Pierce: Things are still getting worse for the Democratic party in Mississippi

Excerpt from article by Esquire's Charles P Pierce on the election of Mississippi Democrat governor candidate Robert Gray. [The Unknown Trucker Candidate of Mississippi].

As hard as it is to believe, things are still getting worse for the Democratic party in Mississippi, which apparently got completely wrong-footed by political shenanigans only one small step above, "Hey, look! Squirrels!"

• "I'm calling every political consultant, anthropologist and witch doctor in the Southeast to help me understand what happened yesterday," said Brandon Jones, director of the Mississippi Democratic Trust. "… Anybody who offers a clear-cut formula for yesterday is probably a little ahead of their skis right now." Political science professor and longtime observer of state politics Marty Wiseman said, "It's the freakiest thing I've ever seen. … It's a low point for the Democratic Party, which doesn't need any more low points. You'd like to think it's a perfectly pulled off conspiracy by the Republicans, but that's too far a stretch."

• Terry truck driver and first-time candidate Robert Gray, who goes by "Silent Knight" as his CB handle, carried 79 of 82 counties in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. He pulled more than 147,000 votes, or 51 percent, to presumed frontrunner Vicki Slater's 87,000 votes, or 30 percent, in a three-way race.

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Pierce: More children living in poverty in Mississippi right now than there were German soldiers killed on D-Day

Esquire's Charles Pierce posted an article at Esquire this week [ "Mississippi Poverty and the Utter Failure of the American Dream]. In it he notes that there are 246,000. children living in poverty in Mississippi, which is one of the United States of America and, therefore, one-fiftieth of the most prosperous nation on earth.

He writes

• A huge percentage of these children will never have a chance, no matter how glowingly the American Dream is peddled by both parties in the upcoming presidential election. Poverty–actual, grinding poverty, the kind upon which we once nobly made war–is the great unspoken issue in the campaign, although climate change is coming up fast on the outside. It has vanished from the campaign discussion ever since the Embattled Middle Class became the Holy Grail of field organizers. The only thing John Edwards ever did right in his campaigns for president was to shove the issue of poverty back to center stage. But these 246,000 children are as irrelevant to the 2016 presidential campaign as William Henry Harrison's cider jug.

He summarizes:

•  There are more children living in poverty in Mississippi right now than there are people living in Madison, Wisconsin or Reno, Nevada. There are more children living in poverty in Mississippi right now than there were German soldiers killed on D-Day in Normandy.

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