Not Another Hurricane!

Hurricane fatigue is quickly replacing COVID fatigue in America.  The latest tropical cyclone to form is Zeta, expected to be a hurricane or a strong tropical storm when it makes landfall this week . . . in Louisiana, a state that has already seen four tropical systems make landfall there his year.

If Biden is elected President, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards should become his FEMA administrator.  He already has the experience.

This storm will be a repeat of Delta, which hit Louisiana and ended up causing a lot of rain for New Jersey.  Zeta will follow the same course.

And that's not all.  The Global Forecast System, you may recall, predicted a hurricane that would affect the New York area today, October 26.  That isn't happening, of course, but it's been stubbornly predicting that some sort of tropical system will affect the East Coast in the first half of November.  One projection showed a storm hitting the New York City area with bull's-eye precision on Saturday, November 7.  Subsequent runs have taken that off the table, but they have still been showing a storm coming out of the Caribbean and possibly affecting Florida before going either out to sea or moving up the I-95 corridor into the Carolinas by November 10, suggesting that the storm could affect the Northeast in time for Veterans' Day.  Funny, though, how the GFS is always projecting a hurricane affecting the East Coat sixteen days from whenever I look at it . . .  

Ten tropical cyclones will have made landfall in the U.S. this year, a new record - four of them, as noted, in Louisiana.  Zeta will make it five and eleven, respectively.  Zeta is the 27th named storm of 2020, bringing it behind only the 2005 season, which had 28 named storms.  (I might have said on this blog that the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season had 26 named storms.  I was wrong, but not as wrong as we will be if we guess that this season won't tie or break that record. 😨 )

Louisiana 2019

After being forced into a runoff by Donald Trump and state and national Republicans when he failed to win a majority in Louisiana's nonpartisan open primary, incumbent Democratic governor John Bel Edwards won a second term.  And because his Republican challenger (I could tell you his name, but that's irrelevant) was his only opponent, that means that Edwards was re-elected with a majority.

Once again, Trump tried to make a state gubernatorial election about himself and his agenda, and once again the voters rejected him.  Trump's popularity in Louisiana actually made the election close, but enough of the voters realized that they shouldn't vote for a Republican for governor just to please Trump.  They'll gladly vote for a Democrat if they feel that the Democrat is on their side and is governing the state effectively.

Edwards is no liberal despite his party affiliation. He's pro-life, and he also supports gun rights, as do most Louisiana residents.  But he's also been a very effective governor, having expanded Medicaid and having been responsive to natural disasters such as hurricanes  which Trump's environmental policies will make common and more dangerous occurrences of in the Pelican State for decades to come.  This is how a Democrat wins an election - by being responsive to the people.  And though Louisianians are deeply conservative, the country at large is more politically balanced and more reasonable, and Democrats need a pragmatist presidential nominee who doesn't go too far in one direction or the other - especially when we're in no position to try any progressive, European-style social democratic experiments (again, we were in such a position in 2016, but not now) - and that bodes well for anyone who's running for President as a Democrat in 2020 who wants to take a more cautious approach.    

And we'll need a cautious approach, given the ongoing appeal of Trumpism. The victories of Edwards in Louisiana and Beshear in Kentucky merely treated symptoms of Trumpism.  The disease goes merrily on.