Last fall the Presidential Election of 2016 played out in real time, right here in Louisiana. Locally, we called it the 2015 Gubernatorial Election.

My takeaway:

Given a unified party, any of the three Republican candidates would have beaten the sole Democrat in the race head-to-head. In retrospect, the leading Republican, Sen. David Vitter, had no chance of winning the general election because of his astronomically high negative poll numbers. The Dem won the general because he stood by while the Republicans carved each other up.

Today, we have Liberal Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The parallel with 2016’s Presidential Election should concern any Republican. Donald Trump crows about “winning” in the polls and belittles his opponents. None of them take him to task for his negative poll numbers. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio destroy each other via the death of a thousand cuts.

Sooner or later, either Rubio or Cruz will bow out. The longer this bloodletting continues, the harder it will be for them to unify to block Trump.

Cross-posted at RedState.