AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in the Deep South, where Mississippi’s Senate race remains too close to call. Democrat Scott Colom is narrowly leading Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by more than 1,800 votes as election officials process provisional ballots and late-arriving mail ballots. Just two years ago, Donald Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points. If elected, Scott Colom would be the first Democrat to win the state in 40 years and the first African American since 1875, during Reconstruction.

Colom made the issue of affordability central to his campaign, and in an ad that went viral, he blasted Senator Hyde-Smith for saying Mississippians should, quote, “pick another protein,” unquote, if they’re upset over high beef prices. The ad features Mississippians saying they’d rather pick another senator.

HUGH KEETON: The price of beef continuing to go up.

SEN. CINDY HYDE-SMITH: You know, you have so many proteins to choose from.

MISSISSIPPI VOTER 1: Pick another protein? [bleep], I’d rather pick another senator instead.

MISSISSIPPI VOTER 2: Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind. I’d rather pick another senator.

MISSISSIPPI VOTER 3: Pick another protein? What the [bleep]?

SCOTT COLOM: Pick another senator instead.

AMY GOODMAN: Scott Colom is a former district attorney for northeast Mississippi. In 2022, President Biden nominated him to the federal bench, a nomination blocked by Colom’s opponent in this race, incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Colom has sharply criticized national Democrats for writing off Mississippi and failing to invest in his campaign. Early on, he told reporters, quote, “Mississippi was never a lost cause. We were a betrayed cause.” This is Colom speaking to NBC News.

SCOTT COLOM: The reality is our country does not do well when it ignores places like Mississippi. … You can’t lead with doubt. You have to believe. You have to lead with belief, and that’s where the power is. When you believe things, you can actually achieve it. And there’s some people in the party that they are just treading water. Right? “What’s the path to least resistance to get to 51? Oh my gosh, we did it.” That’s not the right way to think. In this particular moment, you have to think about how can we win everywhere, because we need to represent working people in a way where we actually deliver.

AMY GOODMAN: The potential electoral upset in Mississippi is part of a much broader political shift across the South, where Democrats have scored major victories in states long considered Republican strongholds.

For the latest on Mississippi and more on the sea change in the South, we’re joined by two guests. In Durham, North Carolina, we’re joined by Chris Kromm, the executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of its online magazine Facing South. And we’re joined by Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. He’s been in Jackson, Mississippi, for much of this week, including election night, but is now back in Atlanta, Georgia, where we’ve spoken to him many times before.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Cliff Albright, let’s begin with you. To say the least, Colom feels betrayed by the Democratic Party for not backing him sooner, and yet he has shocked the nation in being ahead in this — very narrowly, in this race, where he may be, though it’s not finalized yet, unseating the incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Tell us what happened in Mississippi.

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: Yeah. Good morning, Amy. and good morning to my good friend Chris.

Yeah, you know, you all may not be able to claim it, but we’re claiming it. He’s claiming it. He’s ahead. He’s been ahead since election night. His lead continues to grow as they continue to count absentee ballots. We’re continuing, many organizations — it’s an incredible coalition of organizations down there in Mississippi that are fighting right now to make sure that every vote gets counted, people that were forced to do affidavit ballots, or provisional ballots, in some states it’s known as, trying to get organized to make sure that all of those ballots get counted, that people that didn’t have ID get their ballots fixed, get the ballots cured, to get all those votes counted. So we believe that he’s winning and, at the end of the day, that he’s going to be the winner.

But what happened is, in spite of the rest of the country really ignoring Mississippi — and I got to say that in addition to Mississippi, the points that he made about that state, the same could be said about Louisiana, which got even less support than his race got, and still came within a razor-thin margin. The same can be said about Florida — right? — Alabama. All of these states have been ignored, have been underresourced, underinvested. There are amazing groups doing work on a shoestring budget. But because of the tide of Black voter enthusiasm, largely fed by the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act, ever since that decision, we’ve seen a wave of organizing, a wave of momentum. Of all the shifts that took place in the country — and to be clear, the entire country shifted left — but when you look at it regionally, the biggest shifts took place in the South — Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana. All those points had shifts between 20 and 24 points. And so, the wave of energy, largely led by Black voters who were most under attack with the mid-decade racial gerrymandering that was taking place — it clearly backfired, and all it did was to wake up a sleeping giant.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chris Kromm, I wanted to ask you your reaction to the results in Mississippi. And if you could talk a little bit about the history of the two candidates?

