Bad Idea

Cindy Hyde-Smith won fairly handily last night, because of course she did.  It was Mississippi.

However, there was some concern that allegations of her attending a white's only school and embracing neo-confederate groups would hurt her.  She handled the allegations poorly, but in the end it didn't matter.

I wonder if maybe it did matter.

In the general election, there were three main candidates.  One of them, Chris McDaniel, was a true white supremacist.  He was a bomb throwing demagogue, who upset the Mississippi GOP establishment.  He got 16.5% of the vote.  There was some question as to whether his voters would stay home, and them staying home was Espy's only route to victory.

Instead, the various attacks on Hyde-Smith likely helped her with those McDaniel voters.  On election day, she won 368,000 votes.  Espy won 360,000 votes.  Yesterday, Hyde-Smith won 457,000 votes, whereas Espy only picked up 388,000. 

The racism helped her.

I'm sure the NY Times will write a Very Serious Piece about how Democrats need to reach out to working class whites in Mississippi, but if I'm right, I just don't see how that's possible.  The racism wasn't a problem, it was the point.