Mississippi turns Blue: "That's how p*ssed off rural voters are with Trump!"

John Lewis, this may seem like a very simple question, but how on earth has Mississippi voted for a black democratic senator? Is it all down to Trump? Are attitudes actually changing in the South? I just don't get it. Yeah, it's the first time that there have been... a black senator in mississippi since reconstruction and i think it was the 15th 16th and 17th amendments that were passed at the time after the civil war when there was this window briefly open where you thought america was this equal multi-racial society and everyone would live happily ever after and then came jim crow and then came segregation and sure enough it wasn't until the civil rights act in 1965 it turns out the kkk lads weren't too keen on having blacks they they turned against the idea They turned against the idea. And, you know, and it has taken until 2024 for there to be another black senator since the kind of mid-late 19th century. It is phenomenal. It is phenomenal. I think, I mean, to be fair, Schumer, the majority leader, has been talking about Mississippi for a few years. It's a bit like, in order for Democrats to win in these states, like, you know, Texas and especially Mississippi County, like... Everything has to be right, you have to have a deeply unpopular incumbent, and let's not forget, particularly, and this will apply to Mississippi, especially applies to Texas, and it applies in Kansas, like, you've got a president who has done two things, he has pissed off core part of his coalition, which are rural voters, farmers, because of tariffs, because of the Iran war, they're paying, you know, huge amounts for diesel, which obviously their farms run on, they're finding it hard to export their goods because of tariffs. And as well, you've got data centres popping up all over the place, which are obviously popping up in rural areas, vast things that look like alien spacecraft, which are being associated with the Trump administration. So you've suppressed your sort of natural core rural constituency, and there's lots of exit poll reports which show a lot of these rural voters not just not voting for the Republicans, but voting for the Democrats a lot in these places for the first time in a generation. That's how pissed off they are. But also in a case like Mississippi, as well, that kind of explains Kansas and some of Texas. Mississippi is the blackest state in the American South. It has the biggest black population, which is obviously a legacy of the slavery period. And that's why Schumer had his eye on it. The problem historically has been the fact that obviously white voters continue to vote in such large numbers for the Republicans. That was suppressed. But also that it was harder to get black voters to turn out.