JOHN BRUMMETT: Pipe dream worth having

True Arkansas believers in Hillary Clinton huddled under an awning protected from the rain on Saturday morning.

They were opening a Democratic National Committee campaign office on the back side of the Tanglewood Shopping Center in Little Rock.

And they were seeing hope for Clinton in Arkansas.

On what conceivable basis? It was that Donald Trump is so bad that he's pulled Hillary close in new polls in such unlikely conservative meccas as South Carolina and Utah.

Alas, Arkansas, as ever, is different.


South Carolina has a Democrat-inclined black population that is 28 percent, compared to 16 percent in Arkansas. And South Carolina has a heavy military population probably offended, at least for the moment, by fresh recollections of Trump's lack of sensitivity to the parents of a slain war hero.

Utah is a Mormon state, and Mormons don't like Trump, generally speaking. They have suffered religious persecution themselves, so they tend to recoil when Trump talks of discriminating against persons of any religion. They tend to be more educated and prosperous and global-thinking than the evangelicals of Arkansas, and thus more resistant to Trump's crudeness.

I call Arkansas evangelicals Republibaptists. Any nominal Republican will suffice for them as long as he rails against gays and abortions.

Their religion, at least in its political application, is issue-oriented. It is to have the government discriminate against gays and pregnant women.

It is not so much behavior-oriented. You know the spiel: Judge not lest you be judged, for we are all wretched sinners dependent on amazing grace.

The only weakness of the flesh that Arkansas Republibaptists can't seem to get over is Bill Clinton's.

Otherwise, a tearful confession, a redemptive prayer and a diatribe against boys in the girls' bathroom will get just about anybody endorsed for their version of God's holy ticket.

So why would the national Democrats be putting an office--albeit one hidden from Cantrell Road and Mississippi Avenue--in this Oklahoma increment that Arkansas has become?

The first and easiest answer is that Clinton promised in June to deploy a 50-state strategy and to place a Democratic presence even in states she lacked much hope of winning.

The office in Arkansas is not only for her, but for federal Democrat candidates, not that Arkansas has many. There is only Conner Eldridge, challenging U.S. Sen. John Boozman, and Dianne Curry, running against U.S. Rep. French Hill in central Arkansas.

For explanations beyond that for this small money pit of a headquarters, I asked several plugged-in state Democrats. What I got back was mostly boosterism's standard claptrap.

You know: Hillary can compete and win in Arkansas and she loves her home state and her home state loves her, and so on and so forth.

But then there was this theory from a man speaking not for attribution: There's a symbiosis between the Clintons and Arkansas that must be honored.

Donors here have long jump-started and sustained the Clintons. Those donors demand and deserve a home-state presence. In turn, the Clintons have favored foundation resources on the presidential center here. Arkansas Democrats have plenty of money to spend on state legislative races owing to Bill's appearance this year and Hillary's last year at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner.

And there is this additional theory: If Hillary can run a little better than Barack Obama ran in Arkansas in 2012--a paltry 37 percent--and make it up to, say, 42 percent, then those few Democratic votes might accrue to a few Democratic state legislative candidates and deliver them to victory not otherwise achievable.

There even is this ever-hopeful thinking: Let's say Trump continues his erratic behavior and stays in free fall. Let's say many of our famously independent-minded Arkansas voters sidle to over to the Libertarian or Green Party candidate. Let's say Hillary's 42 percent holds solid. Might that be enough to carry the state in a fractured vote?

As one Democrat told me, it may be a pipe dream, but it's one worth having.

And I suppose it's one worth making a few phone calls from the local headquarters.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 08/16/2016

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