Dublin There’s another lesson that needs to be underscored from the US midterms in for the Democrats: if you want to win, every state needs to be a battleground! The numbers argue that the old strategy of only spending money on special races and certain states is wrong. If a party is willing to contest for the post and run hard, they can win. The results throughout the southern states shout this lesson.
Every parish and county in the South moved to the left, improving the vote count for the Democrats. In Texas, control of the state’s House of Representatives shifted along with the vote count in every county. Democrats won every state office from Railroad Commissioner to Governor. Senate races in South Carolina and governor’s victory in Georgia are all part of the story, but there’s more, much more.
Look at Mississippi where the election is still not settled. The Democrat, a Black man, is leading the incumbent Republican, even if less than 100 votes. We won’t know for a minute, because absentee and mail ballots can be counted on a five-day leeway. There’s no way the national party saw this as a key race or a race with a snowball’s chance in hell of going for a Democrat, much less a Black Democrat in Mississippi. If the party understood that to win, you need to be viable everywhere and compete, this race would be over.
Look at Louisiana, where a Republican Congressional representative won the race for Senate. Sure, she beat the Democratic candidate, Jamie Davis. His campaign was hardly a blip on the screen, poorly financed, and virtually unknown in the state. He campaigned as a farmer. He had never run or won any office. The vote total was roughly 746,000 for Julia Letlow or 50.9% to a bit more than 720,000 for Davis at 49.1%. Around the state the vote for Davis as the Democrat was roughly 20 points up from Trump’s totals in 2024 when he swept Louisiana. Despite the Supreme Court enabled gerrymander in Louisiana that eliminated a seat where an African-American could have won, the 5th district along the Mississippi River has a Black woman leading the field into the runoff against the Republican. She won’t be favored, because a host of Republicans had shared the votes, but it’s a contest.
Candidates need to saddle up. I listened to an interview with Davis on one of the weekly calls with members of A Community Voice – ACORN. He was without doubt a nice, sincere guy, but in no way ready for primetime or up to date on the issues. He wasn’t a politician, which might have been his charm, but looking and listening from the outside, no one would have seen him win or come this close. If Cedric Richmond, a former Congressman from New Orleans, or Mitch Landriu, a former mayor of New Orleans, or a long list of others, had been in this Senate race, they would now be calling a moving van to pack up their stuff to move to Washington.
Like any wave, you have to be ready to ride it. Others might say, you can’t predict a wave, but my point is that in politics we always know the water is moving, so we have to be ready to swim or surf. If we’re not recruiting and contesting everywhere, then there’s no way to win. All politics is local, everywhere is a battleground to people who live there. Looking to 2028, if we want to recover what’s left of our pretense at a democracy, we need to fight for every vote.