Numbers indicate big Jindal edge, hard road for Blanco

While Gov. Kathleen Blanco would have trouble getting reelected against any conservative challenger, the best her handlers could come up with when it was revealed her worst nightmare of an opponent, U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, had entered the gubernatorial contest, was “As the hardest working governor in our state's history, I remain focused on the business of building our economy, improving our schools and completing the state's recovery after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

Amusingly, her response tried to shift the issue from her nonperformance in office to the effort she expended in doing her job. Reminiscent of former Pres. Bill Clinton’s excuse when it was becoming clear his plan to nationalize a seventh of nation’s economy through a system that brought health care under firm government control would fail miserably, he argued that he was “working harder” than he ever had on the issue, ignoring the fact that one can work has hard as one likes on something, but if that person has the wrong philosophy to make it turn out right, no good will come of it and the people typically will realize this.

Such is the case with Blanco. She retains the tax-and-spend tenet of political liberalism and the serve-our-allies-first-forget-about-the-rest tendency of the good-old-girl network, as demonstrated through her three years in office, and that path leads to failure in improving the quality of life in Louisiana. She can work as hard as she likes, but because her ideas are wrong in the first place, they cannot improve Louisiana’s situation. Her inferior ideas disarm any ability she has to build the economy, improve schools, and complete the state’s recovery adequately.

Apparently a large portion of the Louisiana electorate already has made up its mind as such. Simply, if Blanco polls at 35 percent with 94 percent of the electorate already willing to state a gubernatorial preference, she cannot win this contest absent a miracle. Whether Jindal then can win it is a somewhat different matter, but the evidence is on his side.

The fact that at this time he appears to win in all areas of the state, and has such a commanding lead, augments this supposition. The way things work is that the possibility of candidates gaining in a situation of a large undecided vote is far greater than a candidate losing support from a public largely already stating a preference. Simply, people who psychologically commit early are a lot harder to dissuade than in eliciting support from those forming a preference for a certain candidate among those who don’t yet have one.

In short, this is Jindal’s race to lose. If he stays on message and out of controversy, he’ll be hard to beat regardless of who enters the contest.