The Louisiana Governor Race

It is an interesting time in Louisiana.  When I moved down here, I suspended writing posts for this blog, because my main topic had been the quagmire of politics in Wisconsin.  I was unwilling, at the time, to dip my toe into the cesspool of Louisiana politics.

But in a state notoriously red(neck), something amazing is taking place in the 2015 Governor race.  The Democratic candidate, John Bel Edwards, is probably going to win.

David Vitter, the Republican candidate, is a pretty typical Louisiana politician; pandering to big oil, robbing the populace of the many benefits of the state's vast natural resources, and falling in with Washington D.C. prostitutes.  John Bel Edwards would be his polar opposite, high in integrity and an honorable history.

So why is Louisiana on the verge of electing a democratic governor?  What happened?  The political analysts are watching this election very closely, because they can't explain it.

Let me try to boil it down to a simple statement. 

You can fool some of the people some of the time, most of the people most of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. 

Louisiana has come out of a deep coma-like sleep of right wing politics, right wing rhetoric and conservative policies.  The history is that nothing has changed under these politicians, and in fact, things have gotten measurably worse.

The usefully ignorant, as the political analysts have deemed the right wing voters, are not willing to be so ignorant any longer. 

Louisiana is a conservative state, a religious state (ugh, how I hate the non-separation between church and state) and an unhealthy state in every sense of the word.

But I think the tide is turning, if for no other reason than a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo.

We'll see.