CHRIS KROMM: No, absolutely. In an incredible year for Democrats in the South, the story of Scott Colom in Mississippi is one of the most remarkable. I mean, here you have a longtime leader in the Black community in Mississippi up against a longtime Republican. And the history that you brought out was incredibly important to the backdrop to this race, where he was put forward as a federal district nominee from the Biden administration in the fall of 2022, and almost every politician in Mississippi backed him, including the Republican Senator Roger Wicker, but the one person who blocked his nomination is the current senator from Mississippi, [Cindy] Hyde-Smith. And what you see there is — so, there’s a personal history there. And she really seemed determined. You know, she thought she had this race. She was kind of phoning it in. And, you know, to their credit, the Democrats, I think, late in the game kind of realized that this is a race that could be won.

And what you’re seeing now, I think, is really interesting, where armies of lawyers have come to Mississippi. The Republican lawyers are saying that they want to segregate those ballots, pull them aside, that came in, the affidavit ballots, or called provisional ballots elsewhere in the country, and pull those aside. Democratic lawyers and civil rights lawyers are saying that that’s not something you can do in Mississippi. And so this is really turning out to be an important legal battle. But as Cliff said, the trend lines are all going in the direction of Colom. And given that personal history, but also the long political history in Mississippi, it would be truly historic if he can come out on top.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chris, in other states, the victories by Democrats at the top of the ticket have had an impact on the — on other races, less high-profile races. What’s happened there in Mississippi?

CHRIS KROMM: Yeah, well, I think that’s something really important to understand, is that these Senate races — so, if Scott Colom wins, which I think is very likely, that’ll be six Democrats who have won statewide U.S. Senate races. And those races really drove a lot of turnout that benefited, played a role in U.S. congressional races and statewide races. And so, you see that playing down the ballot, where this overall shift — as Cliff noted, that there was a 20-point shift overall in the South, when you look at the '24 presidential vote to what happened in the Senate races, a 20-point shift in the Democratic vote margin from ’24 to ’26. And that played out all down the ballot and even in races where — as Cliff notes, the places where Democrats came up short. What it really showed was the possibility of what's possible in Southern states. And I think that’s going to change forever people’s ideas about what the political map looks like nationally and the importance of the South in driving the national political agenda.

AMY GOODMAN: Cliff Albright, I know you have to leave in a second. You’re back in Atlanta, Georgia, where Keisha Lance Bottoms is now the first African American woman governor in the country. And you’ve just been in Mississippi. One of the most remarkable shifts in this country is the massive voter turnout. In many countries, many more people vote, percentage-wise, than in the United States, but it is growing here. If you can talk about also what this lack of Democratic establishment support has meant for Colom, but also Angie Nixon, who came so close to defeating the incumbent in Florida without that support? As Colom has pointed out, if only she had had that from the beginning. Your final comments on what you’re taking away from this election, as you say in Mississippi they’ve accepted that Colom has won, even if the rest of the country doesn’t, and if you think it could be stopped? I mean, here you have Cindy Hyde-Smith, who prevented Colom — she might be sorry now — from being appointed to the federal bench. She blocked Biden’s nomination.

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: Yeah, you know, I think that — so, a couple of things. On the Georgia thing, in addition to Keisha becoming governor, all the way down the ballot — to the point that Chris was just making, all the way down the ballot, it’s almost every state office in the state of Georgia is now going to be led by a Black woman — labor commissioner, agriculture, education — all the way down, except for lieutenant governor, where Josh won that one. But so, it’s absolutely remarkable, and it’s a sign of what could happen all across the South with the proper investment. What’s been happening in Georgia, you know, in 2020, in 2022, with Warnock winning again, this year, this has been from years of investment, the kind of investment that Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida has not seen.

