Not that this wasn't already a preordained, foregone conclusion, even for the woman who made a Senate career out of pulling runoff rabbits out of her hat. Post-November 4th polls consistently showed the Democrat incumbent trailing by anywhere from fifteen to twenty percentage points.
But the final tally tonight? Cassidy (R) 65%, Landrieu (D) 35%.
It's almost as if Louisiana voters - 73% of whom disapprove of Barack Obama - were sending a still louder message than the one sent five weeks ago:
Landrieu has been struggling for well over a year with her campaign to be elected to a fourth term and in November’s election could not get the 50% plus she needed to avoid a run-off and keep her seat. Today was the day that the run-off was held and, as every poll predicted, she lost handily....
Even the Democrat Party saw her campaign as a lost cause and pulled $2 million advertising dollars from her last week.
With Mary Landrieu dies the penultimate Democrat foothold in Dixie. The Sun Belt now has a solid "red" arc from Texas (Cornyn, Cruz) through Louisiana (Vitter, Cassidy), Mississippi (Cochran, Witter), Alabama (Shelby, Sessions), Georgia (Isakson, Perdue), South Carolina (Graham, Scott), North Carolina (Burr, Tillis), Tennessee (Alexander, Corker), Kentucky (McConnell, Paul), around the horn to Arkansas (Boozman, Cotton). Only Florida's Bill Nelson still survives (No, I don't think Virginia counts as "south" anymore; it's now clearly "northeast," as demonstrated by Mark Warner's re-election in the biggest GOP Senate tsunami in thirty-four years). Time will tell whether he sees that same wall handwriting as his next reelection bid in 2018 approaches.
Exit question: What could have happened in the past month to turn a fifteen point blowout into a thirty-point extinction-level event? Hmmmm.....
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