With fewer than 48 hours left in the electoral life of the last remaining Democrat Senator in the South, Landrieu presses on in what many already see as a quixotic tilting toward windmills.
Racking up the miles and wearing out the shoe leather, Landrieu declared defiantly of Republican Senate control and the election, “[Senate control] has been decided now. But what is still left to be decided is who is best qualified to represent this state for six more years in the United States Senate.”
The all but inevitable defeat of Landrieu represents not merely a final midterm blow to the Democrat party but equally to a generations-long Louisiana political dynasty.
Landrieu’s father is former mayor of New Orleans, an office currently held by her brother Mitch. Likewise a cadre of other family members control parish and city-level governments and organizations all over the state, a fact that may still weigh large in Democrats’ last-ditch turnout efforts.
An unnamed GOP operative on the ground in the state reported that it’s still too early to declare Landrieu dead and that the state–and Landrieu’s Democrat political machine–has a long history of finding votes in urban areas which curiously result in one hundred-plus percent voter turnout.
Still one wonders if any level of political chicanery can be enough to overcome what has appeared for weeks to be a coming electoral tsunami that has been building for sixteen years.