On Wednesday, NBC 33 in Baton Rouge ran the first part of an interview with John Bel Edwards which seems to be aimed at letting him off the hook for eight years of mismanagement and decline. You almost certainly didn’t see it, and we’re not here to tell you that you should.

By any measure, and especially compared to Louisiana’s neighbors’ performance over the past eight years, John Bel Edwards has been an utter disaster for the people of this state. Pick an area of public policy and compare us to Texas, Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, whoever, and you’re going to see some pretty stunning underperformance over the past eight years.

And it isn’t as though the jury is still out on all this, by the way. Edwards destroyed the Democrat Party in Louisiana over the course of his eight years in office, to such an extent that Democrats can’t even see 40 percent over the horizon running for a statewide office – Republicans are getting upwards of 65 percent in every statewide race now. Outside of legislative seats specifically drawn to elect black Democrats it’s no better for their party; there are at present only five white Democrats in the state House and just one in the Senate, while Republicans control 73 of 105 House seats and 28 of 39 Senate seats.

Do you think if the voters saw John Bel Edwards as successful that his party would be in the shape it’s in?

And by the way, Edwards’ Republican collaborators fared almost as poorly as Democrats did. His hand-picked House Speaker Clay Schexnayder was turned back in his bid to become Secretary of State in embarrassing fashion; Schexnayder finished in fourth place. Other Edwards-friendly legislators like Tanner Magee and Page Cortez are finished in elective politics with no prospect of returning to it.

Magee is reduced to using Twitter to beg for airtime on Moon Griffon’s show in an effort to stay relevant…

I want to be a weekly guest on @MoonGriffon to discuss the Legislature next term. Do you think he’ll have me ? @TheHayride @brianhaldane

— Tanner Magee (@TannerDMagee) December 15, 2023

And it isn’t just popular sentiment based on political messaging. The facts aren’t good. For example, the Left always uses infant mortality as a metric for the success of a public health system, and for decades it was set forth as an indictment of Louisiana’s failure to take care of the poor.

So Edwards comes into office and proceeds to do the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in order to put most of Louisiana on government health care.

Eight years later, how’s that working? Well…

Louisiana has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the developed world — and it's not getting any better.

“We need to have an attitude,” former LDH secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee said, “that this is shocking and inhumane and unacceptable.” https://t.co/N9Vvv5iopt

— NOLA.com (@NOLAnews) December 9, 2023

That’s a policy failure. Make all the excuses you want, but putting the government in charge of people’s lives, which is exactly what John Bel Edwards’ eight years was all about (something he was able to demonstrate most thoroughly with his COVID lockdowns), is a demonstrably poor approach.

And now that it’s ending, now that his legacy and his party are in ruins and the state is moving on from him, we’re going to get the spin treatment that JBE was NTB (not that bad).

Bullcorn.

We liked what the Louisiana Freedom Caucus had to say in a press release yesterday which largely wedded themselves to Jeff Landry’s reform agenda (what we’ve seen of it, by the way, is pretty aggressive and will make these JBE rehabilitators positively unhinged). They took a gigantic dump on Edwards in a way that ought to be standard-issue going forward…

The Louisiana Freedom Caucus will expand in the upcoming legislative session and wholeheartedly supports conservative leadership from incoming Governor-Elect Jeff Landry. For far too long, liberals and self-serving politicians have been literally choking the life out of our beloved Louisiana. This has only intensified over the past eight years through the abuse of power by soon-to-be former Governor John Bel Edwards and his myrmidons who suffered staggering losses in the recent elections. They are now trying to spin Edwards’ legacy to distort the realities Louisianans are facing as a result of his failed liberal policies.

There is no clearer indicator of this failure of governance in Louisiana than the exodus of our people. As summed up and solidly referenced on Census.gov, according to the latest available Louisiana numbers, between 2016 (pop. 4,678,135) and 2022 (pop. 4,590,241) the United States grew 3.2 percent in the same time frame, Louisiana’s Republican-run southern neighbor states were blessed with a 5.2 percent increase in residents while Louisiana lost 1.9 percent—88,000 people—as they hit the exits in search of better economic opportunity, better schools and less crime.

This is unacceptable. The people of Louisiana have given Governor-Elect Landry a conservative mandate and the strong support of our Freedom Caucus members will be key to its successful execution.

“Jeff Landry is no stranger to the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. His outside the box thinking is crucial to quickly turn around our state and provide what government is supposed to provide for its people: a Louisiana where our streets are safe, we educate our children in the fundamentals, we protect life and liberty, we stop spending money we do not have on things we do not need and we get over-burdensome government regulation out of the way of our state’s entrepreneurs. We believe Governor Jeff Landry’s vision will serve to hand the blessings of liberty and prosperity to Louisiana’s future generations,” said Beryl Amedée, Executive Officer of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus.

“The Louisiana Freedom Caucus looks forward to being the tip of the spear in bringing our new governor’s conservative agenda across the finish line,” Amedée added.

Good for Amedee. That’s exactly correct. And Edwards can get all the free rein he wants in an effort to deny those failures but the verdict is in.

We need to make sure to enforce that verdict. There was no rehabilitation for Bobby Jindal; there damned sure can’t be one for Edwards.