Dems win House seat in Lousisana!

[yesthattom]

Don Cazayoux (D) defeated Woody Jenkins (R) in a special election to fill the LA-06 seat in the House. This is a telling sign about what might happen in November in the Obama vs. McCain race. In this conservative state the “don’t vote for a liberal” tactic just plain didn’t work. The Republicans are now nervous:

Both the DCCC and NRCC advertised heavily here. The NRCC referred to Don Cazayoux (a Cajun name) as “Don Tax You” and claimed he is a “liberal,” which is a big insult in rural Lousiana. They also tried to tie him to boogeyman Barack Obama and boogeywoman Nancy Pelosi. The whole nine yards. At this point, the Republicans assume Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee and LA-06 was a field test of their November strategy to paint him as a big-government, high-tax, arugula-eating, orange-juice-drinking, Ivy League, out-of-touch liberal. Only it didn’t work, even in a very conservative area. The next field test is scheduled for May 13, when Travis Childers (D) dukes it out with Greg Davis (R) in a runoff for Sen. Roger Wicker's old seat in MS-01.

By tomorrow every Republican in the House is going to be thinking “There but for the grace of God go I.” If a well-known strongly conservative GOP candidate with 28 years experience in the state legislature can’t win an open seat in a heavily Republican district that the GOP has held since 1975, what is going to happen in the many open seats and marginal Republican districts in November? To make matters worse for the GOP, the DCCC has $44 million in the bank (of which it spent $1.2 million on this race) to the NRCC’s $6 million (of which they spent $500,000 in LA-06).

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/electoralvote/63153.html

Comments

A very, very small glimmer of hope...

[rationalfool.livejournal.com]

... is about as best as I would read it, myself. Cazayoux is said to have taken care to separate himself from the Democratic party leaders (especially Obama and Pelosi, whom the GOP tried to equate him to). He is anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-immigrant, and calls himself a fiscal conservative who will join the Blue Dogs.

I don't trust the South (and I would be surprised by anyone who can, after what happened to Max Cleland). So, rather than being held hostage by Dixiecrats and Blue Dogs (including Bill Nelson, et al), I think its wiser for the Dems to follow Thomas Schaller's advice and "whistle past Dixie". We can win without the South and when we do so, we can move forward on a truly progressive agenda. Of course that's all pretty naive of me to think that the Democratic leadership is truly interested in a progressive agenda ;-).