Redstate

Was there ever a decent Republican challenger in this race?  

As Newt always says, "real change requires real change."  Perhaps the New Orleans residents are satisfied with the status quo.

stupid is as stupid does.

New Orleans has been well aligned with victim status...starting at the top of the pile the inimitable Ray Nagin launched one of this country's greatest Victim campaigns in memory.  It takes a real good Democrat to do that.

The election was really a choice between being a victim, holding out your hand, and railing from the rooftops about all things evil in today's American Government...

OR

Picking yourself up by your bootstraps, brushing yourself off, rolling up your sleeves, and getting about the business of starting over and moving forward.

Apparently New Orleans is more comfortable with the former than the latter.

is that Nagin is so inept it will be hard for him to help Mary Landrieu steal enough votes in New Orleans to get reelected in 2008 if there is a decent challenger. Bobby Jindal maybe?

I think I've finally realized what keeps most politicians going, and why politics has so often confounded and infuriated me.  Now that I've realized it, I find it less irritating:  they enjoy, and indeed, they thrive, because of the randomness and unpredictibity and sheer ridiculousness of the enterprise they're engaged in.  This is why residents of New Orleans can vote for Ray Nagin -- he gets an extra life and a "do-over" (and billions of Federal dollars to spend) -- simply because "he's been there already and won't make the same mistakes again."  

Now I've learned the secret.  Politicians can honestly say they're happy, because the process itself is so full of bunk that nothing they really do is ever irredeemably wrong.  If I lived in such a world and could just convince myself that it was OK, I would be as happy as Ray Nagin is today, too.  

the extra life and do-over best on the list.  5 to the fifth kowalski...

I am from very close to NO.

I do not support racists or leave my money where racists are elected.

I will not go to NO again.

"Just say, 'no' to NO.

I think this is just another example of how the MSM still runs the show.  We may like to look at the declining readership and viewership of the MSM, and want to believe their influence is waning, but from whatever source people are in fact getting their information from (Comedy Central, MTV, radio, their local ministers?), the message they hear is the MSM party line.  And that message is that it was all Bush's fault.

I felt disgust when Marion Barry became mayor of DC again. What I feel now is much worse.

Nagin failed on almost every level possible as an executive. Both before and after the disaster, his actions showed he was not up to the task of leading his city. Despite all the incompentence he displayed, he was re-elected to an office he clearly is unfit for. What does someone have to do in NO to not get re-elected? Scary stuff.

Fine, NO. You want Ray, you got him. But not my money. I don't want to hear anymore crying and whining about money, FEMA, Bush, etc. If you don't even want to help yourself, then why in the world should anyone outside of NO help you?

Our friends in LA have just shown that the Landrieu name is not golden any more down there.  I wonder if that Mary is aware of that message?

I have seen it more than once.  The President and/or CEO of a company drives it into bankruptcy.  Other companies then line up to get him/her as their President and/or CEO. The process is repeated.

...in fact, I would've voted for Mitch (in the runoff). (Disclaimer: I am a Louisiana resident, and former resident of the New Orleans area. My daughter, with whom I share few political opinions, was a volunteer for the Landrieu campaign.)

Just as in food, there is a little more nuance and a little more spice in New Orleans politics, as compared with the rest of the country.

First of all, party politics are all but irrelevant in Louisiana, especially in New Orleans, and especially post-Katrina. The city desperately needs leadership, not ideology.

Rob Couhig (who brought AAA baseball to N.O.) and Peggy Wilson (perennial city council fixture) were the most conservative major candidates in the primary. Couhig, who emphasized self-reliance and personal responsibility, would've gotten my vote; in the runoff, he supported Nagin. In the one debate I saw, I thought Ms. Wilson strayed dangerously close to race-baiting.

Nagin won his first election with substantial support from white conservatives. (In fact, he won this election with substantial support from white conservatives.)  He was a Republican who switched parties to run for mayor. He contributed to Bush/Cheney in 2004, and did not back Kathleen Blanco in her successful campaign for governor against Bobby Jindal. He was a sincere reformer who had his own cousin arrested in a public corruption scandal. The main thing the man has in common with Marion Barry is skin color.

