Yeah, lots of people feel the same way, and there was a lot of chatter among Democrats about Arthur Jones ratifying the racism of the GOP. I get why people might think that, but they think it because they don't pay attention to congressional elections.

It's an underappreciated quirk of our politics that you can't just try to run in a district, just to see how it goes, and then try again somewhere else. You run and fail, and you're often damaged goods for any other race. A bunch of things in our legislative races make more sense when you grok that.