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HOUSTON Texas Democrats surged to the polls on Tuesday in the first primary of 2018, demonstrating a wave of Trump-inspired energy, but also showcasing party divisions that have emerged at the outset of an otherwise promising midterm campaign.

Nearly 886,000 Texans cast ballots early in the states 15 most populous counties, the highest early-vote turnout in a nonpresidential election year in state history. And more Democrats statewide voted early this year than even in 2016, the year that Donald J. Trump, a Republican, was elected to the White House.

Yet even as Democrats in the states biggest cities came out in large numbers, Republicans still cast more ballots over all thanks to their rural strength.

The most heavily anticipated contests were in three racially diverse House districts that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, won in 2016, but where incumbent Republican lawmakers are seeking re-election.

And none was more closely watched than the Democratic primary race in Houston to take on Representative John Culberson.

The progressive Laura Moser made the May 22 runoff despite a late attempt by the House Democratic campaign arm to derail her candidacy. Ms. Moser, an author and an organizer, trailed Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a lawyer, but Ms. Fletcher failed to garner 50 percent of the vote, so they will face off again in a race that will be something of a proxy battle between the moderate and more liberal wings of the Democratic Party.

Fearing that Ms. Moser is too liberal to defeat Mr. Culberson in an affluent and historically Republican district, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took the rare step last month of publicly attacking her as a Washington insider who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.

However, the broadside may have only lifted Ms. Moser who grew up in Houston but lived in Washington while her husband worked in Democratic politics there in a primary that featured seven candidates capturing votes.

In an even more Democratic-leaning seat, Gina Ortiz Jones, a lesbian and Iraq war veteran who would be the first openly gay member of Congress from Texas, was the top vote-getter in a district that stretches south from San Antonio to the Rio Grande and west to El Paso. The seat is held by Representative Will Hurd, a Republican who has narrowly won twice, but Democrats argue that Mr. Hurd will have a more difficult time surviving the backlash to Mr. Trump.

The excitement you can feel it, said Ms. Jones, a former Air Force officer who moved to San Antonio after serving in President Barack Obamas administration. Folks are hungry for a win in this district.

Ms. Jones is part of a wave of Democratic women, African-American and Hispanic people, gays, lesbians and even journalists who are running for office for the first time in Texas, in large part in reaction to the Trump administration.

She will face either Judy Canales, who served in Mr. Obamas Agriculture Department, or Rick Trevio, a high school teacher, in the May runoff.

And in a Dallas-area district, Representative Pete Sessions, a veteran Republican, is facing an energized left. Colin Allred, a former Obama Housing and Urban Development Department official and an N.F.L. veteran, advanced to the runoff and will compete against either Lillian Salerno, another official in Mr. Obamas Agriculture Department, or a former television reporter, Brett Shipp, for the nomination.

In statewide races, George P. Bush, the state land commissioner and a son of former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, averted a runoff after a somewhat difficult primary campaign against Jerry Patterson, who previously held the job and accused Mr. Bush of mismanaging the General Land Office so badly that it brought him out of retirement.

Mr. Bush, one of the few members of his family to back Mr. Trump, was scared enough about the challenge that he produced fliers noting that he was standing beside our president. And he offered Mr. Trump a MAGA post last week on Twitter invoking the presidents campaign slogan, Make America Great Again after Mr. Trump offered his support via tweet and noted that Mr. Bush had supported him when it wasnt the politically correct thing to do.

Senator Ted Cruz faced minimal opposition in the Republican primary, but his Democratic opponent, Representative Beto ORourke, won the nomination while losing a substantial number of votes to two little-known opponents, demonstrating that he is not well known yet among many of the states voters.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican with a $43 million war chest, was renominated and will face either Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff, or Andrew White, the son of former Gov. Mark White, in the general election.