Mitch Landrieu has deep bona fides as a liberal Democrat, his father having served a couple of terms as the city's last white mayor back in the days of the Great Society. I don't know what percentage of the black vote went for Mitch this time, but all the Landrieus have historically enjoyed considerable African-American support.

My hypothethical vote would have gone against Nagin, based mostly on my assessment of his leadership. Red flag #1 was on the Thursday after Katrina, when his command post was still ensconced on the 27th (!) floor of the ravaged Hyatt Hotel. I took that as a symptom of a mental disorder. Reading between the lines, I believe his main failure at Katrina-time was less personal, and more a failure on the part of his top-level appointees responsible for emergency response, whose names we have not heard and are now nowhere to be found. As a leader, he should be held accountable for the failure of his appointees. His campaign, and his foot-in-mouth silly comments, are symptomatic more of weariness (a la G.H.W. Bush's 1992 campaign) than of racial politics; I'm not convinced he really wanted to be reelected.

Going forward, I think Nagin will do a good job if (and only if) he can recruit and appoint effective administrative talent. In his acceptance speech, he was highly complimentary of President Bush for keeping his Jackson Square promises of commitment of resources to repair the levees and start rebuilding the city.

New Orleans, with all its problems, needs our support, not derision. In many ways Katrina has wiped away the sins of the past and given us a chance to start afresh. One example is in public schools, where the horrible and notoriously corrupt and inefficient School Board has effectively lost power, to be replaced in many cases by charter schools. This could be a test case for the nation. I hope that conservatives can get behind these reforms instead of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for Mr. Nagin to fail.

The Democrat spin machine, the MSM, and all the poverty pimps will scream for more money to restore the NO ghettos and thus the Democrat voting ATM.  Republican "guilt" being as it is, the Congress won't be able to find ways to spend enough in the sewer formerly known as NO, and they'll import little Democrats, or at least little voter registration forms, from all over the world.

Haystack,

I just did a post at my blog using the same Forrest Gump quote. I come here and there is your post. Great minds think alike, eh?

I don't know how right or wrong you might be on this...certainly there is a lot of bunk involved; I'm just not sure about the cause-effect relationship you propose here.  But certainly this is a refreshingly creative analysis.

So, since you've come this far in your thinking, I would be interested to hear any thoughts you might have on this question...

Why is the process so full of bunk?

In 25 words or less, of course. ;-)

According to the news reports that accompanied diary entries on this race last night, it appears that Nagin got 80% of the black vote and only about 20% of the white vote.

And I think the point being made here today is something you pretty much agree with - Nagin exhibited zero leadership, and continues to exhibit zero leadership, and just keeps pointing the finger elsewhere for the issues.  I don't think these comments are calling for an ideological solution - they seem to be about the person and performance of Ray Nagin and the utter amazement that someone so inept could have been re-elected.

20% white support is probably right. And a substantial portion of that was white conservatives who could never vote for anyone named Landrieu.

My main point is that N.O. is not D.C., Detroit or Atlanta, or Kansas City or Des Moines for that matter. It is a special and unique place that right now, has a challenge unprecendented in scale compared to that faced by any American city in the last 100 years. Ray Nagin is not Rudy Guiliani, but most leaders are trained to handle the routine, not the extraordinary. And nothing is gained by rooting for him to fail (again).

First of all, party politics are all but irrelevant in Louisiana, especially in New Orleans, and especially post-Katrina. The city desperately needs leadership, not ideology.

Well in any big city, the ideology is set in stone. That's why there's no need for debate about it. Often in big cities there are no Republican candidates running for a post at all. Or if there is one, it's someone that just switched so he could stand out from the rest of the pack. You end up with 4 Democrats running against each other and Congressional seats going unopposed.

I am someone who thinks everyone failed NOLA, including its citizens.

