John’s post about the anger in NOLA, and Mary Landrieu’s tepid response, got me wondering about Mary.
She spent a little over $11 million to get elected in 2008 with 52% of the vote. She got about $365K from individuals and groups associated with the oil and gas industry during that run.
The only other Democrat elected to statewide office in Louisiana is Attorney General Buddy Caldwell. There’s a single Democratic Representative, Charlie Melancon, who is running against David Vitter this year. Melancon’s raised about half of the $5 million Vitter has in the bank, and Cook rates that seat as “likely Republican”.
So, if you’re a Democrat in Louisiana, you need to raise twice as much money as a Republican to win a seat, and you’ll have to genuflect to some pretty ugly interests to get your cash. If you’re a Republican, you can fuck whores and cruise to re-election. If you ever wonder about Landrieu’s strange politics, just keep that in mind.
MikeJ
Why hasn’t Vitter come up with a way to stop the spill? In his Pampered life he’s learned about extra absorbent materials.
Dan
Two things to keep in mind:
1. $365k is only 3% of the total money she raised for the 2008 cycle.
2. The oil and gas industry is one of the biggest employers in the state, so one might expect her to receive money from people employed by oil companies.
Just saying…
WereBear
It’s kinda Karmic, the way the Gulf borders so many states that have had the Republican dogma of no regulation preached at them.
When the reality of your environmentally based industries like fishing and tourism is destroyed, I wonder if it looks differently.
Alex S.
Mary Landrieu is a skilled politician. It’s a weird set of skills you need to have to make it in this business, but I think she’s got them.
P.S.: Maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but isn’t David Vitter’s ‘crime’ not so much his contact with prostitutes, but his hypocrisy? I don’t care about his private life, as long as he doesn’t run on it.
El Cid
Hey
Don’t forget the diapers!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
If anybody ever wonders about why it’s harder (or more expensive) for a Dem down there to get elected to statewide office, read Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant. Ok, he’s talking about Winchester VA but a lot of the rurl redneck/white trash demographic he discusses in his book applies anywhere there are rurl rednecks/white trash.
And even tho LA truely is a different country, some overlap still applies.
Linda Featheringill
Good morning.
I get up every morning and scan the news to see how the Gulf of Mexico is screwed over now.
The news hasn’t failed to deliver more bad news yet.
Apparently, BP’s straw isn’t going to work.There are some REALLY BIG plumes of oil floating around in the deep water.
Sigh.
Speaking of politicians in Louisiana, though, I must say that Bobby Jindal has performed better than I expected. I know, I know, he does have some irritating traits. But he is trying. And those artificial “barrier islands” might turn out to be a good idea. Then he would be a hero. Prepared for that?
funluvn
Family values RULEZ in Red States!
The smell of baby powder permeates everything.
ChrisWWW
Of course it’s going to be hard to win an election when you don’t differentiate yourself from your opponent.
Seriously, what’s the point of running as a Democrat if you’re just going to act like a Republican?
Viva BrisVegas
@Alex S.:
From a Democrat point of view it’s hypocrisy, from a Republican point of view it’s sin.
Sin can be forgiven through absolution, hypocrisy not so much.
Which is why Republicans find it so easy to give their own a pass, but Democrats can’t.
WereBear
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: I have to second the rec of Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant.
A beautifully written example of how the Screwed Over so often don’t know who is screwing them over.
Citizen_X
@Linda Featheringill:
Apparently, BP doesn’t want anyone to know exactly how big they are:
I can appreciate that they don’t want anyone else mucking about down there while they try to shut the damn thing off. And I can appreciate that knowing how much oil is coming out has nothing to do with shutting off flow. But it damn sure is important to the response effort for the entire Gulf, not to mention (ahem) for determining BP’s culpability.
Nick
I think this is more of an indictment on the people of Louisana rather than Landrieu.
Brian J
Maybe my opinion might be different if the seat is actually lost, but it’s stuff like this that makes me feel it might be better to take a temporary reduction in numbers in the Senate if we can finally rid ourselves of such nonsense. Each state has its own issues, but wouldn’t it be easier to work with Democrats from Arizona or North Carolina than it would be to work with one from Louisiana or Arkansas? I imagine it would be. You’d get moderates, sure, but perhaps moderates who aren’t looking to be sticks in the mud.
Nick
@ChrisWWW:
I think you’re missing the point.
There are only two statewide elected Democrats and they won BECAUSE they ran essentially as Republicans.
Other Democrats who ran statewide and lost ran as DEMOCRATS. So even if difficult, it’s easier to win in Louisiana if you don’t differentiate yourself from Republicans.
In Louisiana, you win.
Citizen_X
Also, too: here is Wikipedia’s list of oil spills; they’ve got the ongoing Deepwater Horizon spill right at the top, w/total amount given as 290,000-2,900,000 tons (U.S. short tons). You can sort the list of spills below that by amount spilled in tonnes (metric; 1 U.S. short ton = .907 tonnes).
