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Louisiana has six seats in the US House of Representatives. According to Ballot Access News, there will be Republican candidates running in all six districts, Libertarians running in five and Democrats in only three.
This marks a humiliating decline for Democrats in a state that did not have a single Republican senator for the entire 20th century. (David Vitter who was elected in 2004 was the state’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction). The fact that Democrats were unable to put up a candidate in three districts in this once solidly blue state may represent a new low for the party’s fortunes in the Deep South.
Although Democrats have been saddled with embarrassing statewide candidates in recent years like Alvin Greene in South Carolina in 2010 and Mark Clayton in Tennessee this year, they emerged by accident through low-turnout (and low-information) primaries.
In sad contrast, Louisiana Democrats couldn’t even find a single fringe candidate willing to appear on the ballot with a D next to their name in these three districts.
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MuddyLee on August 18, 2012 10:33 AM:
There are folks in SC who don't think that the unknown Alvin Greene paid his own filing fee - it may not have been paid by Jim DeMint but with all the crazy conservative money flowing into the state in 2010 (for example, funding Mick Mulvaney - Ayn Rand disciple - against the respected and experienced John Spratt), it's quite possible. $10,000 for the filing fee is just a drop in the bucket to Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers.
Neildsmith on August 18, 2012 10:33 AM:
This is the most depressing aspect of our political situation. We end up with right-wing nut cases in Congress because no one with half a brain bothers to run as a Democrat in these horrible places. I don't blame them, really. This country is ungovernable.
At this point, I've just about given up. If Romney wins, I will give up and I won't give a hoot how many poor and elderly people suffer. They will have deserved their fate for handing power to the GOP.
Nycweboy on August 18, 2012 10:56 AM:
This post seems terribly naive. Why is Vitter the first Republican since Reconstruction? Because southern voting after the Civil War was largely the opposite of what we have today, as documented fairly endlessly by many lefties tracking the rise of the post-civil rights era "southern strategy of the GOP. Democrats across the South struggle with that aftermath, and it seems hardly surprising that one net effect, even now, is a paucity of viable candidates in a state as hidebound as LA. (BTW, republicans struggle as bad as worse across much of the northeast. Still.) so really... What's news here?
c u n d gulag on August 18, 2012 11:09 AM:
So much for that "50 State Strategy," eh?
And it's not just in LA, SC, and TN. I hear KY is having the same issues. And has anyone taken a look at KS lately?
This is pathetic!
We’ve had over 30 years of Conservatives running for office, saying that they hate government, saying government doesn’t work, wanting to shrink it, eliminating every part of government – except the military, and, of course, the job/office they hold and the benefits they get from that government.
And THAT, they want to keep – for life!
And, after 30 years of voting for those people who hate government, say it doesn’t work, and then, having no interest in actaully governing, PROVE that the government doesn’t work when they’re in charge, the idiot people in this country are lining-up to kick at the football Conservative Lucy is holding – AGAIN!!!
Nobody ever lost a single penny betting against the stupidity of the American people.
Always, ALWAYS, take stupidity and the points!
Too bad this is too long for a bumper-sticker:
“2012: US Congress Has Approval Rating In The Teens.
Isn’t It Time To Vote For People Who Actually LIKE Government?”
Maybe someone can figure out a way to shorten it.
And as for the states like LA, where D's don't even bother to try to run for office, well, HOW THE FECK DO YOU EXPECT TO CHANGE PEOPLE'S MINDS!
Jayzoos Keerist on a unicycle!
If all people hear from FOX, and right wing talk radio, and their politicians, is the same NONSENSE, and there's NO ONE to talk any SENSE to them, then how are people supposed ...to come TO their senses?
To paraphrase the words of the immortal Yosemite Sam:
RASSA-MASSA-FRASSA!!! Idjit Democrats...
Willie Stark on August 18, 2012 12:19 PM:
Lousiana was the exceptional Deep South state that remained willing to elect national Democrats into the late 20th century (Clinton won it twice), but I don't think I'd say that it was ever "solidly blue" in the modern sense.
