The great paradox of the oppressed:if they don't fight, they get nothing, but if they do fight, and lose, they lose everything.

The best thing an oppressed people can do is hedge their bets.

Good Morning Charles,
I'm not so sure it is sad Charles. I do know it isn't surprising at all. Most definitely for a (Southern) state, Mississippi is conservative. And, I think more than half of its residents are African-American. So, it stands to reason (numbers) that some of those voters would vote GOP.

Note that Old Dixie has at least one African-American Senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina as well. Granted he was appointed but still. He's one of 2 in the US Senate.

These gerrymandered districts are never going to swing to a Democrat until at least 2022. It's silly of Charles, who should know better, to put out the false hope that it's competitive.

@3 I don't think you understand what happened here. They are not Republicans.

Charles I think your analysis lacks something. Most observers agreed that the risk your suggesting held terrible odds.

I have to agree with @4 - it was shrewd because their one opportunity to really affect the outcome was at the primary level; Mississippi will be sending a Republican to the Senate, period....either a genteel class oppressor (Cochrane) or an unreconstructed rebel...

McDaniel is not giving up. I bet he'll split the Republican vote in Nov. and the Democrat wins. So this is not the bad idea some say.

MS is only about 30% African-American at the moment, but considering people under 30, it's a tad over 50% (see what I did there?). So, Mr. Cochran was merely the first to recognize that you can't win without at least some AA support. In coming years, even R candidates may have to actually DO something for their AA constituents if they want to win, not just point to how much worse it'll be under .

There was a follow up where Cochran says "let's keep Voter ID Laws intact."

This, to me, speaks volumes about how the Right in 2014: They promise you something, but you gotta vote for them first (and then they'll not doing it anyways).

The lesson, as always: Never trust a rich old white man.

They can't gerrymander themselves into office forever. Eventually the percentages just don't work out.

Simplifying things way down. Let's say you have three districts and a 50/50 Democrat/Republican population. You only need to gerrymander two of the districts into R majorities to win the state. Easy, two districts are 8.33D/25.00R and the last is 33.33D.

However, once 66.66% of the population is Democratic it doesn't work any more. Now, your two swing districts are split 16.66D/16.66R. You cannot achieve numerical superiority in enough districts to gerrymander.

In general with n districts (assuming n is odd) you need greater than a ceil(n/2) * 50/n percent minority to secure control of the majority. With 25 districts a perfectly gerrymandered 26% minority could control an entire state by achieving slight victories in 13 districts and ceding the other 12.

Of course in reality there are lot more districts without necessarily equal populations, different districts for house and senate, and voters don't split along easy party lines.

My conclusion was formed before I crunched the numbers. It's actually quite bleak since quite a small minority should be able to maintain control as long as they can continue to do almost perfect gerrymandering. Which is why gerrymandering is supposed to be illegal...

Yes, because African-Americans all think the same, have the same lifestyles, make the same choices, have the same political positions, and live in the same village reminiscent of "The Shire" from the Lord of the Rings. I mean, it's not like any African-Americans would ever be Republican simply because they believe in the Republican positions.
And of course there are NO African-American libertarians. No such thing exist...oh...wait...
http://www.examiner.com/article/candidat…
This has got to be the biggest piece of shit article I've read in some time, even by SStranger standards. Yep, Charles Mudede is right, we African-Americans should just be a bunch of boojangling uncle Toms for white liberal massa and NEVER question why liberal policies have failed the African American community or ever stop and realize that the welfare state has managed to do what Jim Crow and slavery couldn't: destroy the black family.
I'm glad I got off the plantation that Charles is so happy to work on. Maybe if he puts down the grits white liberal massa gave him for a little under an hour he'll find this video enlightening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvgMJmIU…

@13: I'm going to, from the festering mess that is your post, pluck out one item with which to take exception. Where is your evidence that slavery and institutionalized racism couldn't "destroy the black family" but that "the welfare state" has? Because when black men and women saw their children, their own flesh and blood, sold out from under what little protection they could offer, I'd say that THAT destroyed plenty of black families.
Just a rough metric to toss out here: birth rates are down by ~1/3rd since 1990 among unmarried black women 15-44 (source),

@14
Let me, in fairness, rephrase: the welfare state has managed to PERMANENTLY destroy the black family and has done MORE LASTING DAMAGE than Jim Crow or slavery. Yes, slavery tried, but African Americans, with their perseverance, rebounded. Same with Jim Crow. The illegitimacy rate for blacks in the 40s was only about 19%...today, it's over 70%.
The 1940s were a time when slavery ended less than a hundred years before and Jim Crow was alive and well, and yet the black family thrived despite all that. Now, it's dying.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/wi…
What happened? The greatest tool of state-sanctioned white supremacy ever created: the welfare state.
In shorts, black FAMILIES were destroyed by the horrors of slavery, I agree. But THE BLACK FAMILY is now being destroyed by the welfare state, and that damage is going to be a lot harder to fix.
The solution? Simple: Don't assume that African Americans are inferior and need a big, socialist style government run mostly by wealthy white liberals to save it. Instead understand that the best thing to run the black community IS THE BLACK COMMUNITY.

@15,
You raise a very good point. I genuinely worry about our brethren, the African-American family.

A friend of mine once remarked about "welfare", that it "dehumanizes" people. While I have a guarded appreciation for the "safety net", the law of "unintended consequences" just may be wreaking havoc on welfare & the "basic unit of society", the (American) family in general and the African-American family in particular.

It troubles me that Pres. Obama can't say something about this. Maybe it sounds too "conservative" to criticize welfare? But, I think he has nothing to lose. Former Pres. Bill Clinton among other liberals (Mayor Morial of New Orleans?) have gently reminded people of the great dysfunction in the African-American community. It needs to be discussed.

Personally, I think it the most important issue of today. I think plenty of conservatives would be willing to talk about it with liberals. As long as there is no rancor.