50 States, 50 Elections: Arkansas

The fourth in our continuing series:

Key facts about Arkansas:

1990 population:  2,350,725 (82.7 % white, 15.9 % black)
2010 population:  2,915,918 (74.5 % white, 15.3 % black, 6.4 % Hispanic, 1.2 % Asian)
Share of population native to the state:  61.1 %

State GDP (2010):  $105.8 billion (about the same as Vietnam)
Per capita GDP (2010):  $36,483 (44th of 50 states)

Governor:  Mike Beebe (D-Searcy)
State Senate:  20 D, 15 R
State House:  54 D, 45 R, 1 Vacant

Senior U.S. Senator:  Mark Pryor (D-Little Rock) (elected 2002)
Junior U.S. Senator:  John Boozman (R-Rogers) (elected 2010)
 Members of the U.S. House:
 111th Congress (elected 2008):  3 D, 1 R
112th Congress (elected 2010):  3 R, 1 D

Electoral Votes:  6
Arkansas in the last six Presidential elections (4 R, 2 D)
2008:  McCain 59 %, Obama 39 %
2004:  G.W. Bush 54 %, Kerry 45 %
2000:  G.W. Bush 51 %, Gore 46 %
1996:  Clinton 54 %, Dole 37 %, Perot 8 %
1992:  Clinton 53 %, G.H.W. Bush 35 %, Perot 10 %
1988:  G.H.W. Bush 56 %, Dukakis 42 %

Discussion.  These days, most folks on the left have a very simple explanation for the South's decision to join the Republican Party:  they draw a direct connection between the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the movement of Southern voters to the GOP.  This is a very comforting notion for American liberals, because it absolves them of any blame for losing an entire section of the country to the Republicans.

But anyone who grew up in the upper South during the 1970's and 1980's knows that the reality is a lot more complicated.  In fact, the Democratic Party remained very strong in the Upper South for decades after LBJ came out in support of Civil Rights.  (For that matter, Arkansas voted overwhelmingly for LBJ in 1964 -- the very year in which he supposedly lost the South).  Even the personal popularity of Ronald Reagan did relatively little to advance the ball for Republicans -- Southern Democrats in Congress, from Carroll Hubbard to Al Gore, found it easy to distance themselves from the Northeastern liberalism that Reagan criticized.  In the 1980's, Tennessee Republicans complained that Al Gore was "bilingual" -- he talked like a liberal in Washington and like a conservative in Tennessee.  But he wasn't the only one; it was a common skill among Southern Democrats.

In retrospect, the combination of Reagan in the White House and a Democratic Congress was perfect for  upper South voters.  Reagan protected them from Big Government (and the USSR), while Congress protected them from Big Business.  (Big institutions have never been popular in the upper South, which idolizes the small farmer and the small businessman.)  But these halcyon days were ended, ironically enough,  by the greatest politician from the upper South since Andrew Jackson.

William Jefferson Clinton has many qualities, but to me he is an almost perfect representative of the upper South.  Born in a small town, growing up with little money, he grew up blazingly intelligent and ambitious.  But he also grew up with a love of fast food and college basketball, and an instinctive ability to get in front of a crowd and tell them what they wanted to hear.  There is no period in history where Clinton wouldn't have been a huge success at the Fancy Farm picnic.

Like all great politicians, Clinton had the uncanny gift of persuading people with different beliefs that he was on their side.  In 1992, the Republicans tried to paint Clinton has just another Democratic liberal, but the label didn't stick.  He picked another son of the upper South (Gore) to be his running mate, his primary campaign manager (James Carville) was an obsessive LSU fan, and one of his nicknames was Bubba.  Clinton and Gore launched their general election campaign with a bus tour through America's heartland, and on election night he did very well in his home region -- carrying West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia.

But Clinton's victory placed the Carroll Hubbards of the world in great peril.  No longer could Southern congressman and senators pretend that they had no significant connection to the Democratic party -- unless they were willing to vote against their own President.  Once Bill Clinton became president, the fate of the Democratic party in the South was largely in his hands.

I still think Clinton could have brought the South back to the Democrats.  He knows the region, its people, its history, its religion, as no Democrat in living memory.  He can instinctively appeal to those who are suspicious of Big Business, and he has a masterful talent for explaining how government programs help the average person.  If Clinton had really tried, I think he might have sweet-talked the South away from its Reaganism and built a new coalition that might still be in power.

But he didn't.  His "third way" campaign in 1992 had not only appealed to the Upper South -- it had also appealed to wealthy, socially liberal voters in places like Silicon Valley and Wall Street.  While Southern voters look for someone to protect them from Big Government and Big Business, the fiscally conservative social liberals of the coast were generally in favor of business -- the bigger the better.  And they couldn't abide the traditional religious sensitivities that play such a huge role in states like Arkansas.

After the 1992 election, Republicans were not going to allow Clinton to keep fudging the difference between his Southern roots and his East Coast views.  Forced by a relentless GOP opposition to define himself, Clinton was forced to make the decision that Southern Democrats had sought to avoid -- were they with the National Democratic party or their Southern neighbors?  When push came to shove, it turned out the Clinton's years at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale were more important than his time in Arkansas.  He largely jettisoned those aspects of his persona that had been most popular in the rural South.  Instead, he promoted a version of  "moderation" that involved supporting East Coast liberalism on social issues and Wall Street on business issues.  Big business wanted more deregulation, NAFTA, and the WTO -- Clinton delivered.  Liberals wanted judges who were social liberals -- Clinton delivered for them, too.

The results were quite good for Clinton -- who cruised to re-election in 1996 with solid support from the two coasts.  But they were devastating for the Democratic party in the South.  The GOP took the House and Senate in 1994, in large part because Southerners voted out so many moderate Democrats who had spent the 1980's running away from their national party, but who couldn't run from Clinton.  And in 2000, George W. Bush swept the upper South -- including every Southern state that had voted for Clinton eight years earlier.  (True fact:  if Al Gore had carried his home state of Tennessee -- or Clinton's home state of Arkansas -- he would have been President regardless of what happened in Florida.  But he lost them both.)

These days, of course, the Clintons are politically exiled from Arkansas.  It is significant that Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate in Bill Clinton's spiritual home of New York, as opposed to his actual home of Arkansas.  And so the South has parted from its most talented politician since Huey Long.  There is great irony here.  Southerners adore politics, and for decades they waited for a great Southern politician who would represent them on the national stage.  And then when the great Southern politician came along, he used his talents to advocate the interests of New York and California.

Places like Arkansas have only moved further from the national Democratic Party since President Clinton left office (although local Democrats can still do quite well by the old trick of distancing themselves from the national party).  Remarkably, the Democratic Presidential vote in Arkansas fell from 46 % in 2000 to only 39 % in 2008 -- exactly the opposite of what happened in the rest of the country.  The upper South used to be a bellwether in national politics -- Arkansas voted for the winner in every Presidential election from 1972 to 2004.  But these days Arkansas is represented on the national stage by Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Baptist preacher who finds it easier to forgive Big Business for its rapacious behavior than to forgive President Obama for his support of social liberalism.  So thanks in large part to Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney will probably carry Arkansas without much of an effort.

Running total:

Obama:  0
Romney:  18
Toss-Up:  11