"non-establishment"

You can be neoliberal AF in your approach to service economic development and basic service delivery. You can be authoritarian AF in your approach to law enforcement and public safety. You can cozy up to bankers and hoteliers and corporate "partners" as a general matter of course.  You can be the son of a mayor and brother of a three term US Senator. You can have an extensive resume in politics at the local and state level. You can serve as Lt. Governor of your state and as a two term mayor of a major American city.  But, as long as you don't actually work in D.C., you still somehow qualify as a "non-establishment politician"

Democrats bruised by their upset loss in 2016 say they’ve learned the lesson of needing the right candidate for the right time. Even as Hillary Clinton, the consummate political insider, won the presidential nomination last year, Democrats saw excitement continue to grow around Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who was the ultimate outsider.

Now, as the party looks to rebuild, Democrats say Landrieu and other non-establishment politicians like him could be the future of the party.

For Landrieu, it means increasingly fielding questions about a White House run in 2020.

If you say you've "learned the lesson of needing the right candidate" instead of Hillary Clinton and your response is to go out and find a candidate who replicates her policy program exactly, then you've learned the wrong lesson. This isn't an examination of party and what it stands for. This is a cynical re-branding exercise.

But, then, if the professional Dems are intent on sticking with cynical politics, Mitch is probably their man. For whatever reason, he and his handlers prefer to lie about their obviously coordinated effort to push the monument speech out to a national audience rather than just tell us it's something they thought the country should hear. We've said this before. The speech was pretty good. But because Mitch Inc. is constitutionally incapable of not treating us with sneering condescension, they can't own up to the fact that we, in New Orleans, weren't the primary audience. Also check this out.

Ryan Berni, the deputy mayor of external affairs under Landrieu, said the monuments speech was “never intended for a national audience.”

But he said the address, which was written by the mayor himself, stood out “as a way to move forward” on race issues.

“It was genuine, and that’s why it was able to resonate beyond the local audience it was intended for here,” he said, adding “It’s always flattering to have your work recognized.”

Again, all they have to do is admit that they have some speechwriters and PR people on the task. Nobody would fault them for that. The lie here is an outright act of contempt. All of which is to say you're not going to find a more establishment Democratic politician than Mitch Landrieu.  His m/o fits their failed 2016 model to a tee.