New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has seen this movie before. Alienated people who feel left behind by their leaders elect a demagogue whose dog-whistle politics feed their basest instincts.
The year was 1989. Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, and a progressive “New South” movement was on the rise. And yet a white supremacist was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives — former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and current outspoken Trump supporter David Duke. Landrieu, who served as a Louisiana state representative from 1988 to 2004, calls Duke’s time in office “a dress rehearsal to the rise of Donald Trump.”
On this week’s episode of The Ezra Klein Show, Landrieu explains how to deal with politicians like Duke and Trump who spout coded racist rhetoric. He also discusses such wide-ranging topics as criminal justice, immigration, and gun reform, how he came to self-identify as a “radical centrist,” and why politicians need to lean into the discomfort of the current political and social climate. If these sound like topics for stump speeches to you, you’re not alone — Landrieu is frequently brought up as a potential 2020 candidate.
[For more on this story by Emily Heller, go to https://www.vox.com/2018/3/26/...ns-mayor-2020-amazon]
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