Our state that used to be a part of the solid Democratic south has taken a definite change of face. When new statewide officials take over, every one of them will be Republican.
It wasn’t very long ago that the exact opposite was true. In fact, it was often jokingly said that the registered Republicans in Louisiana could hold their conventions in a phone booth.
Today, the two parties are much more evenly divided in the state than they were in the old days. But the country as a whole, including the solid south and Louisiana, has steered to the more conservative outlook of the Republican Party nationwide.
In the recent election, Louisiana lost its three-term Democratic senator to a Republican in a torrid election campaign that showed no respect by either candidate to their opponent on the issues. Perhaps future candidates will take it easy in campaigns after such weird, unflattering images of Mary Landrieu and Bill Cassidy were put into commercials about each other.
Now the country is governed by a president who is a Democrat and a Congress in which Republicans hold majorities in both houses.
This means that the Republican Congress can pass laws that can be vetoed by the Democratic president who will be in office for two more years. But he can do that only so long as the Republicans cannot maintain a two-thirds vote to override the veto.
Regardless of what happens in the years ahead, this is a democracy and it was formed to give our citizens a choice in deciding public officials.
There are some things which should change in our democracy, such as relying on electoral votes to settle elections.
There have been cases in which the candidates with the fewest popular votes won the election. This was decided by our forefathers to make it simpler to calculate candidate support nationwide by states in the early days of our democracy when communication was not great.
But the fact is that we have survived as the most successful democracy in the world and serve as a shining example of a country that represents the views of its people. Though we may have some red marks in our election procedures, we have led the world in providing liberty and peace for our citizens and have given our citizens the right to choose their leaders.
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