So, who from Louisiana’s political left is right about the morass of the state’s Democrats? The veteran political analyst who foresees the light at the end of the tunnel as very distant? Or the academician who thinks the party’s political fortunes can improve dramatically?

As part of his television gig, longtime editor of the shopper New Orleans Gambit – no longer a shopper since The Advocate chain gulped it up a few years ago – Clancy DuBos doesn’t see much hope for the party that ruled the state uncontested starting over a century ago for six decades, and still was in the majority until about 15 years. He declared the party on “life support” and, boldly asserting perhaps the surest thing in state political history, foresaw a major shakeup in state party leadership within the next few months.

That’s axiomatic for a state party with a single out of eight members of Congress, without a single statewide executive, standing on the wrong sides of supermajorities in each legislative chamber, soon to be down 9-2 on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and in three years likely to lose ground on the one elected body where it isn’t in a steep minority, the Public Service Commission. Having no candidate come within 25 points of Republican winners in any statewide race and ceding even more supermajority ground to the GOP in the Legislature as a result of this year’s election makes leadership change a question not of if, but of when.

Possibly the party’s state central committee will act sooner, at its next quarterly meeting, to dump current Chairwoman Katie Bernhardt and others. Being that they are the ones that put her there originally, they may not and concentrate instead on winning reelection next spring and then have the new group make the change.

Regardless of when, expect its happening to eject from leadership the final vestiges of the rent-seeking/trail lawyer/courthouse liberal populist gang of whites lording over the party. The facts are that of all the 48 state office elected Democrats – two on the PSC, two on BESE, 11 in the Senate, and 33 in the House – all but seven are black, and blacks comprise 61 percent of the party registrants. Black political elites must take primary control of the party to help shape candidacies that will attract a majority black base that will inspire a turnout that among that base which likely was below 20 percent in the general election runoff.

On the point that new, if unspecified other than it needs to raise more money, leadership is needed, Dillard University professor Robert Collins agrees. Yet he thinks, with that in hand, there’s a way forward for Democrats, based upon observations of other odd-year state election results. Specifically, he views the success of an amendment to Ohio’s constitution to make abortion less restricted, of Virginia Democrats’ ability to stave off further Republican gains there in legislative elections, and Kentucky Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear to win narrowly reelection as object lessons towards reinvigorating Louisiana Democrats.

However, there’s much less to the eye here than he argues. First, Louisiana is not a swing state like Ohio – slightly red – or Viriginia – slightly blue. It’s a solidly center-right state slowly becoming less of the former and more of the latter. So, among the three states, only Kentucky is comparable.

That doesn’t mean the issue of state regulations on abortion can’t be used as a wedge to pry some voters away from Republicans. Except that Collins misreads the inherent power of that issue not just in Louisiana, but nationally. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court (rightfully through one of the most erudite decisions in its history) disabused the notion that the Constitution contained a right to snuff the unborn, the degree to which only constrained by state action within the bounds of an incoherent Court decision made a half-century ago, now with states empowered to decide abortion’s boundaries they have engaged in an equilibrium exercise to align their laws with their people’s prevailing moral beliefs as enunciated through their elected representatives or through instruments of direct democracy.

Since the decision, states have wandered their ways towards their individual median preferences. Soon, that will resolve and the issue will cease to grant either political party more than a miniscule advantage or disadvantage, which will include Louisiana because it pretty much rested at equilibrium from the moment the decision came down.

Collins mistakenly doesn’t think so, citing a recent poll (and he could have gone with another a bit older) showing slightly more Louisianans oppose the current law that allows for abortions only in the case of a threat to the mother’s physical health or is unviable than support it, using this factoid to argue that a Democrat running hard on the issue to loosen restrictions could gain major traction.

The problem with this is abortion for decades among Louisianans (and nationally) has been far down the list of voter concerns. Most recently, issues towards the top (from the poll Collins cited) swing very much against Democrats, and in Louisiana in particular because the negative outcomes the state experiences on these come precisely from decades of governance by liberal Democrat populists – and voters increasingly are acknowledging that role in the state’s economic destruction.

Running hard on liberalizing abortion in Louisiana – often described as the most pro-life state in America and with the oldest and deepest Catholic roots of any – is a fool’s errand. It will hardly move the needle in a state suffering depopulation, economic development running behind almost all others, and educational quality still lagging just about any other. (As shown in the Senate District 12 race last month where an avowedly pro-abortion candidate lost 78-13 percent.)

Nor can the lesson in the one state Collins mentioned with a similar political environment to Louisiana, Kentucky and the Democrat Beshear win, translate to Louisiana Democrats. What Collins doesn’t know or disregards is Beshear won only because his last name is Beshear. His father having been governor from 2007-15 and the last name on state ballots 15 times in the last 44 years, the dynastic familiarity with the name made him an extreme outlier in a system that in every other way mirrors Louisiana – supermajorities in the state legislature and Republicans controlling every other statewide office.

There’s no such Democrat in Louisiana now or for the foreseeable future. And almost certainly in Kentucky in 2027, when Beshear is term-limited, we’ll see a Jeff Landry-like Republican seize the office to give the Kentucky GOP a clean sweep. In essence – in one of the few instances where Louisiana isn’t behind the times now – Kentucky is four years behind Louisiana.

DuBos, running against type over the past couple of decades, is right: Louisiana Democrats have no immediate hope of becoming a relevant party again. But he does miss the caveat: unless they make a concerted effort to move closer to the median voter. Since the election of Democrat Pres. Barack Obama, the party has emulated its national level, becoming shriller as its leadership sprinted to the far left, embracing tighter identity politics and conspiratorial economics.

The ensuing trickle down to its candidates gushes precisely against the prescriptions of its waning Great Society base who argue any platform that doesn’t put first and foremost, beyond any other issue such as climate alarmism, defunding police, gender affirmation, etc., economic policy to address working class concerns will not win elections. That goes triple in Louisiana, where the irony is the population already is sensitized to the folly of the economic policies these liberals have stumped for since the Great Society.

Moving towards the Louisiana median voter will be a hard thing for the party to do with all the pressure coming from the national party that predicates its issue preferences on what New York, Illinois, and California Democrats want. But pulling rabbit candidates out of hats, pinning hopes on insignificant single issues, or pining for leadership that is just old wine in new bottles won’t make it; shedding radicalism is the only hope for Louisiana Democrats to gain anything but episodic and rarely consequential influence over policy-making in the state.