Converting the units, you will see that, even at the low estimate, Deepwater Horizon is in the top ten spills, and is on track to surpass Ixtoc I. At the high end, it is, by far, the worst spill in history, far surpassing Saddam blowing up the wells in the Gulf War.
frankdawg
OK, so that makes sense except I’d hope someone would want to be a Senator for some reason other than just to be a Senator.
Now, can you please explain Mark Dayton, who spent a crap-ton of his own money for no apparent reason. Or Amy Klobuchar who ran as a Dem but was a “good” Bush Democrat for two years and now has disappeared except for a couple of “mommy issue” things which, while nice, is hardly all she should be expected to do.
They both came out of Minnesota where Democrats, while floundering badly, are hardly fighting an uphill battle for office.
Nick
I’ll say what I said in the last thread.
More than 60% of the population in the South want more drilling DESPITE the spill.
Louisiana is in the south
She is being populist here.
It’s not her fault her constituents have a death wish
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Nick: So how did Huey Long ever win an election there in the first place?
Chris
(shrug)
There are some places where we should just admit the people really want to have Republican leaders, and conservative policies, and on the state level where we’re not talking about fundamental issues of civic justice (e.g., civil rights), maybe we shouldn’t waste energy trying to get GOP-lite Dems into power… since what they tend to *do* with that power is not all that different from what the Republicans would do with it. (I suppose the downside is that it’s hard to get anyone to run for office if you tell them they’re not going to get more than 42%.)
madmommy
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
It was easier in Huey’s day for people to understand that the fat cats who helped bring about the Great Depression were not working in the interests of common folk. Huey was a crook of the first order, but he understood that if he made life better for working people they would stick with him. Nowdays the people who most benefit from Democratic policies are watching Faux News and listening to Rush. They believe that it’s the Dems and the brown people who are screwing them, and no amount of facts will change their minds. There were tea parties all over the state on 4/15, despite the fact that most Louisianans got a tax reduction this year.
Never underestimate the ability of people to continually vote against their own best interests.
The Moar You Know
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: The Louisiana of 1928 is not the Louisiana of 2010. 82 years is a long time.
Nick
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: It was 1928, he won a three way race with 44% of the vote and the wedge issues of abortion, guns, gays, and, of course Civil Rights, hadn’t yet come about.
Nick
@madmommy: Two things occured between 1928 and 2010 that changed the South (and the entire country really)
1.) The Cold War, which successfully allowed the right to paint people with political points of view like Longs as Communists, Socialists and Marxists, and of course being one of those makes you an enemy, cause you’re just like big bad Russia. Once the Cold War started anyone who wanted policies like Long were secretly trying to turn the US into Stalist Russia.
2.) Civil Rights, which made it impossible for people like Long to argue that his policies were to help all people. Long was able to make that argument because his policies wouldn’t help blacks even if he wanted them to. Once Civil Rights passed, it became impossible for Democrats to be the party of helping poor whites, which is what it was before the 1960s.
Notice, btw, that Long’s son, Russell Long, while supporting some of the same policies as his father, grew much more conservative as time went on, and was staunchly anti-Communist and anti-Civil Rights.
Bernard
a lot of white people here in Louisiana are like other rednecks in the rest of the South. while there are some educated people, jindal is cutting back on education, like Gov Good Hair, to keep them in their place. the Us vs. Them mentality works.
Landrieu is corrupt as is the rest of the state. what can i say. ignorance is bliss to these people. hey, the Republican whites/good ole boys/ have been running America for over 30 years now. and with Democrats who are as corrupt as they are, it is easy to parrot the same old same old.
by the way. i think it was Russell Long, or was it Earl Long, who helped write the tax bill revision that ended the deduction for sales tax on the Federal income tax.
so Huey’s children are just following a family tradition.
Tazistan Jen
@Nick:
Agreed. And since Katrina didn’t seem to budge their attitude, I think we need to accept that Republican policies really are what they want. This might change someday, but I see no signs of rethinking now.
PTirebiter
@Nick: LBJ pretty much predicted a “southern strategy” following the civil rights legislation. A cynic might say it was inevitable, but still, Republicans had to make a conscious decision to embrace it.
That decision should be to their everlasting shame, but reality intervenes making a part time Democrat preferable to a full time Republican.
Alex S.
@Viva BrisVegas:
Very clever, and probably true. The sinner of today can be reborn tomorrow.
@Chris:
Still, a Mary Landrieu who is with you 60% of the time, is better than a Vitter who is with you about 10% of the time. Well, I don’t know the percentages, but I think she is turning out to be pretty valuable. The same is sometimes true for Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln, but those two have a habit of creating problems where there were none before, while Landrieu (and Mark Pryor) manages to vote with the Democrats under the radar.
Zuzu's Petals
@Citizen_X:
Wasn’t part of it the idea that they’ll be able to take accurate measurements once it’s been funneled to the surface? Or am I thinking of something else?
Jenn
@Alex S.:
Plus, even when conservative Democrats don’t vote the way you want them to, at least they’re helping Democrats maintain the majority. And that’s pretty damn worthwhile, right there.
rikyrah
I don’t care. She’s next – she needs to go.
Nick
@rikyrah: and replace her with….?