Less than a week after it came out that Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards maliciously lied to Louisiana’s black citizenry and voters, from whom he received a massive vote turnout and a near-unanimous share of the 2019 vote, about when he knew of the circumstances of the Ronald Greene killing by the Louisiana State Police, Edwards decided he’d go full Bull Connor.

This morning he endorsed a moribund white Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate who will clearly finish last among the “major” candidates in the race, and doing so is a sizable F You to 60 percent of his party’s registered voters in the state.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is officially throwing his support behind Luke Mixon in his run for U.S. Senate.

Mixon is hoping to unseat Republican incumbent John Kennedy in the November election.

In his endorsement, Edwards says the U.S. Senate needs Mixon.

“Washington is more broken than ever, and Congress has become paralyzed by partisanship. I’ve governed by always putting Louisiana first. Whether it’s funding to recover from devastating natural disasters or to repair our crumbling infrastructure, Luke Mixon will work with both parties to make sure Louisiana’s needs are met in Washington. I am proud to support his campaign because I know that in these serious times, people with Luke’s background know how to get the job done”, said Edwards.

“Governor John Bel Edwards has lived a life of principled service, and I could not be more grateful for his support,” said Luke Mixon. “He’s proven that Democrats can win in Louisiana, but more importantly, he’s demonstrated the value of responsible leadership during difficult times. Our state and nation face serious challenges that require serious leaders with real solutions, not empty soundbites. I’m not running a race to either extreme. I’m running to represent the 70% in the middle who want safe communities, good schools, affordable health care, decent jobs, and a future for their children”, said Mixon.

Let’s understand a thing or two here.

First, Mixon is the least compelling of the three candidates of note in the race, and he’s going to finish a distant third behind John Kennedy, who’s going to be re-elected in the primary, and Gary Chambers, who’s outraising the pants off Mixon and will outpoll him 2-1 or 3-1 in November.

And nothing John Bel Edwards does for Mixon will change that.

What this means is Edwards is voluntarily taking an “L” at a time when his political stock is already in the toilet as a lame duck governor of a rapidly failing state the major cities of which are all shooting galleries plagued with public sector dysfunction. He’s going to have zero influence whatsoever statewide when Mixon struggles to get to 10 percent in November.

Ten percent is basically the ceiling for Mixon, who we’ve decided to call The Alpaca owing to his bizarrely elongated neck. Kennedy earned more than 60 percent of the vote when he won election to the Senate in 2016 and probably hasn’t squandered any of that support, which leaves no more than 40-42 percent available to challengers, and Chambers is running to consolidate the third of the electorate who are black voters. There is zero reason to believe black voters would back Mixon over Chambers.

Reasonable political calculus directs Edwards to steer clear of an endorsement in the race, or even to back Chambers since he’s the more viable of the two Democrats where money and votes are concerned. Backing Mixon is, and ought to be seen as, a rebuke to the black community.

Let’s remember that Chambers has been picking up endorsements from black political figures of late. He got New Orleans councilman at large J.P. Morrell and ex-jailbird councilman Oliver Thomas, and he even got “white Hispanic” leftist Helena Moreno’s backing. He’s surely going to get Sharon Weston Broome’s endorsement at some point and probably LaToya Cantrell’s as well. All Chambers needs to do is show enough cash that he can grease all the urban Democrat machines and the pols those machines produce will line up for him. That’s happening.

Those machines are where the Democrats’ votes come from in Louisiana. A huge chunk of white Democrats in this state vote Republican. For example, as we use the CIVIQS poll as a tracker of political attitudes, it currently has Joe Biden’s approval rating at 28 percent all told in the state (34 percent nationally), and that number is 13 percent among white voters (it’s 58 percent among blacks). CIVIQS says Biden is at 73 percent approval among Democrats.

Those numbers only make sense if a whole bunch of white Democrats are down on Biden, which would be a stand-in for Democrats who don’t vote that way anymore. White Democrats are 14.2 percent of the electorate in the state, while black Democrats are 23.9 percent.

So this endorsement is pointless. It serves zero purpose other than to poke Chambers and the black electorate, perhaps as a means of attempting to signal Edwards is still in charge.

But if that’s the intention, the effect is going to be the opposite.

Chambers has kept quiet about Edwards, but throughout his political career he’s regularly expressed disapproval of the Bourbon Democrat crowd Edwards represents. Now he’s been provoked, and behind the scenes this is about who’s going to run that party in the state going forward. Not about beating Kennedy; everybody understands Kennedy can’t be beaten.

We’ll see what Chambers does. Don’t be surprised if he goes weapons-free on Edwards particularly regarding the Ronald Greene case. He has little to lose and a lot to gain by doing it.

We’ve said again and again that it’s a matter of time before black Democrats, who are 60 percent of Democrat voters in Louisiana and a majority of elected Democrats in the state, take full control of that party. Edwards’ lame endorsement of Mixon might just catalyze that eventuality.