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Barring a last-minute miracle, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, will lose a runoff election to her Republican challenger, Rep. Bill Cassidy, on Saturday.

"She certainly she is fighting to the end, and she is campaigning hard," said CBS News congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes, but "a lot of Democrats have already resigned themselves to the fact that she likely is going to lose."

It stands to be an unfortunate turn of fate for Landrieu, the scion of a storied Louisiana political family who has represented the state in the Senate since 1997.

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Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, discusses an emerging deal to fast-track the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

But it's hardly surprising: Landrieu has watched many of her fellow white, Southern Democrats fall to GOP challengers in the last several cycles. Her defeat, if it comes to pass, will mark the end of an era - the departure of the last white Democrat to represent the Deep South in Congress.

The South was once Democrats' most reliable stronghold: Before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Democrats enjoyed a monopoly over statewide elections in the South, holding all of the region's governors' offices and Senate seats. That grip began to slip in the decades that followed, but as recently as a decade ago, Democrats still held a majority of senate and gubernatorial seats in the Deep South. Not a single one will remain in their control after November's victors take office next year.

"It's not just that Senate Democrats have been wiped out in the South," explained Cordes. "It's that there are no longer any Democratic governors. There are no longer any Democratically-controlled state legislatures....It really is a clean sweep."

Analysts see a number of demographic, cultural, and political factors behind the collapse of the Democratic party in the region. Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University who specializes in American politics in the South, directed the lion's share of the blame at a national party leadership that has lurched leftward over the last decade.

"The Democratic Party is now dominated by very liberal politicians from the Northeast and Pacific coast and from the metropolitan areas of the country," he explained. "Their priorities, interests, and values have very little appeal among white southerners."

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How Democrats lost the Deep South

WASHINGTON It used to be that Democrats would mutter under their breath about President Barack Obama and the White House.

Now, with the midterm elections behind them, some leading members of the president's own party are airing their frustrations with little restraint and charting their own course.

In speeches, negotiations and congressional hearings, several high-profile Democrats are disregarding the White House in ways large and small. The White House has responded with an extraordinary veto threat while Obama has made a round of calls to liberal Democrats urging them to stand up against their own leadership.

Consider that in just a week's time:

Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate's Democratic leader, was on the verge of cutting a deal with Republicans with a 10-year price tag of more than $400 billion in tax breaks without White House input.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a prominent member of the Senate Democratic leadership, raised new doubts about the timing of Obama's 2010 health care law.

Sen. Robert Menendez, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, began work with Republicans against the Obama administration's wishes on new penalties against Iran.

"There is always going to be some friction between somebody who's never going to run again and a bunch of people who are," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "There's going to be a natural rub there the president never has to worry about his approval rating again."

Put differently, many senators have served a long time; presidents come and go. With two years left in his two-term presidency, Obama's time is running out.

That doesn't mean Obama necessarily wields a weaker hand. The deal by Reid, D-Nev., to permanently extend certain tax breaks failed after the White House rallied liberals and issued a veto threat. Menendez, D-N.J., has yet to put together a veto-proof majority on his Iran plan.

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Obama, Democrats show cracks in their unity; veto threat over emerging tax deal sets new tone

Democrats finally caught up to Republicans in the super PAC battle, but it didnt matter, partly because they got crushed in the overall big-money war.

New reports to the Federal Election Commission show that Democrats, who had been leery about embracing the new big money politics until recently, far outpaced Republicans in the fundraising by super PACs, which are required to report their contributors identities.

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But voluntary disclosures by other outfits suggest Republicans more than made up for the disparity through their dominance of secretive non-profit groups that do not disclose their donors.

The six biggest-spending super PACs spent $177 million boosting Democrats and only $80 million boosting Republicans, according to a POLITICO analysis of the FEC filings, which cover roughly the three weeks before Election Day, plus the three weeks afterward.

They show a major push by both sides richest partisans in the run-up to the election, with 38 liberals giving $100,000 or more to the three biggest Democratic super PACs led by hedge funder Jim Simons, who gave $4 million for a total of $15 million. Interestingly, Tom Steyer the liberal hedge fund billionaire who was the elections single biggest disclosed giver at $74 million or more didnt contribute a dime in the final weeks to the super PAC he founded to elevate the issue of climate change.

On the other side, 31 conservatives reached or crossed the six-figure mark in the elections stretch run led by industrialist Charles Kochs $3 million check for a combined total of nearly $14 million.