It voted for Goldwater in 1964, for Wallace in 1968, and for the Republican candidate in four of the 20th century's remaining seven presidential elections. It's been electing very conservative Republican congressmen since the 1970s. The New Orleans suburbs and North Louisiana are as conservative as any other part of the South. (See Duke, David, political career of).
Victories for generally authentic Democrats remained *possible* because of the huge black vote in New Orleans and the appeal of economic populism to Cajun whites. But it was still very difficult.
Bobby Goren on August 18, 2012 12:26 PM:
It boggles the mind that a state that could have suffered so much post-Katrina due to GW Bush's ineptitude could be so enthusiastically Republican. I just don't understand the South.
mb on August 18, 2012 12:41 PM:
I think that, similar to Dean's 50 state strategy, the DNC should commit to fielding a serious candidate with some level of baseline funding in EVERY House District. I believe that over time such a strategy would bear fruit.
It'd have to be better than simply not fielding candidates.
TCinLA on August 18, 2012 12:44 PM:
Southern progressives have been useless since the mid 1700s. Sadly the slaveowning scum and their braindead true believers always dominated and still do. Further proof we should have either ethnically cleansed the place 150 years ago or should expel it now.
James E. Powell on August 18, 2012 1:44 PM:
@mb - You forget. Howard Dean was the worstest Democrat evah! He didn't do what Rahm Emanuel said. And as we all know, everything Rahm Emanuel says is the right thing to do and anyone who disagrees is a $@&$#$!!
I do not know what he did or said, but Beltway Democrats really hate Howard Dean.
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Jim Heim on August 18, 2012 4:09 PM:
Those 'southern Democrats' were largely dixiecrats quite unlike the modern Democrat. There are too few of us today, but the tide is slowly sweeping southward. Who would have thought that North carolina and Virginia would be swing states?
Discouraged South Carolinian on August 18, 2012 6:58 PM:
If the rest of the South is like SC, Republican majorities in the legislatures have gerrymandered the districts to make safe black Democratic districts and safe white Republican districts while doing everything they can to destroy white Democratic districts. The DOJ has played an inadvertent hand in this in the South, too.
I bet the 3 districts fielding Democratic candidates in Louisiana are heavily black.
I think as the Republican Party goes more and more into TEA Party and Libertarian insanity, it is a good time for white Democrats to start educating voters and running in Republican districts - no matter how many times they lose. This is the best time in a long time to start re-building and they are missing it.
Obvously, the solution to state and federal political extremism (in addition to the return of the broadcast Fairness Doctrine.) is non-partisan, non-legislative redistricting by independent commission. That issue is something that would appeal to Republicans, too. They think every black in public office is there thanks to gerrymanderig. Many are. It just may be that for the betterment of all, we need to have as many districts as possible be as competitive as possible and no safe ones, no matter if a white or black represents it.
mb on August 19, 2012 9:11 AM:
It could also be partly due to the abandonment of various southern States by the dnc and the dccc. There is no money from the national groups to the Dem groups or candidates in the south. We have pretty much been dropped and left to our fate. For many southern democrats, we blame the party for walking away.
zandru on August 19, 2012 3:13 PM:
"a humiliating decline for Democrats"
Well, weren't innumerable Democrats packed out of New Orleans in the biggest mass expulsion since the Acadians, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? And most never returned?
Talk about rewriting the electoral map!
WayneL on August 20, 2012 1:59 PM:
When the Civil Rights Act passed, Sam Rayburn, House Majority leader from Texas told LBJ, "We've lost the South for a generation." That generation is the Tea Party. The South has always been conservative, heavily for "state's rights." The Civil War did not defeat the idea, only the army of the Confederacy. Democrats have been unable to make a case since FDR that the govt can help. Katrina further solidified that govt can't help. LA is only a symptom of a disease that's much more virulent in neighboring Mississippi.