But I am also someone who has seen more than their share of hurricanes up close and personal. The main thing I learned from Katrina is how few Americans have any understanding of the reality of a large-scale natural disaster of the kind that visit our southeastern coasts on a regular basis. I could tell this based on their astonishment at the destruction they saw on TV (and the cameras always fail to capture more than a faint suggestion of what it is really like on the ground). I could also tell this from what they expected of the citizens of NOLA, local and state leadership, and the federal government...before, during, and after.

I think maybe the citizens of New Orleans know better...now, if not before. I think they know...now, if not before....that, as kowalski so eloquently put it, politics is full of bunk.  And that all of the politically driven hoopla outside of the disaster area was pure bunk.  Some of it was intentional bunk, most of it was ignorant bunk, but bunk it was. I think they also know...now, if not before...that, when you are caught up in something as real as Katrina, our bunk-ridden system is of absolutely no value to you whatsoever. It's just a myth to keep Americans feeling safe. When the real thing happens, you learn that you are on your own, always have been.

I think maybe that what most of the citizens of New Orleans know about Nagin is that he knows this too....now, if not before. They also know that, however much he failed them, they failed themselves first and foremost, and it would be wrong to hold him accountable when they themselves did no better. Would that the rest of America could learn this lesson.  I take the re-election of Nagin as a sign of hope in the hearts of the citizens of NOLA, that they can take what Mother Nature taught them about the real and the bunk and learn from it and go forward together. And a message to the poltiical bunk artists, that New Orleans knows better...now, if not before. How long the lesson will stick, I can't say.

And somewhere in there is an explanation of my blogname. It was not chosen capriciously, which is why I will not change it of my own volition. Shoot me first. And I mean that.  It's also why I won't argue with Moe about it.  It is Not To Be Argued. But I don't resent it's being changed. I'm starting to get rather fond of the new one, in fact. I consider it far more profane than the original, in a very real sort of way.

And this is all bunk, anyway, right?

this is nothing more than a pre-dominately black city voting for a black mayor. the only way Nagin would have been defeated is if his challenger was also black.

wants to be GOV.  He ran in 2003 and then passed up on the open Senate seat in 2004 to run for Congress.  I expect in 2007 he will run in a re-match against GOV Blanco and will avenge his 51-49 loss.  After that, he will hopefully either make his way to a national ticket, a cabinet position, or into the Senate at some point.  Whatever he does, I hope he stays in public life.

And how many black people represent predominately white districts?

Besides, I think it's considered in poor taste here to blame things on race...

it does cut both ways. i wish that we all could someday listen to the words of the message rather then the appearance of the messenger. when you make comments about a "chocolate city" then who is it that you claim to be representing. your suppose to be everyones mayor, not just the mayor of the people you have have the same skin color of. comments like being a "chocolate city" are what i consider to be bad taste.

the process exists only for the players - and no others - all hoopla to the contrary, notwithstanding.

Definitely agree there.  The "chocolate city" thing was really pretty terrible.  He did apologize for it, but it probably does reveal how the thinks of his city...

You know I am amazed that people are so afraid of the race issue or rather by speaking of it being accused of racism.

There is truth to the statement that Nagan won due to his race, to ignore that fact is to ignore the reality that people of color see things differently than White folks and especially in NO. Realizing that there are difference is key to all races understanding each other.

Nagan, or rather his inaction/freaking out leading up to and during the disaster called Katrina, was a root cause of great misery and even some deaths due to his poor leadership. Mitch represented the old Southern parternalistic Liberal Democratic machine. Seems the people of NO made a choice of Mayor largely not based on competency but on some other factor. Heck, "Chrome Dome" was even a Republican before he switched parties to run for Mayor.

If you want to read more about the mess that is NO and what really happened during Katrina, read the book "The Great Deluge" by Douglas Brinkley.

i love reading books that deal with current events and i will definitley check it out.

And in only 16 words, no less!

Yeah, there are probably some ifs, ands, and buts on this one, but I'm inclined to think that's pretty close to the essence of the situation.

