The cards we're dealt

Last week the Arkansas Democratic Party announced that former President Bill Clinton will speak at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner on Friday, July 15, at the Verizon Arena.

The Arkansas Democratic Party is positively cinematic.

It's Groundhog Day, waking every morning to 1992. "Don't Stop Thinking About Yesterday" plays each dawn on the radio alarm.

The party is Back to the Future, with state Democratic chairman Vince Insalaco as Doc Brown. He turns the party into a time machine that crash-lands in the 1980s. Arkansas Democrats are young and vigorous and in charge, galvanized by the ever-rising superstar that is Bill Clinton.

But, actually, it's 2016, time flying. Those young Democrats of the 1980s and '90s gather in Clintonian cliques and regale each other with time-embellished stories.

They hop up on titanium hips and head for distant states as "Arkansas Travelers." They campaign door-to-door for Hillary Clinton, who couldn't much stand Arkansas, or probably them, when she lived here.

But, again, this is 2016, and about that ...

Democrats offer but one candidate in the four congressional district races. The Libertarians offer candidates in all four.

In the last big election, in 2014, the Democrats lost a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship by humiliating margins. That was after the aforementioned Clinton, long departed to a presidency and globally focused post-presidency based in New York, came into the state a half-dozen times to wave a wand depleted of magic.

Clinton stumped for his old campaign driver, Mike Ross, and his contemporary's son, Mark Pryor.

He talked about the state's fabulous private-option form of Medicaid expansion, which, truth be known, was a concoction of three Republican legislators. It stood a better chance of vital salvation if the state elected a Republican governor who needed it for tax cuts instead of a Democratic governor the Republican Legislature would gleefully deny.

Ross and Pryor lost by ... well, it was about 20 points each.

Now, 19 months later, the Arkansas Democrats seek to raise money, though it doesn't seem they need much considering their sparse ticket. They reach into the deck and pull out the only card in it, the Bill Clinton card--frayed, faded and crumpled.

Prior to the big dinner and Clinton's speech on July 15, the Arkansas Democrats will entertain high-dollar donors with a private reception in honor of ... wait for it ... Clinton, Mike Beebe, Jim Guy Tucker and David Pryor.

No Ben Laney? No Francis Cherry? No Hernando De Soto?

Do Arkansas Democrats possess no currently active officeholders worthy of honoring for their active service on the mean streets of Arkansas red-state politics?

State Sen. Joyce Elliott is vice chairman of the party. Is her hard ongoing fight in the state General Assembly unsuitable for donor appreciation?

What about state Sen. Linda Chesterfield? State Reps. Clarke Tucker, Greg Leding and Warwick Sabin?

How about some of those Young Democrats who ate my lunch when I appeared before them a few weeks ago?

How about municipal officials who have undertaken bravely progressive policies in the Democratic islands of Little Rock, Fayetteville and Eureka Springs?

Why not, as a dinner speaker, Elizabeth Warren, who ripped off Donald Trump's hide in a speech the other day?

I know the answer. It's that Warren is not from around these parts and she's ... well, the word to be whispered is "liberal." She and her tight regulation of "bidness" might offend some of those high-dollar donors engaged in a private reception with the ghosts of governorships past.

The perfection of Bill Clinton's choice, as state Democrats see it, is that he is safe, neutral, popularly home-grown and a source of pride among persons who might not tolerate some of what he says if his mom hadn't given birth to him inside the state's boundaries.

Clinton, as always, will deliver a probing and inspiring sermon for the adoring, ever-nodding amen chorus. The crowd will be massive. The bounty for Arkansas Democrats will be rich.

The problem will be that, once Clinton flies out, the Arkansas Democrats won't be able to think of anything to spend the money on except to bring him back.

Maybe the Libertarians could use the funds since they provide actual ballot opposition this year to a Republican Congress.

If Trump drags down all Republicans, Arkansas Democrats won't be able to take advantage. The Razorbacks could never win if they stood permanently on the sideline absorbed in yet another Frank Broyles' pep talk.

I know what you're thinking--that it's rich for these acid words to come from a 60-something newspaper columnist who has written about Arkansas politics since the late 1970s.

I would point out in my defense that columnists are supposed to write what they know.

I wrote a historical essay a few months ago for Talk Business and Politics magazine about the transformative 1970s in Arkansas politics. Arkansas Democrats thought it was current events.

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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 06/14/2016

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