Mississippi Is Going To Elect Someone… To The U.S. Senate

And the Democrat still isn't worth voting for!

Joe Manchin (WV) is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. According to ProgressivePunch, his lifetime crucial vote score is 60.71, pretty dreadful. He's the 55th "most progressive" member of the Senate. Every Republican is worse. The 5 Democrats almost as bad as Machin-- from bad to worse-- are Kay Hagan (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN), John Walsh (MT), Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA), all in red or purple states. These 6 cross the aisle and vote with Republicans far more than any other Democrats. The half dozen Republicans who occasionally cross the aisle in the other direction and vote with the Democrats are Susan Collins (ME), Dean Heller (NV), John McCain (AZ), Mark Kirk (IL), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Roy Blunt (MO) are all from blue or purple states. Their ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote scores are between 27.81 (Collins) and 7.07 (Blunt), astonishingly right-wing. Even Collins, who votes with the Democrats more than any of the other Republicans, almost never does and Santorum famously reported that she's a team player and that when the extreme right needs her, she's always there for them. Always. And she's the best of the lot, the 56th "most progressive" member of the Senate, right after Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu and Joe Manchin. Going down below the 6 who sometimes vote with the Democrats, you pass right-wing extremists Rand Paul (7.03), Mike Lee (6.52), Chuck Grassley (5.44), David Vitter (4.59), Pat Toomey (3.80) until you come to the Republican with the 74th "most progressive" lifetime voting record in the Senate, Mississippi's Thad Cochran (3.65), just a tiny bit more conservative than Toomey's and a tiny bit less conservative than Tom Coburn (3.17).

The deranged neo-fascist politician who took over Club for Growth when Pat Toomey gave up the job to run for the Senate, Chris Chocola, sent a poison-pen article to Mississippi's influential Sun Herald that they published today, Thad Cochran Has A Liberal Record In The U.S. Senate. Spoiler: he doesn't, at least not unless you define "liberal" as anything that doesn't measure up to a Mussolini-like agenda. Chocola has endorsed Chris McDaniel, whose agenda does measure up to a Mussolini-like agenda. Chocola and McDaniel point out that the 41 year old McDaniel has seen Cochran, an incumbent of 42 years, in Congress his whole life and that tenure "is part of the reason why we have $17 trillion in debt… Why would his seventh term be any different from the last six?"

Sen. Cochran has a liberal voting record. That's a fact. Even the staunchest defenders of Cochran will never deny that Cochran has voted for the following things:

• He voted to create the Department of Education under Jimmy Carter in the 1970s.

• He voted for the 1990 income tax increase under President George H.W. Bush that broke Bush's famous "read my lips, no new taxes" promise.

• He voted to fund ObamaCare and to raise the debt ceiling-- he's actually voted to raise the debt ceiling 20 times.

All of those are facts. Period. They are not in dispute.

And while Sen. Cochran has been in office, the debt has gone from practically nothing to $17 trillion. That's a fact too. It's part of the reason he was given one of the lowest ratings by the American Conservative Union of any Republican Senator during the Obama era, a 63 percent.

A lot is made about projects in Mississippi that Thad Cochran got federal money for. What his supporters (many of whom are lobbyists who are paid to get politicians like Cochran to appropriate money for one project or another) fail to mention is that for every building in Mississippi Sen. Cochran voted for, he also had to vote to spend Mississippi tax dollars on things like a Woodstock Museum in New York or a Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Oklahoma or a Lobster Institute in Maine. All of which, like Sen. Cochran's pork projects, received millions of dollars paid for by Mississippi taxpayers.

Thad Cochran loves to tout his pork projects even as the rest of the Republican Party has taken the opposite position on pork. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner opposes them. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, opposes them. 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney opposes them. Even President Obama-- hardly a conservative-- opposes them. Not Sen. Cochran.

Today, a typically crackpot right-wing polling firm showed the race a dead heat, although the survey was done in December. More reliable polling by PPP shows a tough race but with Cochran still beating McDaniel.

55% of GOP primary voters say they would prefer a 'more conservative' alternative to Cochran, compared to just 35% who say they support the long time Senator. And although Cochran still leads primary challenger Chris McDaniel 44/38, much of that lead is attributable to his higher name recognition. Among the 50% of primary voters who have heard of McDaniel, whether they like him or not, Cochran trails his challenger 60/29.

Cochran's approval numbers with Republican voters have dropped precipitously over the last two years. In November of 2011 we found him with a 74/14 approval spread with them, but that's declined now to 45/42. Unsurprisingly Cochran's problems are coming with the furthest right segment of his party. Among voters describing themselves as 'very conservative' he has just a 34/55 approval spread, trails McDaniel 51/32 head to head, and loses out to a generic 'more conservative' alternative 74/22.

If Cochran is the Republican nominee for the Senate next year the seat likely won't be competitive. He actually has a positive approval rating with Democrats at 44/40 and that crossover support would make him close to unbeatable in a general election. He leads Travis Childers, who has actually floated the possibility of running, 50/33 in a head to head. He's also up 50/37 on Ronnie Musgrove and 45/43 on Jim Hood in hypothetical contests.

If McDaniel is the Republican nominee though it looks like there's at least some chance at a competitive race forming. He leads both Childers (41/38) and Musgrove (44/41) by just 3 points in head to heads and actually trails Hood by a couple points at 43/41. McDaniel just doesn't have the same kind of support across party lines that Cochran does.

“Thad Cochran’s in pretty serious danger of losing the primary next year,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Conservatives have really soured on him over the last couple years and are ready for someone new.”

The most recent poll, also from December though, was done by another GOP group, Harper. Only Republicans were polled, no normal people. They showed Cochran's favorables at 64.10%, unfavorables at 27.92%. McDaniels was still pretty unknown-- almost 50%-- but his favorable/unfavorable breakdown was 33.05%/16.60%.

Related questions get to the heart of why Mississippi is the most backward state in the country and the most miserable place for a non-millionaire to live:

If McDaniel wins, the DSCC hopes to elect a far right fake-Democrat, Travis Childers, who would probably switch parties before his term was even half up, and who will certainly be much further right than Manchin. Beltway imbecile and DSCC dictator, Guy Cecil, thinks this is a far more effective strategy than trying to win states where actual Democrats actually win elections, like Maine (Shenna Bellows) and South Dakota (Rick Weiland).