Florida is insane, the way that people have turned their backs on the state of Florida and declared that it was hopeless, even after Andrew Gillum came close in 2018, and then just people just wrote it off. And for Angie to do what she did — and shoutout to her — on almost little, very little investment, really says what the potential is in the South. We’re hoping that the narrative or the question, the debate around what strategy makes sense in the South — do you invest in Black and Brown voters and mobilize that base? Right? Or do you continue to look for these unicorn Trump voters that swing back and forth? This year should really put that debate to an end, but I have a feeling it’s going to continue.

The last thing I’m going to say, Amy, is — and this is very important — with all these victories, there’s a risk that people lose sight of the structural barriers that still exist, the voter suppression that is still taking place. I know the Mississippi coalition is very insistent that people hear that story about things that still went wrong in this election. And this goes for across the South. And a lot of times what happens is, when we win, against all odds, that people say, “Oh, the voter suppression wasn’t that bad.” They said this about Warnock in '22. They said, “Oh, I guess that voter suppression bill wasn't that bad.” No, we were able to overcome the suppression, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a structural barrier. The racial gerrymandering that took place has still given Republicans a structural edge, that’s been covered in a wave year, but it’s still something that’s got to be corrected. The Supreme Court’s decision has still got to be fixed. We still need voting rights legislation. And that, with investment, means there’s nothing that we can’t achieve all across the South.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chris Kromm, I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about what’s happened in North Carolina in this election.

CHRIS KROMM: Remarkable. Not only did you have at the top of the ticket, it looks like Roy Cooper is going to win by 19 to 20 points when all is said and done in terms of counting the ballots, but again, you go down the list. Four of the biggest upsets in U.S. congressional races were in North Carolina. It looks like at this point that we’re going to go from a delegation that, despite extreme gerrymandering, was a 10-4 in favor — delegation in favor of Republicans, will flip to a delegation that’s 10-4 in favor of Democrats.

Incredible stories like the longtime speaker of the House, Tim Moore, who created his own district through redistricting so he could win, was upset by a Black woman in District 14. In the mountains of North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene had devastated the region, you had a farmer, Ager, who’s going to — who’s won that race in District 11.

Just down the ballot, upset after upset, and it really showed that it was a combination of the political environment, how at the top of the ballot, the excitement and the investment that happened, but also some solid grassroots organizing, historic Black and Latino voter turnout. It really was the perfect storm, and it showed what’s possible. And again, I think this is a story — a lot of other Southern states could look like a North Carolina with the right investment, with the right attention. And so, the story of North Carolina, I think, is one that people should be paying attention to across the country, and also about what’s possible in the South.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Chris Kromm, we recently spoke to Justin Pearson, Justin Pearson who ran for Congress from Memphis. He really took on the data center there, as did his brother. He did lose, but he lost by just 2,000 votes in his gerrymandered district. So, even in that case, can you talk about the significance of this in Tennessee?

CHRIS KROMM: Well, this is what’s so important to understand, is that for all of the wins, and there were — you know, Democrats held on to 40 congressional seats, House seats. They are going to flip about 10 to 14 seats. I think that number is growing every day as new results come in, but it’s going to be about another 14 seats. If you think about how much bigger that wave would have been without the extreme gerrymandering, without the extreme voter restrictions that have been seen throughout the South, that wave would have been even bigger. And it really points to the importance of voting rights.

And Pearson is a great example of this. There’s over 30 data centers in the Memphis area. He is an out — a leader in that fight and talking about what the implications are for the community. And so, he didn’t make it to the finish line, but there are so many candidates like that in places where they were able to really move the needle, when you saw this incredible uptick in the electorate of Black and Latino voters, a real shift. And even if they didn’t get to the finish line, I hope the overall story people see is that the South is increasingly competitive and that there’s a real opportunity for engaging more voters and really pushing the region in a more progressive direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Kromm, we want to thank you for being with us, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, speaking to us from North Carolina, and Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund. He spent the week in Jackson, Mississippi, just back at his home in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coming up, we look at some of the historic elections for Latinos with our own Juan González, author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. And then Hasan Piker will join us from Los Angeles to comment on the elections overall. He had one of the largest broadcasts in the United States on election night. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “When First Unto This Country,” rendition by Down Hill Strugglers, performing at the Brooklyn Folk Festival last year. This year’s festival is this weekend, and we’ll bring you more of those musicians.