Yet even while Mr. Abbott is an overwhelming favorite for re-election, he proved that he did not have an iron grip on his party: Two of the three Republican state representatives he opposed as part of an unusual intervention against incumbents still managed to win.

Manny Fernandez reported from Houston, and Jonathan Martin from Moon, Pa.

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Texas Democrats Surge to Polls, in Show of Anti-Trump ...

The TAKE with Rick Klein

Primary season 2018 has Democrats thinking big. So why does it feel so much like 2016?

These should be heady times for the party of the resistance. President Donald Trump is overseeing a chaotic White House, with an approval rating mired in the 30s; the presidents policy gyrations are making GOP members of Congress squirm; Robert Muellers probe is even forcing new, bizarre plot twists.

Yet the storylines going into the first 2018 primaries, being held today in Texas, are of overstuffed Democratic fields, and of establishment-led efforts to thin them out.

One of todays marquee races, in the Clinton-carried Houston suburbs of Texas 7th Congressional District, features the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee trying to disqualify a progressive favorite. On cue, progressive organizations rallied to her side with memories still raw from the Hillary-vs.-Bernie feuds of two years ago.

Yes, Democratic enthusiasm is fueling record-setting early voting in Texas. But the challenge for Democrats will be keeping that going for another eight months - with a whole lot of rough-and-tumble politics being played along the way.

The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks

I like him. I like him not. I like him...

Every Republican candidate is going to have to land on one of those answers about the president, and with primary season now officially in full swing, the days and options for petal-picking are ticking down.

Its a tricky question for traditional Republicans, just when every voter is focusing in, and the president is not making it easy for them to stick together.

Hiked tariffs, as the president is pushing, are antithetical to the free-trade pillars of the old Grand Old Party. House Speaker Paul Ryan said as much yesterday.

Now with another senior Republican lawmaker, Sen. Thad Cochran, announcing his retirement, and putting two U.S. Senate seats in his ruby-red Mississippi on the ballot, Republicans will have yet another outlet for duking out their disagreements.

The TIP with Emily Goodin

Former Rep. Steve Israel, who served as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman during his congressional tenure, talked about the races that would keep him up at night if he were running the campaign committee this cycle.

The first House primaries of the 2018 midterm take place today as Texas voters head to the polls.

First of all, Israel pointed out: Democrats have to hold 19 seats. People are forgetting that. They are thinking about Republican pickups. Democrats still have to hold 19 of their frontline seats, including six open seats.

Democrats need to net 24 seats to retake control of the House. But some of their own seats they need to protect include: Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and the seats of retiring Reps. Tim Walz and Rick Nolan in Minnesota, and Carol Shea Porter in New Hampshire.

Then, a few GOP seats opening up are on the must-win list: Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinens in Florida, Martha McSallys in Arizona, Rodney Frelinghuysens in New Jersey, and Patrick Meehans in Pennsylvania.

Finally, there are some likely GOP seats that, if Democrats win them election night, would indicate that a blue tide is about to sweep the House: Reps. Mike Coffmans in Colorado, Carlos Curbelos in Florida, Don Bacons in Nebraska, Barbara Comstocks in Virginia, Will Hurds in Kentucky, and Andy Barrs in Kentucky.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

President Trump meets with the Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven in the Oval Office at 2:05 p.m. President Trump and Prime Minister Lofven will then participate in an expanded bilateral meeting in the Oval Office at 2:15 p.m.

President Trump will hold a joint press conference with Prime Minister Lofven at the White House at 3:30 p.m.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivers remarks at 10:30 a.m. at George Mason University on the U.S. relationship with Africa and the governments desire to strengthen ties with African partners through greater security, trade and investment.

FBI officials will brief members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees on the Parkland investigation today, according to a committee aide.

Today is primary election night in Texas and the first primary voting of 2018. The polls open on Tuesday at 7 a.m. CST (8 a.m. EST) and close at 7 p.m. CST (8 p.m. EST).

