Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu has been lagging in the polls, causing many to view her injection of racial politics into her Senate race at the last minute something of a ‘Hail Mary’ move.
“I’ll be very, very honest with you. The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans,” the senator told Todd. “It’s been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader.”
Tonight she issued a statement basically standing behind the charge, while making sure the sexism charge remains in play, as well. It’s well established that Democrats believe they need to increase turn-out among blacks and women to have any chance of keeping control of the Senate.
Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is standing by her remarks that she is struggling for re-election because she is a woman and President Obama is unpopular in her state because he is black.
Neither Landrieu, her campaign consultants, nor Democrats as a whole are truly dumb. If they want, or in this case, wanted an election on the issues, they could have stuck to them. By injecting the race card in a sad attempt to increase minority turn-out in what looks more and more like a well deserved losing effort, Mary Landrieu is exposing more about why she deserves to be out of the Senate, than she is anything about today’s South.