[National Journal] Democrats have been worried about the African-American vote in Louisiana for months. But what really doomed Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection bid was the near-monolithic white vote against her.
Landrieu's loss Saturday to Republican Sen.-elect Bill Cassidy followed a November all-party primary in which the incumbent got a lower share of the white vote (18 percent) than all other Democratic Senate candidates in the country but one, according to exit polling. There was no exit poll Saturday night due to a lack of media interest in the runoff, perhaps because even Landrieu's campaign acknowledged that she would need at least 30 percent support from white voters to win another term, a huge jump from her baseline in November.
That's about what Landrieu received when she won her final Senate term in 2008, and her drop-off since then highlights how the white voters who used to be the Democratic Party's Southern foundation have left—and how the party has collapsed without them.
"She came home to a sea of change since she last ran," said Bernie Pinsonat, a pollster in the state. "We don't have any Democratic statewide officials, after her, left. The Legislature is now dominated by Republicans; you don't even need a Democrat to pass a bill. Next year there will be maybe 10, or maybe eight or seven white Democrats left in the entire Capitol building. There's been a mass exodus and not something that had gone unnoticed. I don't know why she ran for reelection."
The Dems have made themselves first and foremost the party of blacks. If you're not black you're a racist, regardless of what you do unless you have really big bucks when the fund raising starts. Even then they'll take your team franchise away from you if you say the wrong thing. The party's geriatric leadership tries to keep the number of rubes up by pushing gays, tries for the female half of the population with charges of "war on women," tries for the Spanish speakers by trying to pack the population with illegals, tries for anybody they can term "other," but Sharpton and friends are top of the heap. If you're white you're expected to grovel with guilt and keep your mouth shut if your black betters should decide to slap you around or steal your TV. But they're worried when the guys who're racist by definition don't vote for them. |