Former Vice President Joe Biden heads to Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District to campaign for Conor Lamb, a Democrat and former prosecutor.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Let him arrest me. - Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg, in a Washington Post interview Monday, after claiming special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury Friday in the ongoing Russia investigation.

NEED TO READ

Former Trump aide says he intends to spurn special counsels subpoena. In a dramatic round of interviews former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg appeared on cable television via telephone on Monday to announce his intention to defy a special counsel subpoena to appear before the grand jury this week. (Lucien Bruggeman) http://abcn.ws/2Fr9Ibl

Dreamers protest on Capitol Hill on DACA deadline day. Hundreds of young undocumented immigrants and their allies from Florida to California came to Capitol Hill Monday - the day President Donald Trump set for the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program - to protest and lobby members of Congress to pass legislation that would protect them. (Cheyenne Haslett) http://abcn.ws/2H8JiIE

GOP senator Thad Cochran to retire in April, setting up special election in November. Citing lingering health issues, longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran announced Monday that he will retire from Congress on April 1st, a move that will mean both of Mississippi's U.S. Senate seats will be in play this year. (John Verhovek) http://abcn.ws/2Fh5D6k

At least 50 women running for Congress in Texas primaries, a record number. President Donald Trumps negative comments about Mexican Americans and immigrants both on the campaign trail and in office inspired Judy Canales, a Democrat and Latina in Texas, to fulfill a long-held dream to run for Congress. (Allison Pecorin and Rachel Scott) http://abcn.ws/2FotOTW

5 things to watch for in the Texas primary. Texas holds the first primary contests of the 2018 election on Tuesday and both parties are watching for indications of how the battle to control Congress may play out in November. (Emily Goodin, John Verhovek and Rachel Scott) http://abcn.ws/2Fe4PDo

Texas primaries will show 'tremendous' Democratic enthusiasm ahead of midterms: Former San Antonio mayor Castro. What were going to see on Tuesday is a tremendous amount of Democratic enthusiasm, Castro, who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Barack Obama and is considering a run president in 2020, told ABC News Rick Klein on the "Powerhouse Politics" podcast. (John Verhovek) http://abcn.ws/2FUZaPC

Trump Organization orders presidential seal replicas for golf courses: Report. The Trump Organization reportedly ordered replicas of the presidential seal to use at its golf courses despite laws against using the seal for financial gain, according to a report from ProPublica. (Stephanie Ebbs) http://abcn.ws/2oVtXE6

Flynn selling house to pay legal bills in Trump probe. Michael Flynn, the retired Army general and ex-Trump national security adviser who pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about his Russian contacts, has put his Virginia home up for sale to pay mounting legal fees, friends and family members told ABC News. http://abcn.ws/2tnAufU (James Gordon Meek)

Trump says tariff exemptions for Canada, Mexico depend on 'new and fair' trade deal. President Donald Trump said Monday "we're not backing down" on steep tariffs he pledged last week to impose on steel and aluminum imports - even for U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico. (Cheyenne Haslett) http://abcn.ws/2I3QNlx

Inside Trumps $100 million mans rapid rise to power. Newly minted Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale is already Donald Trump's $100 million man. (Katherine Faulders, Jonathan Karl and Soorin Kim) http://abcn.ws/2oIOcFr

Russia Investigation Romance: Key witness George Papadopoulos marries Italian lawyer. George Papadopoulos, the onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who became the first witness to cut a deal with the Special Counsel Robert Muellers Office, married his Italian fianc in an intimate ceremony in Chicago over the weekend. (George Stephanopoulos and Matthew Mosk) http://abcn.ws/2I5HCkC

The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.

Link:
The Note: Democrats fighting each other as primaries begin ...

Democrats who raged against the release of a GOP memo alleging misconduct at the FBI on Friday tempered their concern with a dash of relief and some greeted the document as an outright bust.

