In the hours since I watched this debate, I’ve scoured the ‘net hoping to find an honest appraisal of how embarrassingly bad Hyde-Smith’s performance was. Having found precisely none, I decided to pen one of my own.
The mainstream media reports I’ve read (at NBC, Politico, the Washington Post, wherever) make no mention at all of how amateurish Cindy Hyde-Smith was. The “senator” repeated herself endlessly, she constantly slung mud as a first resort, never taking the high road. Even perennially glancing at her prepared notes on the podium did her little good. Howlers included her claim that Mike Espy first served in Congress a century ago and referring to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), with whom she has allegedly co-sponsored an insurance company-friendly “healthcare” bill, as — and I quote her — “Senator Thompson from South Carolina.”
Hyde-Smith looked and sounded completely out of her depth. This was the first time I’d heard her speak, and her voice reminded me of the late, great comedienne Jan Hooks. Hyde-Smith is exactly the sort of caricature of Southern womanhood that Hooks made her career by lampooning so adroitly. Hyde-Smith’s humor, alas, was completely unintentional. Watching her repeat the same lies so robotically during this one-hour event, it becomes easier to grasp how she’s so lacking in self-awareness that she could have made her “public hanging” and liberal voter suppression gaffes. She’s all gaffes, all the time. Ludicrously, she praised the Trump tax cuts over and over and over again — not having gotten the memo of what a campaigning nonstarter the topic amounts to.
Mike Espy was almost too much a gentleman, and yet I understand why. There was no studio audience at WLBT, but I found myself applauding anyway when he stood up to her racism in his closing statements. It was gratifying to hear the odyssey of the Mississippi Delta bill he wrote as a young Congressman and that was ultimately signed into law by Reagan. And poignant that Espy went out of his way to praise the ailing Thad Cochran. (Whereas all Hyde-Smith could do was gleefully plug her upcoming Trump rallies; Cochran’s health and his service clearly meant nothing to her.)
The moderator was poised and professional; the three journalists from various Mississippi media on the panel were refreshingly unbiased and sharp as tacks in their questioning. Espy, if initially a bit nervous-seeming at the start, grew in confidence as the hour went on. The only errant note was Hyde-Smith herself. Am I allowed to call her white trash? That’s how she came across.