U.S. Senate seats come with six-year terms, which makes it preferable to have almost any Democrat in them than a Republican, but I don’t think Mary Landrieu could have made any easier to say goodbye to her seat. Sure, the seat will be gone for more than half a decade, if not the rest of our lives. And, true, she still has some campaigning left in her to try to save herself.
But how can we not feel at least somewhat happy to see her go and someone else take over for her on energy issues?
It would be different. obviously, if her seat determined the majority. It doesn’t. So good riddance. Of course that means though that we shouldn’t have crapped away seats like the one Ernst will hold come January. It also means we need better candidates for the winnable seats in ’16.
I can’t quite bring myself to say “good riddance” to Mary Landreiu. She adds nothing to the Democratic caucus but her replacement will add to the GOP caucus. Plus LA voters are going to continue swilling the stupid regardless of whether or not Landreiu is one of their senators for another generation.
Good point Marie but its time to make politicians pick a side. She is in La La land down there she will forever be compromised. Lets get progressive the pseudo Repug crap doesn’t win elections.
I’d say it’s way past time to define “Side D.” As it is politicians like Landrieu don’t have a chance to pick a side that is most consonant with her rank ordered values and then sell it to LA voters and deliver it from DC.
Any Senator from Louisiana who thought the oil companies more important than the health of her constituents, the environmental health of the Gulf of Mexico, and the territory under 20 ft about sea level on the Louisiana coast is not an asset to the Democratic Party.
Ta-Ta, Proud Mary.
Big wheels keep on turnin’/
Proud Mary keep on burnin’
I suspect that the majority of her constituents, including a majority of her Democratic constituents, support the pipeline.
Because no one has built the relationship of trust with them to tell them differently. Rush’s message goes unanswered locally.
I doubt that anyone who is electable in LA would be better on energy issues, but I’d be happy to be wrong.
The problem is that no one ever makes the case. Does anyone ever point out how fast Louisiana is losing coastline?
Very good point. If she had to have one last fight, why couldn’t it have been for the continued existence of places like the Ninth Ward, St. Bernard Parish, and Plaquemines, rather than the profits of Texas refineries and assorted companies all over the globe with interests in the Alberta oil sands?
Unfortunately, there’s no glory in losing for having been right. The “loser” label sticks and everything else is forgotten. Al Gore, Sr., Al Gore, Jr. and George McGovern lived on as “losers” and not as respected statesmen. Or maybe it was because they were Democratic “losers” considering that people still listen to the loser McCain and loser Romney.
Authoritarians listen to anyone who they feel is a member of their tribe. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a competitive Republican party.
It’s better to lose for being right than lose for being wrong. If she were really trying a “Hail Mary” pass, she should pick something that’s a) likely to move a lot of voters and more importantly b) not be supported by her opponent. As an attempt to stay in power, the pipelines stank, win or lose.
What motivates voters most is what you might be able to do for them in the future. The past is past. Somebody hoping for Keystone has little reason to prefer Landrieu. Cassidy is for it too, and I’m sure Murkowski will as Energy chair. OTOH, if she stuck up for coastal preservation there are a lot of Louisianans in hurricane zones who’d have a reason to support her. Cassidy isn’t going to support coastal preservation, he’s a Republican.
Ooh – another great approach would have been a “sense of the Senate” resolution opposing the savage Medicare cuts Cassidy voted for.
I’m sorry to say that since Landrieu isn’t an idiot, this is almost certainly aimed at her post-Senate employment. I’m sure she also knew this wasn’t going to win her re-election, whether or not it passed.
All good points.
This is a slippage that is now 20-30 years old. The framing of the arguments should have been made when Rush Limbaugh was just getting started. And then when the fossil fuel industry was rolling out denialism, but because of the contribution money, it went unanswered.
I certainly haven’t followed the saga of Landrieu and don’t know how comprehensively bad a Dem she was, RIP. What I wonder is whether it is politically possible to get a better Dem than her from LA. I guess it’s possible we could now see what happens if one runs some sort of populist Dem in the state, assuming you can find one and they are brave (stupid?) enough to run in future.
But is it really likely that ANY politician from this oil/gas serfdom is going to have an energy outlook and voting record different from Landrieu’s? Her last desperate Hail Mary (so to speak) seems to have been beyond the pale–seeking to have the senate Dems shit on Obama over her beloved Canadian tar oil pipeline to LA, but an LA senator is pretty likely to be a craven a vote for whatever fossil fuel demands in any conceivable universe.
Here we have a state that’s a goddam enormous delta, rich in wildlife, with below sea level habitations, with huge fishing and tourism industry, massively susceptible to hurricanes, yet the jobs and revenue the state gets from oil and gas make most of their citizens absolutely impervious to any criticism of BigOil and its proposed gulf installations. They are never going to choose environment over oil. There will never be an environmentally conscious senator from LA, no matter how environmentally (and economically) endangered the state may be. Landrieu surely included.