One 'and'...I think the process also exists (or seems to) for the spectators.  Has anyone invented the term "armchair politicking" yet?  If not, I want dibs on it before Al Gore tries to take credit for it.

After all, he gets blamed for everything from the Weather to gas prices. Ray "School Bus" Nagin knew he screwed up with Katrina, yet with a little help from his incompetant Governor (who at first REFUSED help from Pres. Bush) he was somehow able to put all the blame on FEMA, and therefore, the president. The overwhelmingly liberal electorate that's quick to blame Bush fell for it and Nagin gets re-elected.

Oh, I wasn't trying to say that rfnorman was wrong -- of course race is a factor in elections, and only  wide-eyed optimists or people walking on eggshells would deny that.  Rather, I was trying to say that race plays an important role in almost every election, and it's rather short-sighted to single this election out.  

In other words, incompetent white people win all the time, in part because they're white.

(I guess I also included a throw-away line about blaming it on race at the end.  But that was pretty much just a cheap shop: it sounded a little bit like rfnorman was playing a game similar to the kinds of games that libs play and get critisized for around here.  Maybe it was in poor taste, but I hope it didn't take away from the thrust of my point...)

Only a RINO would have a snowball's chance in such a left-leaning city and even then he/she would probably lose just because of the "R" after the name.

I think the point Steve may have been trying to make is that it is not because they are black or white (skin color), but because of a shared perspective that the other ethnic group might not hear, even if they do listen to the message.

So when an incompetent white person gets elected, it might not be "simply" because they are white, but because they successfully articulated a message to white voters that a black candidate could not.  Or because white voters assumed that they would have their perspective, whether they articulated it successfully or not.  And vice versa.

I think this is largely what's behind the idear that Bill Clinton was "America's first black president."  He was able to convince black voters that he understood their perspective, even though he was white.  This would suggest that it really isn't about ethnicity per se, but about perspective, which is often heavily influenced by ethnicity.

Isn't much of the NOLA Democratic voting base now scattered around the U.S.?  You'd think if a GOP'er could pull it off, it would be in a circumstance such as this, especially when the "status quo" seems so abysmal.

So surprising things always happen.

Nagin was elected the first time as a reformer.  My Louisiana friends tell me they were disappointed in his bad performance during Katrina; they had hoped for better.  But then he wasn't elected as an "epic crisis" manager. They were more contemptuous of Gov. Blanco's crying jags on TV.

I think African-Americans would cross racial lines for a dream candidate.  But M. Landrieu would be few people's idea of one.

Interesting story.  Everyone in 1969 wrote off John Lindsay's chances to win re-election as mayor of NY.  He began his term by caving into the unions.  The city's economic and social problems grew during his tenure.  He lost the Republican primary. Finally, a disastrous snowstorm in early 1969 left the city buried for a week because of the poor response of the snow removal teams. But he won anyway on the Liberal line, partly because of lackluster opposition and partly because of the euphoria surrounding the Mets' World Series victory in 1969. (!)

Strange things happen in politics.  (Of course, soon after Lindsay's second term and his switch to the Democrats, NY went bankrupt.)

...died last September.

SOMETHING will rise again around the Old Quarter, but it won't be an organic, 300-year-long process... It'll be Disney World...

was the Jindal-Blanco race a few years ago. Right after they both agreed to keep things positive, Blanco went negative and pulled it out. In New Orleans she was the DEMOCRAT; in south LA she was BABINEAUX Blanco the CAJUN; in north LA she was the WHITE candidate.

These may be oversimplifications, but in general she knew how to play to what worked for her or against her opponent in different sections of the state.

The people of LA can only be left to wonder how much better off they'd been during/after Katrina with Jindal at the helm instead of watching Blanco and Landrieu see who could elbow the other out of the way first when a TV camera was nearby. As bad as Nagin was, I'd say Blanco was even worse.