Drafted to portray the Department of Justices investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted by bias against President Donald Trump, the memo ultimately bolstered Democrats defense of the probe by confirming that it did not begin based on the contents of an unverified anti-Trump dossier.

Story Continued Below

And the memo offered little new evidence to undercut Special Counsel Robert Muellers inquiry into Russias disruption campaign, despite Trumps reported interest in the document as grounds to provoke further public uncertainty about the impartiality of the investigation.

Republicans have overplayed their hand, and they have created a frenzy about this memo" against the urging of intelligence and law enforcement officials, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) a member of the House intelligence committee, said in an interview.

A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox.

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Because the person who is a person of interest here is the president of the United States," Speier added, "and in his mind this was going to derail the investigation. Its not going to derail the investigation.

Still, any reassurance Democrats derived from the substance of the memo was counterbalanced by apprehension about Trump and congressional Republicans continuing to seize on it. The intense media coverage of the GOP memo, fueled in part by the fierceness of Democratic pushback, has raised its profile to an extent that Trump may be more inclined to use it to further up the pressure on DOJ.

It's pretty clear that the memo wasn't worth the paper it's printed on, one Senate Democratic leadership aide said. But we know that the president will use anything at his disposal to try to undermine the investigation, no matter how thin it is.

Democrats remain incensed by the process House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) used to release the previously classified memo with a green light from Trump, while keeping them from issuing their response. The minority members said theirs would have provided context lacking in Nunes' document.

Nonetheless, the substance of the GOP memo left Democrats unimpressed.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) slammed it as garbage evidence assembled by House Intelligence Committee Republicans to provide cover for the president to strangle Muellers probe.

This memo seems to do more to confirm the legitimacy of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign than to undermine it, Murphy said in a statement.

The document revealed that the FBI's probe began not with the controversial dossier financed by Democrats and commissioned by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele but with a tip from Australian officials who had received intelligence from Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos during a random April 2016 encounter. It also indicated that no surveillance warrants were issued for Page until after he left the Trump campaign. And it left unchallenged much of the substance of the Steele Dossier.

Some Republicans and FBI allies bolstered the Democrats' critique.

"This is it?" former FBI director James Comey asked after the memo emerged.

"I doubt this was the intent, but the House GOP and the Trump admin just blew up the rights favorite conspiracy theory," argued National Review conservative commentator David French. "The Russia investigation isnt the fruit of the poisonous dossier; it existed before. The decks are now cleared for Mueller."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has joined fellow Republicans in calling for a second special counsel at DOJ to investigate internal misconduct in probes of the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns, also said plainly Friday that "nothing in the memo released today undercuts Mr. Muellers investigation."

House Republicans were left as the most vocal proponents of the memo's contents, arguing that it revealed abuses of the FBI's spying authority to target an American citizen. They defended their ability to conduct oversight of the intelligence community and said laying the facts out despite Democratic protests that their competing memo had not yet been cleared for release was a show of transparency.

Whether the memo moves public opinion on the DOJ investigation remains to be seen. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month found that 55 percent of independent voters view the probe of potential collusion between Russia and Trump's campaign as legitimate, versus 41 percent deeming it a "witch hunt."

As for the long-term effects of the memo, Speier surmised that the attack on law enforcement's credibility has "Vladimir Putin ... grinning ear to ear."

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Democrats: Nunes memo a dud - POLITICO

Mississippi was a large supporter of Jacksonian Democracy, which occurred during the Second Party System (roughly 1820-1860s). At this time, Mississippi politics moved from a state divided between the Whigs and Democrats to a solid one-party Democratic state. The Democratic Party strongly believed in states' rights as well as the right to the slave system. Tensions began to build between southern Democrats and northern Republicans and abolitionists.

In the summer of 1860, the Mississippi delegation walked out of the Democratic National Convention as a response to the convention's refusal to allow slavery in the state. Soon after, Mississippi seceded from the Union and joined many other states in forming the Confederate States of America.

