Don’t look now, but it looks like Louisiana has another vanity project running for president, this time in the form of Democrat former Lt. Gov. and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
The state occasionally experiences a credible politician (meaning not Prisoner #28213-034) taking a Quixotic stab at the country’s top office. Republican former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s attempt for 2016 falls outside this category, because he would have had a real chance after beginning a populist turn in the last couple of years of his governorship had not the most unimpeachably conservative populist of all time GOP Pres. Donald Trump trumped Jindal and other competitive Republicans with his outsider and semi-celebrity status. He was, for a while, a serious candidate.
Jindal actually had a really good shot for the nomination in 2012, but demurred. Instead, that year Louisiana sent forth a former GOP governor as a novelty candidate, Buddy Roemer. He got sucked into this idea that a major party could form on a temporary basis and make someone like him competitive. Of course it didn’t happen.
Nor will success happen to Landrieu, should he dive in. Interviewed on that topic by a sycophant whose publication temporarily lost its access to the White House, Landrieu showed all the classic signs of a bad case of Potomac fever.
First, he alleged that unspecified in number people suggested he go for the White House in 2028. He didn’t differentiate whether they were political consultants looking to pick up a paycheck on the back of his ego, which surely a substantial proportion were, or how many were relatives or friends. As far as individuals who are party activists with true influence among today’s Democrats, that number likely is little more than zero.
Second, he feigned no immediate interest in such a quest and claimed he was pondering the idea. Of course, why the interview in the first place since he’s not even conceived as a Democrat contender until leading with his chin here and now? There are two kinds of nomination candidates at this point around midterm elections: those quietly putting the pieces together to announce a run in the next few months or those like Landrieu hoping after partisans cycle through several disappointments a number of activists will petition him to run. That’s what he’s waiting for, and that’s the purpose of this interview, to present himself.
Third, he insisted he’s not in this for a reward in some Democrat’s administration in 2029. One thing to understand about candidates who do not come to attention organically, such as have Democrats former Vice Pres. Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is that they mean the opposite of what they say on this subject. In reference to the first two points, it means there’s no groundswell of support for him and that he’s very interested in the presidency. As to the underling statement, he’s telling the political world that he’d love to have something like the Cabinet post his father had as a consolation prize.
Fourth, he describes himself as having been on some kind of listening tour across America. That is precisely the behavior of somebody itching to jump in unless reality absolutely and squarely smacks him in the face.
So, he runs. But he will be a vanity project for two reasons, the first being the party and its voters has left him behind in his illusory world. Democrats like him who style themselves of the moderate wing of the party – which is still pretty leftist given how far the party as a whole has lurched to the left – have a fantasy where if they could seize the upper hand in the party’s politics they could win majorities. What they cannot admit to themselves is in reality that the party has gone to such extremes, with themselves willingly pulled that way, that the median voter isn’t on their side nationally.
After all, there is a reason that in the 2020-24 period, when the craziness only was starting to ramp up, that Democrats lost 2.1 million registered voters across states with voter registration from 2020 to 2024 while Republicans, by contrast, gained 2.4 million (the 20 states that don’t track registrations mostly send GOP politicians into state and national offices, so this may understate the shift). And this explains why Landrieu won’t be competitive in his party today: many of the moderates have left the party, many of them joining the GOP, precisely because it has veered so sharply to the left, leaving a far-left base who will prefer a far-left nominee.
The other reason is Landrieu is as clueless as he ever was. Any politician, as he did in the interview, who claims Democrat former Pres. Barack Obama is more conservative than Democrat former Sen. John Kerry, who ran as the nominee four years before Obama and was definitely leftist but who didn’t argue to change the fundamental nature of America as did Obama who was mentored by a committed communist, cannot be considered a serious individual. And he seems oblivious that anybody wouldn’t notice his trying to appropriate the success Louisiana and New Orleans students have experienced in educational improvement with his party, when in fact it bitterly fought for two decades the very policies put in place to cause that and continues that to this day. And he daydreams about having run in 2020 where he sees himself as a better version of former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg that could have won the nomination.
As well, he can’t escape his record. His tenure as mayor (lieutenant governors don’t do anything), which he won only on his third try as a kind of buyer’s remorse candidate after his defeat by the corrupt Democrat Ray Nagin, can be typified as such: he systematically drove and degraded the vehicle known as New Orleans, then handed over the keys to a terrible driver, LaToya Cantrell.
Let him live in his fantasy world. He will provide humor value as he flails about, if he doesn’t get some sense and backs off his ego.
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