BOOYAH

Once again, we leave it to Louisiana to find the silver lining in a Democratic election cycle.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco became the first woman ever elected governor of Louisiana on Saturday, defeating a conservative Indian-American and scoring a rare gain for Democrats in an election season that has seen a string of Republican victories.

Blanco's victory puts the Louisiana governorship back in the Democratic column for the first time since GOP Gov. Mike Foster won the first of his two terms eight years ago. He cannot run again because of term limits.

With 96 percent of precincts counted, Blanco had 52 percent, or 703,226 votes, to Jindal's 48 percent, or 658,806.

I think this AP account of the election cycle is not entirely fair to the Democrats. Sure, they lost three statehouses, one to a RINO actor in a special election and the other two in Southern states that Dean/Clark/etc probably wouldn't win anyway. But they also took the legislative majority in New Jersey and performed well in much of Virginia.

What's also yummy about this news is how Blanco won:

Jindal, a 32-year-old former Rhodes Scholar whose parents immigrated to Louisiana from India, had been slightly favored, partly due to strong backing from Foster. But Blanco, a 60-year-old Cajun, accused him of harming the poor by enacting budget cuts when he served as Foster's health secretary. He later became an assistant health secretary for President Bush.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this was a similar strategy to how Senator Mary Landrieu fought off Bush-puppet Suzanne Terrell last year, by waiting for the time between the main election and the runoff, and taking one specific issue and hammering Jindal with it.

Kos points out that this puts almost every statewide office (including both Senate seats) in Democratic control, so expect a recall effort against Blanco perhaps this could help the eventual Democratic nominee win there.