Sure, that sounds right.  It's pretty much a truism that a good politician will be able to appeal to the group he's trying to court.  Whether that happens by virtue of him being from that group, or by virtue of being able to convince that group that you see things the way they do, you're set.  And that applies to religion, class, race, gender, or just about anything.  And if you're from group X, then, other things being equal, you have an inside track to getting X's vote.  But I didn't mean to oversimplify or anything like that...

Putting a Proven failure back into the position in which he failed initially, Especially with such a dramatic failure, achieves nothing.

All it does is increase the chance that he will fail Again.

Or is NOLA looking at it from the point of view that it's better to be led by a mere incompetent than by true evil?

disclaimer:  I know nothing about his competitors.  This position is taken merely because, as much as I deride humans, I cannot seriously believe they would be so stupid.  Even Democrats...

2006 will break through that barrier.  Lt. Gov. Steele (MD), Mr. Swann (PA), and Secretary Blackwell (OH) are doing their best to win in majority white areas.  Mr. Obama and ex-Rep J.C. Watts have already done so as blacks in majority white districts.  Sens. Martinez and Salazar have won in majority white districts.  And I have a feeling that in Louisiana, we will see Rep. Jindal (who won in a majority white district in 2004 and will again in 2006) beat Gov. Blanco in a rematch in 2007.

...Drudge Report's headline story claims that mastermind Howard Dean and the DNC worked against Nagin and threw its mighty Kos-like clout behind Landrieu.

I watched part of the acceptance speech and he puts on a good face after he won.  We'll let him get run out of town next time.

I was impressed with the way Nagin actually THANKED President Bush for his support after Katrina. I could hardly believe my ears, but I thought that was pretty classy.

On another note, Drudge is now reporting that the Dean-led DNC actively worked to unseat Nagin. Interesting. When the DNC chose the presidential primary loser to run the operation, I thought, "hmmmm... ok." Then they chose ultra-liberal Pelosi to lead the Dems in the House and agian I thought "hmmm."

Things that make ya go "hmm" (or rather "huh??").

If the black vote in New Orleans turns against Mary Landrieu she's toast in 2008. We need a good Republican to run against her with lots of ads in what's left of inner city New Orleans about how Landrieu's party stabbed Nagin in the back. Wouldn't hurt to mention that Dean was governor of a state that was what - 99.99978% white?

Granted, I don't know squat about NO/LA politics, but I have a feeling that any anger at Nagin could actually help Landrieu.  Since her brother was Nagin's opponent, and she has cast herself in the mold of a southern moderate, I think she will be viewed somewhat as an "anti-Nagin."

It will especially help when she can point to the billions upon billions of dollars that Congress has thrown at the region.

This hadn't occurred to me, but now that you've said it, it seems all too likely.

...in this Times-Picayune article.

Well lookie here!  It's not all Bush's fault for the levee situation.  As if I needed someone to tell me that.  It did however take a independent study from UC Berkeley.

Levees ailing before Katrina hit, report finds

It took aim at Congress for its piecemeal funding during the past 50 years, and at state and local levee authorities for failing to properly oversee maintenance of the levees.

From "Cynical Geek"'s link to CNN:

"While the corps is trying to upgrade the levee system, it is installing huge flood gates at key points to prevent the type of Katrina-like storm surge that entered canals and overtopped and breached levees, leading to the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans and surrounding areas."

The Wall Street Journal published a map of the levees which were breached a few days after Katrina hit, and all of them were along canals between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, and none of them were along the lake itself.

If flood gates had been in place prior to Katrina at the ends of the canals, they could have been closed, and even if levees were breached along the canals, the volume of water which flooded the city would have been that of the canal, not Lake Ponchartrain! Instead of water up to people's attics, they would have had ankle-deep water or less, and much less devastation!

As they say in the Vieux Quartier, "mieux vaut tard que jamais" (better late than never). But why didn't they learn after Hurricane Betsy in 1965?

doesn't know Calvin and Hobbes...

Definition:  A semi-sedate condition among the electorate wherein a sufficient amount of interest is displayed toward the political process to promote observation and comment - but NOT participation.

First noted and classified by:   thepoopyfacefromheck