Conner Eldridge, the Democratic senate candidate against Republican incumbent Sen. John Boozman, just distributed this note on Twitter.
I think he’s right. He echoes what my staunch Democratic friends in Louisiana — the few that remain — are saying.
Whether it benefits him or any other Democrat on the ballot to say this is another question.
Donald Trump is said to be headed to Louisiana, a state whose antipathy toward the president matches his low estate in Arkansas. Obama administration people have been on the scene in high profile roles and there’s been no suggestion of a poor federal response, as with a certain previous Louisiana disaster. But appearances also count. Golfing in Massachusetts while the bottom half of a state is underwater is what they call a bad “optic.”
It’s also probably too late.
PS: I should add that John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of Louisiana, says this isn’t a good time for a presidential visit, that it would only create headaches for a state that has plenty already.
“It is a major ordeal, they free up the interstate for him,” Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “We have to take hundreds of local first responders, police officers, sheriffs, deputies and state troopers to provide security for that type of visit.”
“I would just as soon have those people engaged in the response rather than trying to secure the president,” Bel Edwards continued. “So I’d ask him to wait, if he would, another couple weeks.”
That would apply to some degree to presidential candidates, too, I presume.
UPDATE: President Obama will go to Baton Rouge next week.