Mississippi Musings

Almost unreported by the media on Tuesday night was Democrat Travis Childers' special election victory in Mississippi's First Congressional District. Democrats were ebullient, as well they should have been: Bush carried the First with 59% of the vote in 2000, and 62% in 2004; former Representative Roger Wicker (picked to serve out the remainder of retired Senator Trent Lott's term) won with 66% in '06 and a mind-boggling 79% in '04, when he didn't even have a real Democratic opponent.

What does this suggest? I'll take the optimistic position that it's a special election, that it means little or nothing. Only 107,239 votes were cast Tuesday night; Childers' win, by a margin of 57,800 votes, was a comfortable, though hardly earth-shattering 53.9%. Those 57,800 (a suspiciously nice number?) would admittedly have swung the election to the Democrat in the low-turnout '06 midterm, but in 2004 a swing of that magnitude would have reduced Wicker's margin of victory to a still-impressive 58%. Put another way, Childers received just 8,626 votes more than the Democratic candidate did in 2006. All in all, the numbers are a mixed message. Specials are all about turnout and some combination of pissed off/fired up Democrats, disaffected independents, and dispirited Republicans gave Childers the win. But in this "who knows what it says but it ain't earth-shattering," sky-is-partly-cloudy, glass-is-half-full analysis, I'm something of a voice in the wilderness.

Perhaps the dominant interpretation (voiced by Fred Barnes on Fox News last night) is that Mississippi's special election was driven by a rejection of Republicanism. It's plausible, given that this wasn't a truly anti-incumbent election, but rather may have been an anti-incumbent party election, which could be bad news. Yet while Mississippians sent a Democrat to Congress, McCain remains highly competitive with Obama nationally. Just how deep the GOP's woes are remains unclear, though retiring Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) released a 20-page memo outlining the dismal state of the party (in which he created a furor by using Obama and tar baby in the same paragraph, god forbid); this, of course, comes less than ten days after Newt Gingrich's widely-reported and similarly apocalyptic warnings.

The state of the party deserves a post in itself; right now I'm interested only in the state of the state (of Mississippi). Does Travis Childers' victory suggest that Mississippi is in play in November? This is a state that Bush carried easily, with 59% in '04 and 58% in 2000. On the face of things, it's a stretch to argue that Obama can make up that sort of deficit to put the Magnolia State in his column. But Mississippi also has one of the largest proportions of African-Americans in the nation - 36%, or using '06 census estimates from National Journal, 1,053,615(.48...) black voters. If all of the voting-age members of this demographic came out and voted, Obama would be in a much better place. If Childers' victory is indicative of widespread dissatisfaction among independents, and demoralized Republicans, it could be within the realm of possibility (thought at its outer reaches) that Obama could win. Perhaps more darkly still, if Obama wins, does Democratic Senate candidate Ronnie Musgrove win as well? Upsets like that are the sort that will give Democrats what I fear most: a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate.