I don’t think that McDaniel could have gotten black votes, period. The whole Dem/Cochran approach to the blacks was based on the idea that Cochran would give them more “free stuff” - more food stamps, more welfare, huge amounts of money to the dysfunctional “historically black colleges,” etc. It was large-scale institutional bribery, conducted through the usual culprits: the black churches.
However, if the Cochran/Dem alliance openly announced this in advance, McDaniel should have prepared a counter-assault. I don’t know about MS politics, but he was a two-term state senator, so surely he would have known it and could have come up with some kind of strategy. Even, for example, publicizing the Dem/Cochran plot among GOP voters might have persuaded a sizeable number of those who had voted for Cochran originally to vote for McDaniel in the run-off.
TN 9th has a white Jew Dem socialist incumbent. GOP Tea Party backed Charlotte Bergmann is making her 3rd run to unseat him, she is a real smart Black conservative business woman. Yet she pulls only the white votes. Last election cohen got 80% of the vote to her 20%.
They prefer the PERKS, and freebies slave chains to Freedom.
Then you have to discounts Parker's assertion that there ARE conservative blacks in Mississippi that are receptive to positive outreach. It's Monday morning quarterbacking, but relevant for future reference.