It just occurred to me that goober runoff sounds like something that happens when a white trashy neighbor leaves a box of stryrofoam peanuts (as opposed to Jimmy Webb’s cake) out in the rain. It’s happened to me, actually, I’d rather not go there. I’d prefer to talk about the doings in the Louisiana Governor’s race since I last wrote about it.

There are no new *major* Bitter Vitter scandals. But he was caught subsidizing right-wing blogger and past malaka of the week, Scott McKay of Hayride infamy. According to my main man Lamar White, Team Vitter contributes $1K per month to McKay’s wretched and incoherent site. Apparently, Ahmad Chalabi isn’t the only con artist out there. Speaking of inappropriate Middle Eastern analogies, McKay has compared Democrat John Bel Edwards to al-Qaeda dude, Anwar al-Awlaki. Is that the best y’all have got? If you think comparing Diaper Dave to Jimmy Swaggart is a good idea, no wonder you’re losing. Btw, I am not making up the Vitter-Swaggart thing:

That concludes this episode of Bad Analogy Theatre.

As longtime readers know, I’m an agnostic when it comes to citing polling data but things are looking pretty good for Mr. Edwards on that front as well. He has double digit leads in the last three Gret Stetwide polls even when African-American turnout is calibrated as low as 20%. Vitter’s attempt to run a racist OBAMA, OBAMA, OBAMA campaign appears not to be working so far. If anything, black voters now know who they should consider voting for because of Vitter’s Obamacentric teevee ads. Hint: it’s not the Senior Senator from Louisiana.

Team Vitter is having a hard time convincing Republicans who supported Scott Just Call Me Angelle of the Morning, and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne to hop aboard the rickety Vitter bandwagon. The anti-Vitter GumboPac is running this very tough ad featuring the words of Angelle and Dardenne:

Stench and Stain sounds like a sleazy law firm dedicated to ambulance chasing or defending crooked politicians. I wonder if they have a diaper service…

That brings me to today’s political news: Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne crossed party lines and endorsed John Bel Edwards this morning on the LSU Campus. Dardenne finished fourth with 15% of the vote but has won 3 statewide races. This is a big fucking deal: it shows that our politics are getting back to abnormally normal and that the fervid Obama fever spell may be breaking at long last.

In addition to his uncanny resemblance to the British comedian Rowan Atkinson, the other thing I like about Jay Dardenne is that he’s a committed member of the pun community. In fact, he won the vile puns division of the Bulwer-Lytton competition in 2005 with this entry:

Falcon was her name and she was quite the bird of prey, sashaying past her adolescent admirers from one anchor store to another, past the kiosks where earrings longed to lie upon her lobes and sunglasses hoped to nestle on her nose, seemingly the beginning of a beautiful friendship with whomsoever caught the eye of the mall tease, Falcon.

There is no such thing as a vile pun in my estimation. I’m just glad that Dardenne has a sense of humor and the ability to Hammett up after 8 long years of the humor impaired reign of Gov. PBJ.

I mentioned the whole Rowan Atkinson thing, here’s a still from Johnny English:

I don’t have a picture of Dardenne in an action pose so this picture from this morning’s presser at LSU’s Free Speech Alley will have to do:

The runoff campaign has been full of pleasant surprises. Would an Edwards victory have any national implications? Hell no. It’s about PBJ’s reign of error and David Vitter’s malakatude and ickiness. Many national commentators on both the Right and Left are trying to find national significance in teanut Matt Bevin’s upset win in the Kentucky Goober election. (I wonder if their goobers are soaked in Bourbon?) I think they’re all full of shit: it’s a state, not a federal election. Kentucky had a Democratic Governor for the last 8 years and the voters are reacting to that.

Vitter and PBJ hate one another but their politics are identical. They’re goobers in a very wingnutty pod and at least one of them will be out of our political hair next January. Vitter will retain his Senate seat until 2016 and there are already rumors that 3rd place finisher Scott Blue Angelle will rise from the ashes and run for that seat regardless of whether Vitter runs for re-election. More likely than not, that means that Angelle will stay out of the Goober runoff and endorse neither Vitter nor Edwards. It would, however, be much funnier if he endorsed Vitter and had to explain why Diaper Dave’s stench wasn’t rubbing off on him. Scott should just sit this one out and eat Angelle hair pasta and Angelle food cake…

I have gone from cautiously optimistic to fairly confident about the November 21st runoff. If Edwards has a halfway decent GOTV effort, he seems poised to win. My sole worry is that Vitter will cook up a Swift Boat style attack on Edwards’ military record. Otherwise, Vitter’s goose is cooked. It couldn’t happen to a “nicer” guy. Who among us doesn’t enjoy watching a professional asshole finally get their comeuppance?

I’ll give John Hiatt the last word since all the punning on Scott Angelle’s name has given me a raging earworm:

That’s right, somebody just stopped calling you Angelle…