I've been asked a couple times recently by national media to comment on the Senate race between Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel (and, oh, Travis Childers). I begged out of an MSNBC request a couple weeks ago because I just couldn't get excited to talk about it. But when The Guardian wanted to contract me this past Monday to write a column, I said OK. But my main thought was, "I just don't give a damn." I've watched election after election pass with no candidate for even moderate Mississippians to vote for. Our city and state are brimming with good people who want progress for the state, and we get stuck with the worst candidates, brimming with backward ideas, and told we HAVE to vote for the Democrat among them any way.
Meantime, we watch the Democrats lose over and over again.
I don't want "apathy," as somebody accused on Twitter. I want just the opposite: I want Mississippians to demand better from the candidates then the most reasonable one loving all over the NRA and bashing women's reproductive freedom. We need to demand, at least, that Travis Childers, the Democratic nominee not campaign against our rights, and actually address solutions to health care, povery and other vital 21st-century populist issues. If he wallows in the mud with the wingnuts, it's not ME who is encouraging apathy. It is up to him and the Democratic Party to break that apathy and be inspiring, rather than try to out-conservative the conservatives.
I don't identify with any political party (don't even really like the concept), so perhaps it's easy for me to take this stand in an international newspaper. But the response has been overwhelmingly positive, especially from southerners; my Twitter feed and Facebook post on it are filled with cheers. It's as if everyone wanted to say this, but didn't quite know how to say it out loud. But I said it. Read more here, post under The Guardian piece if you want (many great comments of various positions), and then come on back and talk about it here on southern soil.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/04/mississippi-primary-thad-cochran-chris-mcdaniel-run-off">The Mississippi primary? Frankly, my dear conservatives, I don't give a damn
Comments
kdavis 9 years, 10 months ago
I get your point. Childers is really a Democrat in name only. Also, I agree that in too many elections, there are very few differences between the candidates and most are guilty of saying whatever will get them elected. But I do think it is important that we vote.
For the Republican runoff, we have one candidate who has served Mississippi in the U.S. Senate with distinction and who has a good chance at being the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee versus a state legislator who surrounds himself with people that think it's ok to take pictures of people in nursing homes and sneak into county courthouses to try to tamper with ballots. Plus, some of the comments that McDaniels has made in the past are disturbing and not what Mississippi needs as our Senator in Washington.
Unlike some of our past elections, this is a real easy choice for me.