http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/16/...t.ap/index.html

In the tradition of "Operation icing on the cake"

Right on raze my friend. I can't wait to hear what our right wing buddies have to say about this. The Democratic party is very alive and well, thank you!

This article on her win has a funny bit at the end:

The poor dears: stuck between a non-white Republican and a Democrat woman!

"Democratic" woman, TF, "Democratic." Who made history!

I think seriously, though, that if Bobby Jindal had been a white dude, he'd have won the race, probably 55-45%.

Let's see if Blanco moves away from her right-wingish social program towards the kinds of things most Louisianans could truly benefit from. The state is the only one in the South that *lost* population in the 1990s, and financially it's not in great shape.

Hey Razorback,
Operation icing on the cake? I'd venture to guess Blanco won thanks to her performance in the last debate, and to Jindal's previous stewardship of the state's Medicaid system. Louisiana politics are unlike that of any other state, and I dare say Jindal's ethnicity and age were likely factors working against him.

What part of the cake would you call the elections of Fletcher in KY and blowhard Barber in MS a few weeks ago?

I thought it was operation "shut out on the road"

Wrong thread, nevermind.

Hey dude - You've been inhaling your cup to long. "Operation icing on the cake" was a phrase that the GOP came up with when they were convinced they were going to beat Sen Mary Laudrieu in Louisiana. The GOP sent its heavy hitters to the state, including Bush, Cheney and millions and millions of dollars but the Democrat in the race won none the less. That's what I was referring to "cup"cake! wink

And how could anyone not get that reference? I mean, it's common knowledge.

Didnt you know what it was William?

Honestly, Raze, no. And I had friends who went down to Louisiana to work on the runoff.

(For what it's worth, I think we flew to close to the sun on that one, and Mary Landrieu (my Captitol Hill neighbor until this month, when I fled to the burbs) made the best move of her career when she fired her campaign advisors after failing to win reelection in the first round of voting and taking over her campaign herself. Personally, I had a hard time opposing Ms. Landrieu. She's just too cute. All my straight buds refer to her as "Senator MILF.")

(A footnote, as Bob Novak would put it: Mary Landrieu works out at my former gym, Results on Capitol Hill. One morning she was on the leg curl machine and, if I had been so inclined, I could have spanked her for being a naughty, naughty Senator. I was not so inclined.)

[ November 17, 2003, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: William1865 ]

WM1865 (TAP)...

Is this the SAME GYM that has the best water? 3rd floor?

That's the one, PF. Ari Fleisher works out there too, or at least I saw him there once. At my old gym, Washington Sports Club, Arlen Specter would come in every morning and play squash. One morning I walked into the locker room and there was Senator Specter, buck naked, talking policy with some schmoe. Not a pretty sight, let me tell you. I eventually switched to Results...

And you did't offer him the spanking instead? You could have said "Bad, bad boy Arlen. I'm not stopping 'til you get rid of that monotone."

Yikes, not a good visual at all.

W1865, I gotta give it to you, sometimes you can still make me burst out laughing! The images of you spanking Senator "Baby Doll" (because the Democrats do have the hottest and butchest women in the Senate!), and you possibly swatting the prunish Senator ExSpectorate were hilarious!

Back to Louisiana, I think Jindal has a good chance in a future run. If he can somehow gain more black support--which would be possible if he moderated his views a bit and/or ran against a white Democrat who proved two-faced, not too much of a stretch--he could win. I do think that another state, however, will be the first to elect an Indian-American governor.

One of my favorite comments was that analysts couldn't figure out why poor whites didn't give Jindal much support, when they'd supported Foster (and Edwards and Duke, etc.). Hello? If they need to ask that question, maybe they need to enroll in a history of the U.S. South course.

[ November 17, 2003, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

First, I had been wondering why this gubernatorial race hadn't received more (any) attention at Outsports.

Second, Jindal is really, really smart. Why he wants to throw that away for a career in politics, I'll never know. What is he, 27?

This is a win for the national Democratic party, but a loss for Louisiana. Blanco is an inarticulate, uninspiring bureaucrat who offers nothing for a state that has about everything going against it. Jindal, by all accounts as brilliant as they come, might have done some good for the state; Blanco's administration will be politics as usual, which is not a good thing in Lousiana.

Given Blanco's blandness and Jindal's resume, this election showed a couple things. First is that race still matters; the Southern Strategy can backfire when the GOP offers up minority candidates, regardless of their qualifications or potential. No one likes to admit it, but a lot of Southern whites just can't bring themselves to vote for a minority. Second is the surprising loyalty the state still has to the Democratic party. People who voted Democratic did not vote for Blanco, or for the general welfare of Louisianans; they voted against anointing a new GOP wunderkind, against a man who would have campaigned hard and effectively for Bush, and for the Democratic party. Given the choice between a conservative Republican and an almost equally conservative Democrat, they chose the Democrat. Bush is going to have a hard time winning in Louisiana next November.

LOL...Razorback, thanks for the clarification. And while my cup is admittedly aromatic, I did not inhale!

You saw Ari Fleischer at Results?!

Yup. I think he had been playing raquetball or squash or whatever.

I mean, I know the gay hovels in this city are overly stocked with Republicans, but good lord is that surprising.

As the joke goes, the unofficial meeting house of the RNC is the Crew Club.

araanib -- Results on Capitol Hill is not nearly as gay as the original one on U Street.

Agreed, but the stigma is similar. But you're right, it is hardly as bold as I may have made it seem.

It will be curious if exit polling shows similar results as what happened in previous Virginia and North Carolina races. Bubba will tell a pollster he'll vote for Jindal -- but when Bubba enters the privacy of the polling booth he pulls the other lever (if he shows up to vote at all).

When Doug Wilder ran for Governor and Harvey Gantt for Senator pre-election polls had them doing much better than they actually did.

Wilder actually won, once, though, because Virginia has a moderate northern bloc that, when combined with urban pockets like Richmond city, Charlottesville, Roanoke, and rural black voting areas, etc., can swing things the Democrats' way.

The polling discrepancy concerning non-white candidates happens all the time, though. Look at the last US Senate election in Texas, where the Republican had only a slight edge over the (black) Democrat, Kirk, in some polls, but the finally tally was a decisive victory for Cornyn. I strongly believe that most poor and working-class white Texans voted solely on the basis of race rather than the political platform of the candidates. Cornyn has gone to the Senate and advanced the cause of the wealthiest, while Texas remains in serious financial trouble and a sizable number of its citizens have not benefitted in the least from the tax-cutting agenda that Cornyn has rubber-stamped for W.

In the case of Mississippi's election, of course, you had a Democrat who was as conservative as the GOPer, so the question becomes, why support the Democrat if you can have the real thing (which Barbour is)? In Louisiana, race-ethnicity trumped this commonsense approach, thus Blanco.

It's telling that although several Southern states have black and/or Latino populations that approach 30-35% (with Mississippi having a racial equivalence of about 1.05 blacks to 1.75 whites, and a black population that is approach 40% of the statewide total, etc.), it is far more likely that a minority statewide candidate will win outside the south. But the north is no cakewalk either. Although New York has the largest black population of any state in the US, it has yet to elect a black statewide official to any level higher than comptroller.

I'll add this: if Jindal were a moderate Republican running for the governorship of any of the northeastern (from Maine to New Jersey, though perhaps not Pennsylvania) states, he'd have won by now and become the first Indian-American to lead a state.

[ November 18, 2003, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: fantomas ]