What we did was kind of level playing field, said Ronnie Cameron, who donated $1.25 million in the last few weeks of the midterms to two of the three biggest conservative super PACs. The donations, which he made through his Arkansas-based Mountaire Corp. poultry company, went to the Karl Rove-conceived American Crossroads ($250,000) and the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Action Fund ($1 million), and brought his combined totals to those groups to $3.5 million for the cycle.

The groups along with a third super PAC, the Joe Ricketts-funded Ending Spending Action Fund spent $21 million in the campaigns final three weeks assailing Democratic Senate candidates in key states including Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina where Democratic super PACs had bombarded the airwaves early on trying to define GOP candidates.

There was so much political advertising, that it may have had minimal impact, because most people were just numb to it, but that is a whole lot better than having it be all one sided, said Cameron. He said he wanted his money to be used mostly on positive ads, but recognized the political wisdom behind contrast ads linking Democrats to President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.

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Democrats win PACs, lose money war

Originally published December 5, 2014 at 8:49 PM | Page modified December 5, 2014 at 10:09 PM

WASHINGTON The ailing Democratic Party, its stature as a national party teetering, appears poised to be wounded again Saturday if underdog Sen. Mary Landrieu loses her bid as expected for re-election in Louisiana.

The likely win by Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in the runoff would complete a near-sweep this year of Southern Senate seats and governorships, in 10 of the 11 states of the old Confederacy. The Democrats only victory was in Virginia, where Sen. Mark Warner barely survived a surge by Republican Ed Gillespie.

The Louisiana race is emblematic of the trouble Democrats faced in 2014 and are likely to confront for years. The party is widely regarded in the South as hostile and indifferent to the interests of white working-class voters, said Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University.

Landrieu, a three-term senator, won 42 percent in the Nov. 4 election. Cassidy got 41 percent, and conservative Rob Maness won 14 percent. Because no one got a majority, the top two finishers vie in Saturdays runoff.

Novembers exit polls illustrate Landrieus challenge. Four of five Louisiana voters were worried about the economy, and Landrieu won only 38 percent of the ones who were. She barely got 1 of 5 white votes, about two-thirds of the electorate, and 94 percent of the black vote.

Those patterns were repeated throughout the South. In nine other Southern states with Senate race exit polls, Warner did the best among whites, winning 37 percent. Five Southern Democrats got 22 percent or less.

A Landrieu loss would be the latest blow to Democrats in the South. Other than Virginia, only Florida has a Democratic senator or governor, once Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe retires in January. Sen. Bill Nelson was re-elected to a third term in 2012.

Part of the Republican success results from the uniqueness of 2014. Incumbents in three Southern states where President Obama is unpopular were up for re-election, and they were hobbled by their voting records. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who lost last month, had the worst party-line record and he had still sided with Obama 90 percent of the time last year.

The Democratic record included support for the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which Republicans touted as the latest Democratic intrusion into private lives as well as the partys yen for big, expensive government.

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Democrats are all but extinct in the South

Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy has denied Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana a fourth term, calling his Senate victory "the exclamation point" on midterm elections that put Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill for President Barack Obama's last two years in office.

With nearly all votes counted, unofficial returns showed Cassidy with a commanding victory in Saturday's runoff as he ousted the last of the Senate's Deep South Democrats. In the South, Democrats will be left without a single U.S. senator or governor across nine states stretching from the Carolinas to Texas.

Cassidy, after a campaign spent largely linking Landrieu to Obama, called his win more of the same message American voters sent nationally on Nov. 4 as Republicans scored big gains in both chambers of Congress.

"This victory happened because people in Louisiana voted for a government that serves us, that does not tell us what to do," Cassidy said in Baton Rouge, the state capital.

He did not mention Obama or offer any specifics about his agenda in the Senate, but said in his victory speech that voters have demanded "a conservative direction" on health care, budgets and energy policy.

Following Cassidy's victory, Republicans will hold 54 seats when the Senate convenes in January, nine more than they have now.

Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts on Saturday ? including the seat Cassidy now holds ? ensure at least 246 seats, compared to 188 for Democrats, the largest GOP advantage since the Truman administration after World War II. An Arizona recount leaves one House race still outstanding.

Landrieu narrowly led a Nov. 4 Senate primary ballot that included eight candidates from all parties. But at 42 percent, she fell well below her marks in previous races and was sent into a one-month runoff campaign that Republicans dominated over the air waves.

The GOP sweep also denied former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards a political comeback at age 87; the colorful politician who had served four terms as governor in the past had sought a return to public office after eight years in federal prison on corruption charges.

Landrieu hugged tearful supporters and sought to strike an upbeat chord Saturday night after her defeat. Her defeat was also a blow for one of Louisiana's most famous political families, leaving her brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, to carry the banner.

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Last of Senate's Deep South Democrats Defeated