So who is expected to be responsible for making the argument against the horrendous keystone pipeline? Surely not a senator from (LA–OilGas). This pipeline decision has been delayed, evaded, obfuscated and generally handled as a political hot potato for years now, all apparently seeking to try to make it somehow disappear from public view—except the Repubs inconveniently won’t let the WH push it onto the back burner.
So only the Repub “jobs, jobs, jobs, energy, energy, energy” mantra is ever really made and heard, until we get to where we are at—which is about 2/3 of Americans now in favor of a terrible energy project, which may very well be the last nail on the climate’s coffin. By hiding from the issue for so long, and acting like it was some extremist loony eco-terrorist position to substantively oppose this shit Canadian-benefiting pipeline, the WH has made any future rejection of it another massive Dem PR defeat.
Landrieu’s ultimate betrayal was in thinking that she needed to put the Dem environmental position into the hot seat and try to embarrass Obama, and to let off a broadside into the Dem position on the pipeline. This was a stupid strategy, it seems to me, one that wouldn’t really save her ass in 2014, yet harmful to the Dem brand. And the senate Dems incredibly let her carry it out to boot! Presumably Reid knew(?) it would fail by a vote, but how does this aid the Dem brand, unless we too are to become a party of denialists and head-in-sanders?
So she merits her defeat in some way, but it seems likely LA will never be made to question the wisdom of pumping ever more of the gunk it has sold its soul for, nor care about its coming environmental doom, however crazy that seems. They don’t think they are cutting their own throat; do they care very much about anyone else’s?
“Brand D” is the primary problem. Very difficult for a political party feeding at the same trough as “Brand R” to define itself clearly as standing for something different. We saw a preview of this with the administration handling of the BP oil spill and it’s inability to define the GOP Katrina flub as more than an instance of incompetence.
Well, I’d make damn sure they never had a seat on the committee regulating those issues. Ever. She was set to become the chair. So not one iota sorry to see her go.
Landrieu used to be a real Conservadem thorn but she cleaned up her act after 2010 and has been pretty decent since. It’s just reality that Senators support major industries from their states – anybody from LA is going to be pro oil and gas. Apart from that, she’s been pretty good for a while now.
If it wasn’t for the fact that fascist-lite candidate Landrieu will be making hundreds of thousands of dollars from some fascist-enabling organization as soon as she gets thrown out of her seat, I’d donate a $5 to her opponent.
So Pelosi’s bid to go around seniority in appointing an ally to a house ranking membership was defeated by the caucus as a whole. I don’t know the particulars but this was a vote supporting seniority and that is bullshit.
The story being pushed so far is that this was due to the effort of the Congressional Black Caucus, since seniority allows them to control a disproportionate share of top committee spots.
The “logic” behind holding this vote has left me baffled. It’s an “underpants gnome” “strategy”, where the steps are, as I understand it:
On what planet does this convince LA Democratic voters to show up for the runoff? Anyone motivated by this issue is going to be just fine with Senator Nameless Republican. Supporting Keystone XL may make sense in general, but, seriously, how does highlighting the fact that Democrats, whether her Senate colleagues or the President, are the obstacle to the construction of the pipeline help her make her case? It’s true that I don’t understand Louisiana politics, but I don’t think this is complicated. I would expect that there are a number of reasons that Mary could argue she’s better for Louisiana, but I just can’t possibly imagine how this was ever supposed to help her win reelection.
The only way I understand this is in the context of Mary’s next job, but that still doesn’t explain to me how Reid went along.
If a Republican instead of Mary Landrieu had been in that seat, we would have no Obamacare. If we hadn’t gotten Obamacare, we would not have gotten any health care reform at all.
I totally get wishing we had a better Democrat from Louisiana, but celebrating when things get worse is just stupid.
How are they getting worse? Whether she wins or loses has no bearing on who Majority Leader will be come middle January.
OT:
Jim Webb will run against Hillary re: ’16. He announced it tonight. Not sure why he thinks people will vote for him in droves.
A senate seat is potentially has decades-long tenure. Anyone hoping Democrats can retake the Senate within that time should be sad to see this seat go.
Sad to see what go? Kaine already replaced Webb. Kind of interesting he gave up the Senate 2 years ago and expects to come back now and run for President? Weird.
good. Bernie Sanders is talking about running and O”Malley is running and [maybe] Schweitzer. there will be a discussion
Romney won 24 states in 2012. There is no path to taking the Senate without taking at least a few of those seats, and it is unlikely in most of them that a left of center Democrat is going to win them.
I agree – being happy she is leaving is profoundly dumb.
I liked her on energy issues.