There was a joyful moment the other night — as in special election night — for people who oppose both Donald Trump and the current leadership of the woke Democratic Party.
I am referring to the victory of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who survived a hard push by Trump to defeat him. Democrats rarely get elected as governors in Southern states these days.
The question, of course, is this: How did Edwards do it? What made him electable in the current political atmosphere? I would have thought it was important to answer that question in the overture of the following Washington Post report:
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards was elected to a second term … , overcoming opposition from President Trump and an increasingly polarized state electorate to hand Democrats their second major victory in a governor’s race over the past two weeks.
Edwards, 53, was running against Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, 70, in a runoff election after neither candidate won an outright majority of votes last month. …
“How sweet it is,” Edwards told a crowd of cheering supporters at a victory rally late Saturday at the Renaissance Hotel in Baton Rouge.
Edwards said he had spoken with Rispone earlier in the evening. “We both agreed that the time for campaigning is over,” he said, “and now our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us.”
“And as for the president, God bless his heart,” Edwards added mockingly.
A few paragraphs later, readers learn that Edwards was a “relatively conservative Democrat” who “worked to prove his party could still lead a state that has continued to drift to the right in the Trump era.”
So other than Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump, what was going on in this story? What made issues helped make Edwards a winner in a state that Trump won in a landslide?
Way, way down in the story, there was this meaty chunk of information in which the Post finally stated a crucial point — Edwards is a pro-life Democrat who is relatively progressive on economic issues and a conservative on matters of culture. In other words, he is an old-school Southern Democrat.