Well, Louisiana elections demonstrate general problems of minority parties, being that Democratic in most of the South, or Republican, say, in Hawaii, Vermont or Massachusetts: minority parties and their leaders are generally concerned with preserving their small "plots" - and that, essentially, all. What party development??!! Their concern is to preserve, say,
their state Senate seat, and everything is tailored for this, and this
only. It seems there is a sort of informal agreements between parties in such cases: "we will tend our plots, and you don't bother us here, we will do the same and not bother you in your plots". From such point of view last elections were relative success (despite general drubbing) for Democrats: they lost only 1 state Senate seat (which, probably, only Gary Smith could hold), and may preserve status quo in House. But Democrats ran
no serious candidates in a districts they didn't held before (or even in a moderate district reperesented by Independent Marino). As i wrote above - only 3 Democrats went into runoff in Republican-held House districts, and their chances of victory are near zero. The same will happen in Mississippi next month, and we observe the same in Hawaii or Massachusetts: Republicans in Massachusetts don't run candidates in 2/3 to 3/4 districts, but, Democrats don't run anyone against, say, Tarr, though his district went about 60% for Biden. In Hawaii Republicans are mostly interested in holding (anf rarely - gaining) seats in "their" area (say - with strong Mormon presence), and almost ignore most of the statewide or congressional races.
Another problem (which i also mentioned frequently) - state parties lost their "independence" from national one sometime in 1970, and now simply mirror positions of national party, despite (frequently) quite different environment iin their states. Take Louisiana, for example. Not especially conservative on economics (though not most liberal either), but very conservative on abortion. There are few areas (New Orleans, Baton Rouge and, in some case - Shreveport), where solidly pro-choice candidates have chances, and that's not enough for statewide win (it's another matter, say, in California or New York, where there are enough pro-choice majority in NYC and close suburbs to rather easily overcome generally pro-life feelings of Upstate).
IF you want to win a statewide race there - you must take into consideration that fact. Louisiana itself demonstrates that - it was ready to vote for "pro-life populist" JBE not only in 2015, when there was a big scandal on Republican side, but even in 2019 (admittedly - with rather weak Republican candidate, but still). In addition - that candidate (JBE) was conveniently white. In 2023 Democratic candidate was not only Black, but, what was even more important - social liberal.
BOTH parties now subjugate their state and local candidates to national standards: even 15 years ago no one demanded not only in the South, but - from Catholic Democratic candidates in the North too, an obligatory pro-choice position, and Republicans, while being generally pro-life, happily ran pro-choice candidates in the North-East (and frequently won). What now??? A "RINO-hunt" in Republican party and "DINO-hunt" in Democratic. Both parties became very similar to our Russian Bolshevicks and then - Commuist party of Soviet Union. Absolutely no tolerance of diversity on important issues. I wrote many times, that it may work, when you have parlamentary system with, say, 7-10 political parties running the whole political spectrum. But in US??? With 2 parties?
As a result we have an extremely serious (and stronger with each year) political crisis threatening to evolve in real Civil War in not so distant future.
Sorry for a long post, but it's how it looks from far abroad (Moscow). It's a sad feeling, when one sees democracy (with small "d") staggering and crumbling not only in my Russia, but in US and similar countries as well..