After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, Reconstruction began in the United States. Many laws were put in place to allow suffrage for African-Americans, which troubled white Democrats. Democrats overpowered the Republicans to combat these laws by means of force and violence in a method known as the Mississippi Plan, formulated in 1875 and implemented in the election of 1876.[2] This plan was also used in other southern states to overthrow Republican rule. Thereafter, these states became known as the Solid South, meaning that they were solidly Democratic in political nature. This continued for the next seventeen presidential elections, until the elections of 1948.[2] At this time, the national party began to show support for the Civil Rights Movement, which reduced its support in the Solid South.

When the 1948 Democratic National Convention adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals calling for civil rights, 35 southern delegates, including all Mississippi's delegates, walked out. Southern Democrats sought to exclude Harry Truman's name from the ballot in the South. The Southern defectors created a new party called the States' Rights Party (Dixiecrats), with its own nominees for the 1948 presidential election: Democratic South Carolina Governor J. Strom Thurmond for president and Fielding L. Wright, governor of Mississippi for vice president. (In his 1948 gubernatorial inaugural address, Wright had described racial segregation as an "eternal truth" that "transcends party lines".) The Dixiecrats thought that if they could win enough Southern states, they would have a good chance of forcing the election into the U.S. House of Representatives, where Southern bargaining power could determine the winner. To this end Dixiecrat leaders had the Thurmond-Wright ticket declared the official Democratic ticket in some Southern states, including Mississippi. (In other states, they were forced to run as a third party.) Efforts by the Dixiecrats to paint Southern Truman loyalists as turncoats generally failed, although the 1948 Mississippi state Democratic sample ballot warned that a vote for Truman electors was "a vote for Truman and his vicious anti-Southern program" and that a Truman victory would mean "our way of life in the South will be gone forever."[3]

On election day of 1948, the Thurmond-Wright ticket carried Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Alabama, all previously solid Democratic states.[4] Truman won the national election anyway, without their electoral votes. The States' Rights Party movement faded from the landscape, and its Mississippi leaders resumed their place in the ranks of the national Democratic Party with no repercussions, even though all seven incumbent Congressmen and Senator James O. Eastland had run on the Dixiecrat ballot with Thurmond and Governor Wright.[5]

In the fall of 1954, after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Mississippi politicians in the state legislature reacted by approving and ratifying a constitutional amendment that would abolish the public school system. This provision, on the other hand, was never used.[6][7] Soon, Mississippi became the focal point of national media when in August 1955, Emmett Till was lynched in Tallahatchie County.

In 1957, Congress began to enact the first civil rights laws since the Reconstruction Era. By the time of the 1959 state elections, white Democrats acted to put a stop to this and elected Ross Barnett as governor. Democrats in Mississippi were not challenged in general elections and Barnett too ran unopposed. As a Dixiecrat, or States Rights Democrat, a member of the White Citizens' Council and by law on the board of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Barnett was a staunch supporter of segregation laws, as had been his two challengers in the primary. By the time of the 1960 presidential elections, he refused to support John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon. Barnett opted for the traditional route, while many other Mississippi Democratic officials supported Kennedy's campaign. The state party itself had declared, in its platform, to "reject and oppose the platforms of both national parties and their candidates" after the 1960 Democratic National Convention and its adoption of a civil rights platform.[8][9]

As a result of its insistence on maintaining segregation, Mississippi became a focal point for other major civil rights activity. Jackson's bus terminal was a stop for the Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who in 1961 rode interstate buses from Washington D.C. to New Orleans on routes through the segregated South to bring attention to the fact that localities in those states were ignoring federal desegregation law. When the buses made it to the Mississippi state line, by an arrangement between Governor Barnett and the Kennedy administration, police and the National Guard escorted them into Jackson where they were arrested and jailed for trying to use the bus station's whites-only facilities.[10]

