The Clarion-Ledger Editorial, 8/24/8
Mississippi Democrats will be well represented in Denver as the 2008 Democratic Convention officially gets under way on Monday.
State Democrats are arriving in Denver this weekend with a renewed sense of hope and opportunity – not only on the national level but in Mississippi politics, as well. The state party has chosen new leadership and has boasted of a new determination to offset what has since the 1980s been the dominance of the Republican Party in congressional and presidential politics in Mississippi.
Since the Mississippi landslide for Republican nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964, only one Democratic presidential nominee – then-Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in 1976 – has carried Mississippi and then only with a 49.7 percent plurality.
But the 420,751 votes cast in the 2008 Mississippi Democratic Party primary has emboldened the state party faithful to believe that Obama and a group of savvy down-ticket candidates can reverse that trend.
