low-tech cyclist
Hey, who gave black folk agency? I don'[t remember anything about that in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
Seriously, this seems to be a full-time thing for the GOP,regarding women, blacks, and other minorities as ignorant children who have been buffaloed by the Dems and have to be shown what’s really good for them.
Not that the Dems have ever taken them for granted or anything, but it’s more a matter of inattention than underlying attitude. Still less than good, but also a long way from actively evil.
Sherparick
@⚽️ Martin: He was still working until the last year or two. Wonderful life and amazing career. He was just terrific in the Magnificent Seven, How the West was Won, and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”
WereBear
@Sherparick: Yep. One of my faves.
Sherparick
@David Koch: And Lee Atwater and Karl Rove put the Southern Strategy on steroids in the late 1980s and 1990s to gather all the white people they could in the South and border states using the strategy of resentment. Resentment of Blacks, resentment of Hispanics, and resentment of cultural elites (Hollywood and Gays), and as one can see by the reaction of Erick Erickson, spokesman for the “Gated Neighborhood communities,” finding that Blacks have voted “one’s” primary is something that will not be tolerated. For Republicans it is a zero sum game in that any step to attract Blacks, Hispanics, environmentalists, or the poor will repel the White voters who resent and hate those same people and want to see them punished.
satby
@Tommy: Seems like it is, a lot of rescue groups do online fundraising especially for medical stuff that’s out of the ordinary. Most of us spend our own money on lots of rescue needs and as a result live paycheck to paycheck (I certainly did even when I was getting a good paycheck). Example: just food and dog cookies and litter for my 6 rescued dogs and 6 rescued cats costs almost $60 per week; that’s for plain Purina chow and generic dog cookies. And I’ve been unemployed for just over 6 months. So if one of them needed a medical procedure, it would be fundraise or euthanize, and we wouldn’t be rescuing if we thought otherwise salvageable animals should be put down.
Paul in KY
@lamh36: Best of luck on getting that sweet GS-12 job!
another Holocene human
@lamh36: I’m pulling for you. Best of luck and good intentions floating your way.
Will Twiner
sadly, that will actually happen is Cochran will retire next year and Gov. Bryant will appoint Haley Barbour Eternal Senator for Ms
RaflW
JC sez:
That’d be great. I’m not thinking it’ll happen, but it could.
pseudonymous in nc
@AnotherBruce:
Cochran’s primary loyalty is to pork. His party is the party of Senate seniority.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Ten years ago, if the GOP/Teahadists had crossed Cochran like they did this cycle, he’d be doing a lot more to ruin their day than a “kick in the dick”.
But Thad’s very old and kinda senile these days. I anticipate very little of what would be a well-deserved backlash.
WaterGirl
@lamh36: Good for you! Waiting is hard, sending patience your way.