Established in April 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) aimed to challenge discrimination based on race in the electoral process. It consisted of mainly disenfranchised African-Americans, although its membership was open to all Mississippians.[11] The party was formed out of collaborative efforts from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).[12]

In August 1964, a bus of MFDP delegates arrived at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City with the intention of asking to be seated as the Mississippi delegation[12] There they challenged the right of the Mississippi Democratic Party's delegation to participate in the convention, claiming that the regulars had been illegally elected in a completely segregated process that violated both party regulations and federal law, and that furthermore the regulars had no intention of supporting Lyndon B. Johnson, the party's incumbent president, in the November election. They therefore asked that the MFDP delegates be seated rather than the segregationist regulars.[13][14]

The Democratic Party referred the challenge to the Convention Credentials Committee, which televised its proceedings, which allowed the nation to see and hear the testimony of the MFDP delegates, particularly the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer, whose evocative portrayal of her hard brutalized life as a sharecropper on the plantation owned by Jamie Whitten, a long time Mississippi congressman and chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, drew public attention.

Some of the all-white delegations from other southern states threatened to leave the convention and bolt the party as in 1948 if the regular Mississippi delegation was unseated, and Johnson feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign against Republican Party candidate Barry Goldwater. With the help of Vice President Hubert Humphrey (chief sponsor of the 1948 civil rights resolution which sparked the 1948 Dixiecrat walk-out) and Party leader Walter Mondale, Johnson engineered a "compromise" in which the national Democratic Party offered the MFDP two at-large seats which allowed them to watch the floor proceedings but not take part. The MFDP refused this "compromise" which permitted the undemocratic, white-only, regulars to keep their seats and denied votes to the MFDP. Denied official recognition, the MFDP kept up their agitation within the Convention. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to support Johnson against Goldwater, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic northern delegates and took the seats vacated by the Mississippi delegates, only to be removed by the national Party; when they returned the next day, convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there yesterday.

Though the MFDP failed to unseat the regulars at the convention, and many activists felt betrayed by Johnson, Humphrey, and the liberal establishment, they did succeed in dramatizing the violence and injustice by which the white power structure governed Mississippi, maintained control of the Democratic Party of Mississippi, and disenfranchised black citizens. The MFDP and its convention challenge eventually helped pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The MFDP continued as an alternate for several years, and many of the people associated with it continued to press for civil rights in Mississippi. After passage of the Act, the number of registered black voters in Mississippi grew dramatically. The Mississippi Democratic Party agreed to conform to the national Democratic Party rules, guaranteeing fair participation, and eventually the MFDP merged into the party. Many MFDP activists became Party leaders and in some cases officeholders. There is only one chapter of the MFDP still active, in Holmes County, Mississippi.

After the controversy of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964, Democrats sought party representatives and officials that understood the need to compromise. They looked for a more moderate stance. This was tested during the election of 1968, the first in which African Americans were officially and legally enfranchised. When President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not be running for a second term, Mississippians took stock in the independent George Wallace. His campaign was an outlet for white southerners to express their anger and frustration with the civil rights movement. It was also at this time that the Democratic Party went through drastic changes, when the national convention made the decision to award 1968 convention seats to the new "Loyalist" faction of the state Democratic Party, instead of the "regulars" (being "the old guard conservative delegation composed of the governor and others from Mississippi"[15])the first time in history an entire delegation had been denied and replaced. The Loyalist Democratic party became official in June 1968 and encompassed the concerns of such groups as the NAACP, Young Democrats and the MFDP. [16]

In 1972, Governor Bill Waller attempted to unify the "regulars" and the "loyalists," without success. That year, Mississippi sent two delegations to the national convention, but the convention committee once again supported the loyalists. Efforts continued to reunite these two factions before the election of 1976.[17]

After the election of 1976, it was clear that the Democrats were losing speed in the South. It became difficult to merge and force cooperation between the regulars and the loyalists, and conservative Republicans began to make inroads. In 1980 Republican Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign in Mississippi, with the Neshoba County Fair "states' rights" speech, and Southern liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide to Reagan that year; more of the state began to vote Republican.[18] This was a trend across the South.

