Sometimes something in the news seems so significant, just for its own sake, that because it does not obviously have relevance here, it is worth noting.
That is true of the overnight news from the USA that Scott Colom, a Democrat, had beaten the Republican incumbent in the Mississippi election to represent that state in the US Senate, by the smallest of margins.
He is the first Black senator to represent this state for 150 years.
He has overturned a long history of Republican senators representing the state.
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times reported street celebrations when the result was finally called, after a ballot-counting process so tight it was not concluded until nearly a week after most others were settled.
The Democrat lead in the Senate is now extended. I stress, this does not guarantee change. I have already discussed that here, but what this does show is that the USA has rejected the corruption, straightforward evil, and neo-fascist politics of the Trump era, and people have been willing to turn out to make clear that Trump's toxic form of politics must be consigned to history.
The question is whether people elsewhere will take note, heed the lesson, and stay clear of people like Le Pen in France and Reform in the UK. Only time will tell.
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There was a similar shift in US Politics in the 60’s when the Southern states who never voted republican as a result of the Civil War were targeted by the Republican Party who then became the dominant force in the area and displacing the generally not very nices ‘Southern Democrats’
Prior to that US Politics was as much as anything a ‘North/South’ not ‘Republican/Democrat’ split
The Democrats still cling to Neoliberalism, broadly speaking. For as long as that’s the case, fascism won’t be far away. Some Democrats want change, and the number is growing. Now is the time for them to make their move.
Agreed.
That is my fear
You don’t beat fascism by voting it out. Hitler lost a vote 8 months before seizing power, and voting continued in some occupied territories. The Americans have made a good start though, by showing they don’t accept the Republican shift to the far right, but I fear a lot of the vote was economic. Gas prices and all that. America is one of the few countries to have avoided violent revolution through political change however, between the 1920s to the 1940s. Perhaps they can do it again.
What concerned me at the time was that eleven Democrats failed to turn up for the Impeachment vote on Hegseth. So why bother voting for their party? I believe the explanation is that it was only a procedural vote, and could have been overturned by a still G.O.P controlled Congress in the future. Apparently the Democrats don’t take control until the third of January, 2027. That being said, their non-appearance gave Trump. and his cabal, the opportunity to take to the airwaves to gloat over their absence, and in my country, Scotland, as we are only too well aware, that perception sometimes counts for more than facts.