mary landrieu – Moe Lane

Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu concede that they’re not likely to run again.

In time honored fashion: that is, Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu have both joined DC lobbying firms. Pryor is still kind of half-pretending that he might try to run, again: Landrieu has done everything except throw a grenade into the room just behind her and then secured the blast door. All part of the Beltway Circle of Life, and it’s really nice work if you can get it. Meanwhile, I hustle for Amazon referral money; so who’s really coming out ahead here, hey*?

Via @baseballcrank, who is making a larger point that I feel no urgent need to either endorse or condemn.

Moe Lane

*This isn’t nearly as bitter as it sounds. I’m mostly just reminding myself that even though I’m smarter than either one of those two, they’re the rich ones. Good for my perspective, that is.

Why the Democrats stupidly wrote off Louisiana too quickly.

As you no doubt know, the Democrats got their clocks cleaned last night in two House seat runoff elections and one Senate one. The question is, could they have done better? – Actually, no, the question is, could they have done much better? …And the answer may indeed be ‘yes’ in both cases. Please note: a lot of this is going to be a discussion on how much or how little the rubble might have bounced, so keep that in mind.

Let’s start with the Senate race. All numbers here from AOSHQDD: they’re not the certified results, but they’re going to be fine for this analysis.

Election	Runoff	LA-SEN
619,397	561,099	Democrat
603,045	–	Cassidy
202,554	–	Maness
805,599	712,330	Total GOP
1,424,996	1,273,429

The total drop-off for that election was 91% for the Democrats, 88% for the GOP, and 89% overall. In other words: the Democrats managed to retain more of their Election Day voters than the Republicans did. Mary Landrieu still got destroyed in the general because the people who voted for Rob Maness clearly decided to show up for Bill Cassidy, too. This was not particularly contested by Sen. Landrieu, probably because she had limited resources and clearly decided that she needed to boost her own side’s turnout more than she needed to depress her opponent’s turnout. Considering that Sen. Landrieu’s base was mostly African-American – a demographic that’s hard to get to turn out, historically – she didn’t actually do a bad job. Continue reading Why the Democrats stupidly wrote off Louisiana too quickly.

The Louisiana Runoff Election thread.

Why am I putting it up? Two reasons: one, my readers probably want to have a good chuckle when Sen. Mary Landrieu loses. Two, if a future echo of the soon-to-be-former-Senator somehow manages to open a hole in time and space in order to travel back to this timeline and change history so that she won after all… well. The least I can do is have a thread ready for my readers’ gibbering astonishment. I’ll be doing some of that meeping myself, in fact.

Live results here.

UPDATE: Three minutes to call it.

One more day before the LA-SEN runoff. So…

…nah, I can’t think of a damned thing to say about it. So I’ll instead mention what we had for dinner last night: Cornish game hen quesadillas. Turns out that if you strip the bird that you cooked earlier of all the remaining useful meat, fry it up a little, then mix it with your quesadilla mix you really can taste the difference in flavor. Plus, you know, clever use of leftovers. We’ve been getting into that a bit.

Moe Lane

PS: Look, I know that it’s not over until it’s over, but it’s over in LA-SEN. I made the DOOM call. I’m committed to that result, now.

I’ll take ‘sad desperation in Louisiana-SEN’ for $200, Alex.

Her internals must be awful.

A new radio ad approved by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) claims that if Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) defeats her in Saturday’s runoff, Republicans will impeach President Obama.

There’s only one reason to run an ad like that, and that’s if you’re trying to get African-American voters to the polls in sufficient numbers to at least avoid a blowout. Yeah, I said ‘avoid a blowout,’ not ‘win.’ Landrieu’s been having to define victory down a bit this election cycle…

Moe Lane

Quote of the Day, It’s Just Business, Mary Landrieu. It’s Not Personal edition.

Well, maybe it’s a little personal. But it’s mostly just business. Hot Air:

If anything, the end of the general election may have hurt [Senator Mary] Landrieu. The public is still being flooded with advertisements reminding them of everything that’s on the line, and external Republican forces really have nothing else to occupy their time these days, so they may as well make her miserable.

