Let's step back a bit from normal prognostication in what has now supplanted the 1983 Mississippi gubernatorial campaign as the strangest political campaign in the state's long and bewildering political history.
The 1983 campaign merely generated still legally unproven and still legally unchallenged allegations of sexual misconduct. It set off media fistfights, a small parade of transvestite prostitutes, lie detector tests and resulting gubernatorial campaign that saw the winner basically cloistered in the Governor's Mansion for four years.
But through the prism of history, the late Bill Allain was able to reign over a quite productive term as governor.
The 2014 Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate primary has far surpassed that 1983 campaign in terms of weird developments, outlandish strategies, and sheer length. If the 1983 campaign was a bizarre sprint, the 2014 Senate race in Mississippi has been an interminable marathon.
In what was forecast as his final campaign after a long and distinguished career, six-term incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran saw opponents characterize his 40-year record of reliable right-of-center conservatism redefined by his GOP challenger as four decades of support for liberal causes and for wild-eyed and irresponsible spending.
Cochran's actual record clearly doesn't support that allegation in the least, but with an "AstroTurf" group armada attacking on an unprecedented scale in Mississippi politics that record's reality was obscured into another perception.
As noted in prior columns on the subject, the 2014 U.S. Senate campaign in Mississippi was the target of "AstroTurf" groups and super PACs (political action committees) on an unprecedented scale. State voters experienced the handiwork of such high-sounding groups as Club for Growth, Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks -- groups that funneled some whopping sums of PAC money into attack ads against primarily incumbent Republicans.
In Mississippi, outside spending has to date accounted for $11.7 million of what has become a $19.7 million campaign.
Why? Because Cochran read the part of the Constitution that balanced the power of the U.S. president to direct spending with that of Congress to do the very same thing.
Why? Because there's a lot of money to be made in making folks afraid of something and then convincing them that someone's to blame for it.
With those outside spending spigots turned off, national pundits now rate the Mississippi Senate general election as a "safe" Republican seat despite a credible Democratic candidate in former Democratic U.S. Rep. Travis Childers.
The legal challenge of the results of the 2014 Republican second primary by state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, has taken on a political and legal life of its own. That effort continues, but the Mississippi 2014 general election likewise seems to have taken on a trajectory of its own as well.
For Mississippi voters - even those who remain loyal to Sen. McDaniel - there is a national political trajectory to be considered as well. Republican chances to take control of the U.S. Senate have narrowed since mid-year. A Republican victory in Mississippi is very directly tied to a Republican victory in taking control of the U.S. Senate.
It will be indeed interesting and instructive for mainstream Mississippi Republicans and for the state's Tea Party loyalists as well as to see how the actual majority of Mississippi Republicans react to that clear political choice at the national level and how they exercise their state's part in making that choice.
Mississippi Democrats, who haven't won a U.S. Senate race in a very long time, draw inspiration from that GOP conflict.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com