The End for Southern Dems?

As Sen. Mary Landrieu soldiered through her re-election race this year with sinking poll numbers and the heavy drag of President Barack Obama, the refrain from her strategists and supporters was always the same: Don't count her out. She's a fighter. She will pull it off in the end.
But in the hours before a runoff election on Saturday, when the three-term Louisiana Democrat faces Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy, it is hard to find anyone predicting the kind of eleventh hour victory that Landrieu pulled off in 1996 and 2002...

She has been rebuffed by her liberal colleagues in Washington and pilloried at home for voting with the president, and has watched helplessly while her Democratic base has eroded like a cheap levee.

These are hard times for Mary L. Landrieu, the last Deep South Democrat in the United States Senate.

But on the cusp of a Saturday runoff election that feels as much like a race against history as against a Republican opponent, Ms. Landrieu has been barnstorming around her home state on what she called her “Louisiana First...