We have a schedule, and this is part of the schedule, so this is the thing that we are doing now. There’s really not all that much more to it than that. But we will keep to the schedule.

These first early voting numbers for LA-SEN are maybe too good for us.

Courtesy of the indispensable AOSHQDD comes the first early voting numbers for Louisiana’s Senate runoff numbers, and if the trends hold they’re gruesome for Mary Landrieu. The summary: about 136,000 people did early/absentee voting as of 11/25/2014. 72% of those voters were white, 25% black, the rest ‘other.’ If the numbers found here are accurate, Landrieu got 94% of the black vote in the primary… and 18% of the white vote. Some back of the envelope calculations later… if the same electorate that voted in the general election also votes in the runoff, Bill Cassidy is ahead of Mary Landrieu, 62-38 (if you spot all of the Other votes to Landrieu the win goes ‘down’ to 61/39).

Those are a lot of assumptions, mind you. The racial breakdown of the vote is largely based on the CNN exit polls; and, of course, local Democrats are going to go do their level best to increase black turnout. But even if the Democrats manage to get a runoff electorate that’s 30% black Mary Landrieu still loses. Badly (59/41)*. This is so much of a looming disaster for the Landrieu campaign that I’m actively slightly suspicious of it. No way is she losing this badly, right?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Seriously, though, DOOM.

*I didn’t even bother to factor in the ‘Other’ votes, that time. The only difference would be in in how far the rubble bounced.

Keystone: Failed. LA-SEN runoff: …DOOM.

A colleague suggests that Mary Landrieu is beyond DOOM, in fact.

Yup. Senator Mary Landrieu’s last, desperate leap for safety came up short: the Keystone Pipeline bill that Rep. Bill Cassidy championed in the House went down in the Senate. 59-41, of course: Harry Reid ends his career as Senate Majority Leader as he began it. Which is to say, by toadying to the rather disassociated, yet hardcore partisan, establishment figures that run the Democratic party these days. Continue reading Keystone: Failed. LA-SEN runoff: …DOOM.

Keystone bill passes House: eyes now turn to Senate.

That’s one way to put it, at least:

The House on Friday passed legislation to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, setting the stage for a showdown in the Senate next week.

The legislation was approved 252-161, with 31 Democrats joining Republicans in backing a construction permit for the controversial project, which would bring oil sands from Canada to refineries in the United States.

…although I should note that the term ‘controversial’ is, well, controversial: basically, the most progressive Democrats out there hate the thing, largely because they don’t like Americans to have cheap energy*. Everybody else thinks that the idea is just swell; unfortunately – for the Democrats – the aforementioned progressives made a better offer. Short-term thinking for the win! Continue reading Keystone bill passes House: eyes now turn to Senate.

The DSCC listened to Nate Silver*, and now they must face the consequences in LA-SEN.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is wondering why there was no money allocated for Mary Landrieu’s runoff:

This runoff was a flat-out certainty for months, which is why the GOP and its allies planned for big spending in Louisiana past Election Day. They put money aside even while aggressively spending against Democratic incumbents — like Landrieu herself, Mark Pryor, Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, and Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Warner in narrow losses. …Yet no one in Democratic circles prepared for the four-week campaign to save Landrieu from Barack Obama and herself.

Well, perhaps it’s due to a bad call on the DSCC’s part. Let us pretend, for a moment, that the results in 538’s last Senate ranking were correct, and reflected election night results. Well, in that scenario the GOP is not at 53 Senate seats and counting: we’re at 50. That’s because in that scenario we lost North Carolina and effectively Kansas (we will no longer pretend that Greg Orman was anything but a Democrat), and Georgia is on its way to a runoff election. As is Louisiana, of course; but in that situation a Democratic strategist could legitimately conclude that it would be simple enough to fund an emergency drive to take/flip the seats and retain the Senate. It would not be a hard sale, given the knife’s-edge nature of the scenario – which was, mind you, also the Democrats’ public worse-case scenario. Continue reading The DSCC listened to Nate Silver*, and now they must face the consequences in LA-SEN.