Institutional Left Leaves Landrieu High and Dry

Institutional Left Leaves Landrieu High and Dry
Democrat Mary Landrieu’s professed love for the oil industry and conservative social positions may not cost her an election she looks about ready to lose tomorrow in Louisiana … but those stances have cost her just the same.

Large national environmental groups, women’s organizations and unions are barely lifting a finger for the embattled Louisiana Democrat, who has close ties to the oil industry and supports the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

Just as some Republicans are being forced to accept the reality that they’ll never be better Democrats than a genuine Democrat, Mary Landrieu’s posing as a Republican appears to be about to come to an end.

The groups’ decision to stay on the sidelines in a key race is also a reminder that it’s not just the Republican Party that deals with internal fights over ideological purity. The Democratic Party, too, has a movement wing willing to abandon members of their own party they believe are insufficiently liberal.

Politico speculates that the money and boots on the ground that come with support from the institutional Left may have helped Landrieu. And that may well be true. But with her unlikely to switch her positions even if she makes it to a run-off, presumably, we’ll never know how much of a difference that might have made in Lousiana 2014.

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