Is Mitch LANDRIEU the one? Pro & con. He says no, pick BIDEN but never-say-never

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Thanks to the thread by mobeau69, "Watching Mitch Landrieu on The Axe Files" https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210907558 O.P., "He's very impressive! His description of this abnormal time we find ourselves in and what we need to do to turn things around was spot on. He also gave an excellent commentary on Helsinki and the traitor."

My first impression was, "An article on him a few weeks ago fairly much convinced me he's the one for us. My own points about him: He's from the South, connects with the common touch, is politically experienced, intelligent/intellectual, and savvy, has politics in his blood, and is authentic the way CUOMO ain't."

Plus, in Googling, more recent items from the past few weeks are about his denying himself for 2020 while saying never-say-never and saying it should be BIDEN. Well, if this article says it's a sign of how far Wingnut the country has been dragged that a Centrist looks Liberal, it still is in the correct direction. BIDEN is *over* (for me, unless he's the nominee), but maybe Mitch as Veep?

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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/08/mitch-landrieu-new-orleans-presidency-politics-218960

Mitch Landrieu Wants to Know: Does He Have to Run for President?

A remarkably candid interview with the former New Orleans mayor about race, political ambition and America under Trump.

By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE

.... For a man who’s spent his entire adult life in politics, Landrieu has an almost Obama-like intellectualism. He flows between ideas he’s read in books or encountered in conversations. His mind is associative, always linking up ideas with other experiences. He can be lyrical, though sometimes to the point of sounding like he’s doling out aphorisms. There are “y’alls” and explanatory diversions. He doesn’t tweet. He says “let me finish” a lot—not because he’s annoyed about being interrupted (though that sometimes flashes, too) but because he feels like he’s in the middle of a thought, and he wants to get through the full thought.

He talks about history. About moral leadership. The power of diversity. Who the future belongs to, and who it doesn’t. But most of all, he talks directly about race and racism and reality in America. When exactly is Trump saying America was great? What was it that made it great then? He pushes people to think about the answers, and he thinks they’re frighteningly clear. He sees what he lived through in Louisiana playing out in the country, has spoken and written about how much Donald Trump reminds him of David Duke. He says he knows people can be afraid to call it out but knows what happens when they don’t. He says he can’t believe he has to be the one to say there’s no place for white supremacy in 21st-century America.

And he gives speeches like the one he delivered at the Kennedy Library in May, accepting the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award that in 2017 went to Barack Obama. In an address that sounded very Obamalike, he said, “Our democracy is counting on each and every one of you, and in your countless acts of selfless courage. When millions of us do just our small part all at the same time, there is no mountain too high, no task too daunting, no dream too big. To every American listening: You may not be the tallest or the strongest or best-looking, or richest or fastest or smartest or the most well-connected. You may look different, love different or pray different. It is of no moment nor matter. We must all choose to find a way or make one. This is our America.” He finished by quoting Tennyson’s “Ulysses” on sacred duty, invoking JFK’s call to action, sounding like a man who was building up to, “and that’s why I’m running for president.”

But he didn’t.

For now, Landrieu is more concerned about understanding why Trump happened, and figuring out what he is prepared to do about it. “If you say to yourself, ‘It’s really not about him, what were the conditions that caused us to be able to choose this level of chaos over what we thought we had?’ And then what you would have to say is, the conditions in the country should never have been where they were, because it’s clear to me, historically, without necessarily equating them, when you look at the Holocaust, you look at apartheid, you look at slavery, when you look at the Japanese internment—when we as humans did terrible things to each other,” Landrieu told me when I caught up with him two weeks later, again in Boston, where he was to say goodbye to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, “and you ask yourself, ‘What were the conditions in which human beings decided to denigrate another human being that badly?’ They were for the most part in times when people thought that they were supreme to other people because of genetics, or people were fearing for their personal livelihood or safety, and as a consequence, human beings are capable of that evil. So the bigger question for the country long term is, ‘How did we get ourselves in a position where we had to choose between bad and worse?’” ....


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjpdgq/mitch-landrieu-should-not-be-president

Democrats, Please Don't Nominate My Mayor for President

Mitch Landrieu is getting some 2020 buzz, but New Orleanians can tell you about his spotty record.

Until last year’s removal of New Orleans’s Confederate statues made national news, Mayor Mitch Landrieu was largely unknown outside of his city. Today, he’s the latest Democratic flavor of the month. Landrieu followed up the release of his new book, Standing in the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Faces Down History, with a few victory laps of the lecture and talk show circuits, from The Week to 60 Minutes to the Daily Show, where mentions of his possible 2020 presidential run were met with applause. He’s also set to receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in May. ....

Landrieu surely won’t end up in prison like his predecessor Ray Nagin, and he has done a few good things while in office, like help get marijuana arrests down to almost zero (arguably a much bigger blow for racial justice than taking down the statues). And his speeches around the monuments’ removal were admittedly some of the best I’ve ever heard from a politician.

But Landrieu is not the president America needs. Dig past the statue issue, and you’ll find that Landrieu is known around town as the New Orleans mayor who aided and abetted a massive wave of gentrification. While he would clearly like to be remembered for removing New Orleans’s racist symbols, many locals will remember him for the following catastrophes:

Airbnb ....

Cameras, Cameras Everywhere ....
In this and other ways, Landrieu has been to New Orleans sort of what Giuliani was to New York. Except without the drop in crime.

Avoidable Flooding ....

Hassling Music Clubs and Banning Go-Cups ....

Raiding Strip Clubs ....

So no, Mitch Landrieu is not our country’s—or Democrats'—savior. He is just more proof that American politics has been pulled so far to the right that a “run-of-the-mill centrist” (to quote the New Republic) seems not just excitingly liberal, but looks something akin to a real leader.

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