Local power shifts when people learn they’ve been denied a voice — and act on it.
Mississippi’s “deep red” myth collapses once voters hear a message grounded in daily life.
SCOTUS unraveling the Voting Rights Act Section 2 would open the door to erasing newly won representation across the South.
Sam Osterhout, Justin Crosby, and Amir Badat anchor this moment around Justin’s breakthrough win last week — a Democrat flipping a long-held Republican seat in rural Mississippi — and what it signals about voters who were never as disengaged as the system counted on. His victory reflects a shift born from listening instead of lecturing, meeting people in the places where life actually happens, and naming the issues that shape their days rather than the culture-war noise pumped in from elsewhere.
That approach turns participation into something personal, not theoretical, and it gives communities a sense of agency that outlives any specific election map. Even the looming threat to Section 2 can’t fully blunt the fact that once a district experiences representation that feels real, the old assumptions stop holding power. Justin’s win becomes both a crack in Mississippi’s manufactured inevitability and a model for what can happen when politics is rebuilt from the ground up.
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Could the Texas Gerrymander Backfire on Republicans? | Behind the Numbers
Rick Wilson is on a crazy deadline this week, and Andrew Wilson is in transit, so Behind the Numbers on video will have to wait until next week.
