Fielkow the anti-Stormy

Check out Adrastos's airing out the new Arnie Fielkow for Senate rumor. Apart from the amusing thought of watching these two men attempt to out-lisp one another in debate, I think this is a horrible idea for two specific reasons.

1) Even if he had anything approaching Vitter's money (which he doesn't and won't), Fielkow has no chance ever ever ever to win a statewide race against David Vitter. Vitty sits comfortably on the sweet spot of the Louisiana political pulse while Fielkow's position is something like a blood-starved necrotic wart. Vitter is an incumbent Senator with strong wingnut flag-waving cred, and a growing reputation in the anti-whatever-the-Obama-Administration-wants-at-the-moment teabag movement. Arnie is a stilted and soft-spoken moderate (which will play as EXTREMELY LIBERAL in a statewide race) midwesterner with a political base confined to the whiter precincts of Orleans parish who was recently in the news speaking against a recently passed anti-gay adoption law.

2) It's boring. Fielkow is boring. How am I supposed to get interested in watching David Vitter beat the crap out of somebody if I can't at least draw some reassurance from the expectation that it will be funny? Last week, Greg Peters excoriated the LA Democratic Party for its pathetic display of substituting a proxy stunt candidacy of a porn star for an actual strategy. Greg writes

This is what the Louisiana Democratic party as come to: freelance operatives running joke candidates because the party itself can’t come up with a credible opponent. This will get lot of press, and some jokes on Letterman, and everyone will have a good laugh, and the hugely conservative voting base of Louisiana will be turned off by the mockery and the constant exhortations of “hypocrisy” coming from a party that can’t field a candidate or organize a campaign, and the voters will rally around the values flag for a massive FUCK YOU vote and Vitter will crush you in the jungle primary. And there we’ll all be, stuck with that obstructionist, outdated asshole for another six years. But hey, we ran a porn star! SNUK SNERT!

And I largely agree with that. But throwing Arnie out there looks very much like the opposite side of the same coin. Instead of working on finding viable candidates, or making a reality-based argument to the voters, LA Dems are desperately trying to find a way to use Vitter's well-publicized prostitution problems against him. Having second thoughts about the efficacy of using Stormy Daniels to draw a "pointed contrast" of Vitter's "serious sin" with his "family values" platform, the squirrels are hunting after the same nut only this time using a squeaky clean anti-Stormy to remind voters of Vitter's faults. You can see them sitting around trying to brainstorm this. "I know! We'll run a porn star!" A few minutes of chuckling... and then, "Or wait what if we run Mr. Rogers?" It's a fool's gambit and a guaranteed failure.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to suffer from a profound lack of entertainment. Oh well... maybe Nagin will run.