Sen. Cochran Does Not Represent Most Mississippians

Gulf South Free Press recently posted the scores assigned to Mississippi's Sen. Thad Cochran from 2003 to 2009 by the Center for Responsive Politics, and they are not encouraging. They note that Cochran's overall rating on middle class issues is as low as 40%, meaning that he has voted against virtually everything that would benefit the middle class in our state.

All in all, Mississippians need to pay attention...it would help if they would stay in school...but that is for another post...they keep re-electing these people that are doing NOTHING to help the middle class...

Yes, this certainly is frustrating. Why is it that we continue to elect representatives who do not represent us at all? I am reminded of Thomas Frank's excellent book, What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. As Gulf South Free Press suggests, I expect that our abysmal education system has something to do with this. Our embarrassingly high religiosity also seems relevant, as we seem prone to elect whoever strikes as as the most thoroughly Christian without serious regard to adequate representation.

In a state like ours, we need to be far more pragmatic and measure progress in terms of economic and educational progress rather than focusing only on social issues. If we want to be competitive in the future, we need to start focusing less on candidates' socially conservative credentials and more on their plans to reshape our state in the image of success. We simply cannot afford to keep supporting candidates who provide no real benefit to our middle class.

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