In 1991, the governorship was taken away from Democrats when Republican Kirk Fordice won the election. Republicans consolidated this power between 1994 and 1996. At the end of the 1996 general election, Republicans held three of the five congressional seats in addition to both U.S. senators, as well as a gain in the state legislature. Democrats, no longer the Dixiecrats of the past and "by the 1970s resolutely committed to biracial Democratic Party politics", had lost significant power at both the state and national level.[19][20]

Governors and legislators over the decades have called for rewrites of Mississippi's Constitution. The current Constitution was created in 1890,[21] crafted explicitly to replace the 1868 enfranchising constitution of Reconstruction days.[22] It has experienced many amendmentsas of 2014, 121 approved since 1890, more than 75 since 1960[22]and outright repeals, mostly as a result of U.S. Supreme Court rulings.[23][22] However, according to John W. Winkle III, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Mississippi, "More than a century later, the 1890 Constitution, with its rather severe limitations on government and its antiquated organization and content, still shadows the state."[22]

See the rest here:
Mississippi Democratic Party - Wikipedia

A culture war over immigration replays the racialized debate that dominated the 2016 presidential campaign. As much as it saddens me to say it, the evidence is pretty clear that a racialized debate helps Trump. Its the kind of debate that will make it harder for Democrats to retake the Senate and House this year.

Multiple studies have found that the political views of white Americans drift to the right when they are reminded that the countrys population is slowly becoming less white. And many of these voters are winnable for Democrats. A good number, remember, voted for Barack Obama. They may have some racist views many people do but theyre neither deplorable nor irredeemable human beings. Steve Bannon, the guru of white nationalism, understood this dynamic, once saying, The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got em.

Similarly, some innovative polling by YouGov has found that a large portion of white Americans see prohibiting discrimination against women and minorities as one of the Democratic Partys top priorities. Unfortunately, few white Americans who arent already loyal Democrats say the same issue is one of their own priorities. Theyre more worried about their own struggles, many of which are economic. Its a political liability for Democrats, Doug Rivers, YouGovs chief scientist told me, in the same way being the party of the rich is a problem for Republicans.

I know that many progressives are sick of hearing about white voters, but its extremely hard to succeed in American politics without winning a good portion of them. About 69 percent of eligible voters are non-Hispanic whites. They have outsize power too, thanks to a combination of their turnout rates, their geographic dispersion, gerrymandering and the Senates small-state bonus.

Briahna Joy Gray wrote a must-read essay on this topic for New York magazine, titled, Racism May Have Gotten Us Into This Mess, but Identity Politics Cant Get Us Out. Or as Matthew Yglesias wrote in Vox last week, If you want to help the people most severely victimized by Trumpism, you need to beat Trumpism at the polls.

The best debate for Democrats is one that keeps reminding white working-class voters that theyre working class. Its a debate about Medicare, Medicaid, taxes or Wall Street. The worst debate is one that keeps reminding those voters that theyre white.

To put it another way, if youre a Democrat whos frustrated that Republicans have managed to turn the shutdown into a fight over immigration, ask yourself: Why would they do that?

Democratic leaders are certainly right to insist on protection for the Dreamers. The question is whether the best way to protect them, and the best way to elect politicians who will help them in the long term involves keeping immigration policy in the political spotlight for weeks on end.

The smart move now for Democrats is to accept a short-term funding bill that ends the shutdown and defuses the tension. Republican leaders are open to that solution, because they have their own vulnerabilities. Their party is the majority party, which is often blamed for dysfunction.

That solution feels a bit unsatisfying, I know. But tactical retreats can lead to big victories in the future.

Read more here:
The Democrats Are Right and Should Settle