Edwards acknowledges reality, smacks Democrats

He may be out to lunch on desirable policy preferences and not exactly honest, but Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards knows how to spot whether a campaign is winnable, to the chagrin of Louisiana Democrats and perhaps the delight of Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy.

Edwards bludgeoned the fantasies of some in his party when this week he declared he would not be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2026. He was the last Democrat to win statewide office, leading to the wild hope that he would enter the race and, as in both his gubernatorial victories in 2015 and 2019, keep out of the way as internecine Republican battles could permit him to sneak into office.

That became a pipe dream when, during his second term, Edwards took off the mask and showed his true leftist ideologue self. He won twice because he was a fraud, trying to convey the impression he was some kind of centrist, even conservative (only in the context of the extremists controlling his party nationally) while governing from left-of-center to the far left, depending on the issue, carrying himself as a blank slate in his first campaign and in his first term keeping in the dark or fooling enough people who didn’t follow closely enough politics to narrowly gain reelection.

But in that second term he revealed his true leftism, which when forcibly revisited in a campaign for the Senate by the Republican nominee would destroy any chance he had for winning. Worse for him, running for a national office as compared to a state-level politicians expands the issue playing field that throws into even sharper relief his leftist ideology concerning which the Louisiana public generally is largely hostile. He might not even have won his own party primary if a prominent black politician chose to run, given the healthy majority of black Democrat registrants. All in all, only for an ego boost would he have committed time and resources to end up ultimately hammered at the ballot box.

With him setting aside further ego massaging, Louisiana Democrats have a decision to make: do they slide expectations of capturing Cassidy’s seat from unrealistic to nonexistent by coalescing around some bench warmer – and that’s all the kind of candidates the party has at its disposal for a statewide office – who at least can marginally keep the brand relevant while not embarrassing it, or do they try to cut losses by surreptitiously backing Cassidy in the hopes of denying an absolutely solid full spectrum conservative a victory. The latter strategy could come about by activists changing their party registrations to none or independent and then voting in the semi-closed Republican primary and (almost certain) runoff for Cassidy (who likely would make a runoff for the party nomination), hoping their numbers are enough to swing the election away from a Cassidy GOP opponent.

Probably not. If the party has any chance of reclaiming any policy-making power, it must run candidates that eschew the far left wackiness of national party leaders and elected officials whose agenda would drive even more Louisianans away from it and many of them into the arms of the GOP. That means no bong-hitters, dilletantes, or spacemen can be allowed to win the nomination if the party wants to convey a seriousness as an alternative to voters that can stem the hemorrhaging Democrats have experienced that have made them a rump force in state politics most often ignorable in policy-making. And that means no attempt at an “Operation Chaos” in the quest to ensure a credible nominee emerges for Democrats.

Who that candidate might be is as yet unknown but for the party’s sake needs to be established quickly. Any hope at reclaiming relevancy exists only with someone who can at least fake some moderate issue preferences, enough not to lose the nomination to a far leftist but additionally able to keep from sliding below 40 percent of the general election vote. Party elites will have their work cut out for them to find such a candidate they can back to nomination victory, and it’s now official that they must.