“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner, the great American novelist, once wrote. “It’s not even past.”

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Faulkner’s home state of Mississippi, more than a half-century after his death, proved his point again on Tuesday night. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican senator, prevailed in a heated runoff over his African-American opponent, Democrat Mike Espy . Hyde-Smith cements the Republicans’ 53-47 hold on the Senate, an important bulwark for conservatives against what was otherwise a blue wave.

Hyde-Smith won because there are far too many Republicans who support Donald Trump in the state of Mississippi and too few who could dare to choose a Democrat. Trump carried the state by 18 points. A Democrat has not won Mississippi since 1976.

For a moment, Democrats dared to dream. Hyde-Smith’s polling tanked when she was caught on video saying that if invited to a “public hanging” by a constituent she would “be on the front row”.

Mississippi, a state that proudly flies the Confederate flag, holds the heinous distinction of having lynched more African Americans than any other state through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In just about every way, it is the emblem of the deep south – where white supremacy exerted itself with all its bloody might.

Democrats were able to snatch a Senate seat in the south last year when Doug Jones won in Alabama, but Hyde-Smith, ultimately, was not Roy Moore, a man accused of being a sexual predator. She was more run-of-the-mill: a white person ignorant of the blood in the soil and the sins of those who came before her. For most voters, this was entirely forgivable.

Every meandering, maniacal stump speech is a reminder this is, in every way, the party of Trump

Trump naturally rode into Mississippi to campaign hard for Hyde-Smith. It is on turf like this where the president’s race-baiting authoritarianism works best. Every meandering, maniacal stump speech is a reminder this is, in every way, the party of Trump.

The Republicans of Mississippi, like all Republicans who slavishly hang on Trump’s every word, take the past on their terms. The Confederacy was a noble, lost cause, slavery and the brutal Jim Crow era that followed a mere footnote to a glorious, genteel era of unquestioned white dominance.

Public hangings are to be joked about. After all, it wasn’t any of the necks of Hyde-Smith’s ancestors in the noose.

Beyond the mere horror of racism triumphing again, there is the sobering reality – for anyone who wants to throw a political party out of power that shelters white supremacists and denies the existence of climate change – that the Senate is increasingly a bastion of Republican rule. More Democrats are sorting themselves into populated urban areas, while rural America grows increasingly Republican.

Sparsely populated conservative states can outvote populous, diverse and Democrat-dominated states. There are more than twice as many people living in New York City than the entire state of Mississippi. Trump won 30 states. Hillary Clinton, while winning the popular vote, took only 20.

This imbalance was less of a challenge when Democrats were more widely dispersed and Republicans could be found in greater numbers within cities. There was even a time, before the parties completely resorted themselves ideologically, when Democrats could be the party of racists in the south and progressives in the north.

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That era is long gone. For 2020 and beyond, Democrats must figure out a way to compete on a map that only grows more daunting. Some have proposed radical fixes – breaking up the United States into smaller geographical and ideologically harmonious units or moving to a proportional system, as championed by the attorney David Gold, that actually reflects the national popular vote.

Absent all of that, Democrats will enter 2020 with a decent chance to take down Trump while facing a map that still poses serious challenges. Most gratifying for the right, Trump has another two years to ram through federal judges who need Senate approval.

He has already picked two supreme court justices. It’s not impossible to imagine he may even have a shot at another.

That’s democracy in America today – a contorted system that no longer reflects the will of the voters who endure its brutal consequences.