McDaniel had a comfortable lead among Republican voters. McDaniel couldn’t imagine that the Republican Party would recruit illegal Democrat Party voters, to win the runoff. Haley Barbour called this in an Orwellian way, “expanding the electorate”. Barbour did this because Cochran was certain to lose among Republicans. I don’t see how McDaniel could be blamed for his defeat with illegal votes or that this means he slacked off.
They hate us more than they hate the status quo, now hopefully broken.