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After three terms of service, Senator Mary Landrieu was defeated in the December runoff 56-44%. While pundits attributed her defeat to the unpopularity of President Obama in Louisiana, the seeds of her defeat were sown long before that. Senator Landrieu’s fundamental problem was that she had a low ceiling of support – in the three election cycles (1996, 2002, and 2008) she was on the ballot before 2014, she never received more than 52% of the vote. And a closer examination of her 2008 vote revealed she was on shaky grounds even before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President in...

Much has been made of the fact that when losing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) leaves office in January, Louisiana will not have a Democratic statewide elected official in office for the first time since the 1870s. The Republicans who occupy all of the Pelican State’s high offices are in good company; Republicans now control every U.S. Senate seat, legislative chamber, and governor’s mansion across the Deep South – from Texas to the Carolinas. This condition is giving some Democrats, loyal to the party for whom the term “Solid South” was coined, indigestion. The best example of this phenomenon is an...

This meme is in story after story. Since when is Florida not the "deep south"?? Was it not also part of the old Confederacy?? It certainly isn't a border state up near Virginia and Kentucky!

When Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu lost her re-election runoff on Saturday it put Barack Obama in the record books as the two-term president with the most midterm losses for his party. The record previously was held by Harry Truman. Truman’s Democratic Party lost 74 seats in 1946 and 1950, while under Obama the Democrats have lost a total of 75 seats in 2010 and 2014. He could lose one more if Republican Martha McSally beats Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona in an election recount, Breitbart News reports. McSally is currently ahead by only 200 votes. …

It's about time. We've finally retired Mary Landrieu

In the final insult of a devastating 2014 election for Democrats, Sen. Mary Landrieu, the party’s last remaining statewide officeholder from the Deep South, was trounced Saturday in the head-to-head Louisiana Senate runoff election. Republican Bill Cassidy’s resounding victory is the ninth Senate seat picked up by the GOP in this year’s elections, three more than the party needed to take control of the chamber. With nearly all the ballots counted, Cassidy led Landrieu by 14 points, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Democrats have been worried about the African-American vote in Louisiana for months. But what really doomed Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelection bid was the near-monolithic white vote against her. Landrieu's loss Saturday to Republican Sen.-elect Bill Cassidy followed a November all-party primary in which the incumbent got a lower share of the white vote (18 percent) than all other Democratic Senate candidates in the country but one, according to exit polling. There was no exit poll Saturday night due to a lack of media interest in the runoff, perhaps because even Landrieu's campaign acknowledged that she would need at least 30...

A civil war has opened up inside the Democratic Party over Obamacare. With half of all Senate Democrats who voted for Obamacare no longer in office, top Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and outgoing Tom Harkin (D-IA) have begun trashing Democrats' decision to embrace the deeply unpopular Obamacare program. Indeed, even progressive New York Times columnist Tom Edsall now concedes that Obamacare is partly to blame for working-class Americans' all-time low 27% approval rating of Democrats, which Edsall says has now nosedived to "dangerous levels." [Snip] "If more Democrats had been willing to defend the best thing they've done in...

There's no sugarcoating it. The November 2014 election results marked a serious setback for Democrats, the anti-ultra right alliance and the broad people's coalition led by labor. The fight for jobs at living wages, workers and immigrant rights, racial and gender equality, for climate justice and peace proceeds under more unfavorable conditions. The election resulted in a wave of victories for the Republicans and ultra right that may have surpassed 2010. However, while the GOP claims otherwise, it was not a mandate for right-wing policies. Grassroots efforts by labor and its allies mobilized millions of voters. Tens of thousands of...

The values that are pre-eminent for Republican Party voters are probably freedom, independence, autonomy, limited government and self-reliance, and a strong belief in the powers of capitalism and a free market,” Cross said. “We see them in the South: the calls or less government, the call for people to take personal responsibility, the inveighing against the dependent class.” And in Louisiana and other energy-producing states, he said, the perceived antipathy of national Democrats for the oil and gas industry helps swell Republican ranks. “We’re looking at something more than just a bad year,” said Charlie Cook, the Shreveport native who...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Eighty-seven year old former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards has come up short in his attempt at a political comeback after serving a prison sentence for corruption. Results of Saturday's runoff in the Baton Rouge area's 6th Congressional District showed Edwards, a lifelong Democrat, losing to Republican Garret Graves. Graves had been heavily favored in the district that leans strongly Republican.

BATON ROUGE, La. | Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy handily defeated Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, denying her a fourth term and extending the GOP’s domination of the 2014 midterm elections that put Republicans in charge of Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama’s tenure. With Mr. Cassidy’s victory, the GOP will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now. Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts Saturday — including the seat Cassidy now holds — ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the...

10:00 p.m. EST Geraldo on Weekend!

The 18-year long reign of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has finally come to an end in Louisiana. In a landslide victory in Saturday’s runoff election, Republican Bill Cassidy defeated the incumbent and captured the ninth Senate seat for the GOP, capping off a victorious midterm election for his party. The road was rocky for Landrieu from the start. The public found out about her improper use of taxpayer funds, then the fact she doesn’t even own a home in Louisiana. Then, she dissed her constituents. Because of all her missteps and Cassidy’s growing lead, Democrats quickly gave up on Landrieu...

Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy still holds a double-digit lead over incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu going into tomorrow’s Louisiana Senate runoff. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Louisiana Voters shows Cassidy leading Landrieu by 16 points – 56% to 40%. Four percent (4%) are still undecided.

Landrieu is a household name in Louisiana. A Southern, conservative Democratic stronghold for generations, the Gulf States have edged toward the GOP since the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton made fiscal discipline a national value, yet his party failed to follow suit. Still standing true on American values, limited government, and individual liberty, Southern Democrats felt less welcome in their party, and started moving to the GOP. Except for US Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who has had it pretty easy in the Big Easy. A staunch defender of the oil industry, a reliable provider of federal earmarks, she flew out...

You have to say one thing for Mary Landrieu. She told everyone that she wouldn’t be going down without a fight, and she’s living up to her word. In the closing hours of the election, Landrieu supporters have been busy bees indeed. One report coming in to Hot Air indicates that a very specific threat has been going around to anyone in several low income communities as to what will happen if they don’t get out there and vote for the incumbent Senator. The following flyer was picked up by an activist on the scene and submitted to the Black...

AP

With the runoff just two days away in Louisiana’s Senate race, the excitement of the final contest in the 2014 midterms is so thick one could cut it with a knife … at least on the GOP side. Since independent pollsters gave up on the finale of Mary Landrieu’s Senate career, Republican pollsters are the only ones taking surveys — or at least the only ones publishing the results. The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker takes a look at the latest results from WPA Opinion Research, working on behalf of the conservative group Independent Women’s Voice, and finds Bill Cassidy out...

LA Polls close at 8:00 PM CST - in one hour. Post all updates here.