Posted on 10/19/2014 8:05:25 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Self-proclaimed Clinton Democrats are struggling this election cycle, and not even their powerful namesakes may be enough to save them.
Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have tried to turn on their charms to help centrist Democrats in Kentucky and Arkansas. But as candidates in both states are slipping, help from the party’s preeminent power couple is falling short.
In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes has clung tightly to both Bill and Hillary Clinton as she tries to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R).
The former president has already campaigned with the Democratic hopeful twice and will head to the Bluegrass State again next week. The former secretary of state held a rally with Grimes on Wednesday, coming as Grimes kept emphasizing she was a "Clinton Democrat through and through” after flatly refusing to say whether she voted for President Obama.
The former president — a master of the retail politics central to places like Arkansas — is the featured guest in his native state this weekend. There, Democrats are trying to save vulnerable Sen. Mark Pryor (D) and push former Rep. Mike Ross (D) into the governor’s mansion. Pryor even took a selfie on stage with Clinton this month, in an attempt to illustrate how close he is to his state’s favorite son.
Despite their close ties to the Clintons, their efforts to distance themselves from a deeply unpopular current president may not work.
That raises questions not only for Hillary Clinton as she ponders a 2016 White House bid, but also for the Democratic Party as it finds itself increasingly unsuccessful in the Deep South and Appalachia.
‘I’m constantly puzzled when other people are surprised that there hasn’t been this Democratic revival in the South,” said Thomas Schaller, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who has argued that Democrats need to make the South less of a priority. “My feeling is that the underlying fundamentals in the region work against the Democrats.’
Clinton allies and longtime observers of the 42nd president and his wife say that if anyone can make Southern states a battleground in 2016 – and at least force the GOP to use valuable resources to keep the South red – it’s Hillary Clinton.
There’s plenty of reason to believe the Clintons view the situation the same way. The former president will follow up his three-day swing through Arkansas this weekend with a trip to Louisiana to stump for Sen. Mary Landrieu on Monday, in another attempt to help the vulnerable Democrat. Hillary Clinton will campaign with Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) next Saturday.
"These appearances are really the beginning of their campaign to redefine the Democratic Party in their own image, [to] a party that can carry states like this," said Al Cross, a veteran journalist and University of Kentucky professor.
"I think the Clintons believe they can carry Kentucky and I think that's one reason why we'll see them here again," Cross added, also pointing to the Clintons’ longstanding friendship with Grimes’ father, Jerry Lundergan.
Clinton allies also insist that both Bill and Hillary have the sort of innate understanding of Southerners that has become increasingly rare within the Democratic Party. While more of the party’s base increasingly lives urban areas, they are among the few surrogates who can reach blue-collar and rural voters.
Paul Begala, a Texan and former Clinton adviser, said the Clintons ‘love Southerners, and I think that is reciprocated.“
"It's as simple as that,” Begala wrote in an email. ‘They don't view us as some kind of weird alien being. They see us as their friends and neighbors and cousins and friends - because we are."
Hillary Clinton even leads some potential GOP rivals in very early presidential polling in states like Georgia and Kentucky, and could expect a higher, more diverse turnout in a presidential year. The South’s changing demographics – eight of the 10 states with the fastest-growing Hispanic populations are in the region – would also help a 2016 Clinton campaign.
But the problems facing incumbents even like Landrieu and Pryor, who come from perhaps the preeminent Democratic families in their respective states, underscore the difficulties Democrats face in the South.
Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the Harvard-educated Iraq War veteran challenging Pryor, has tried to downplay Clinton's role to focus on Obama.
“I’m not worried about Bill Clinton’s support for Mark Pryor," Cotton told ABC News. "I’m worried about Mark Pryor’s support for Barack Obama."
Obama captured as few as one of every 10 white voters in some Southern states in both 2008 and 2012. Even in his overwhelming 2008 victory, Obama captured fewer votes than the Democrats’ 2004 nominee, John Kerry, in dozens of rural counties in places like Arkansas and Kentucky that were both overwhelmingly white and with comparatively few college graduates.
Since then, Democrats in Arkansas lost control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. In Kentucky, voters are also now more likely to call themselves Republicans than Democrats.
Bill Clinton carried Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky in his 1992 and 1996 presidential wins, at a time when many more voters remembered the days of Democratic dominance in the South before the Civil Rights movement and after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
That gives some Clinton backers hope that Hillary could combine the support her husband found among white working-class voters in those states with the coalition – highly educated, often suburban voters – that Obama used to capture Virginia and Florida twice and North Carolina in 2008.
"You put a Democrat with 20 percent of the white vote in Mississippi and it becomes in play," said Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas and a longtime friend of the Clintons.
Schaller agrees that no Democratic candidate is likely to do better than Hillary Clinton in the South in 2016. But he also stressed that even if Clinton does well in the South in 2016, that doesn’t mean a broader Democratic renaissance is coming below the Mason-Dixon line.
"I think she’s a good test case for how competitive the Democrats can be in the South, because she can pair her husband’s appeal in the more rural South and presumably draw support in the places where Obama did well,” Schaller said. “If she can’t start flipping states, then who is?“
"It's as simple as that,” Begala wrote in an email. ‘They don't view us as some kind of weird alien being. They see us as their friends and neighbors and cousins and friends - because we are."....
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"U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she became fond of the people of Arkansas during the 19 years she spent living in the state. But her former Whitewater business partner Susan McDougal remembers things differently.
"I loved Arkansas," Mrs. Clinton told ABC's Barbara Walters. "And the people of Arkansas were not only very good to me, but I made some of the best friends that I've ever made."
But in a 1996 interview with "Blood Sport" author James Stewart, McDougal recalled Hillary showing disdain for the residents of her husband's home state.
McDougal described an encounter out on the campaign trail, where an Arkansas woman offered Mrs. Clinton a pair of earrings shaped like hogs, the Arkansas Razorback mascot.
According to author Stewart, "Hillary mustered a thank-you, then the woman asked her to put them on. Hillary wouldn't. With the woman out of earshot, she turned to Susan [and said], 'This is the kind of s--t I have to put up with.'"
In 1999, Mrs. McDougal explained to NewsMax why the former first lady didn't like dealing with Arkansans.
'Big Hog Gathering'
"In Arkansas politics, you pretty much know everybody's cousin and their grandbabies. And it's a big hog gathering, you know. And Hillary was not used to that.
"I do not blame Hillary at all for saying, I cannot put these hog earrings on. Now, I would have put the hog earrings on and I would have had a good time. But this was not her kind of deal. She's a lot more intelligent than I am." Source
You know....
Maybe Clinton flavored Kool Aid and even Barry flavor has the same shelf life as everything to the new generation. I mean the iphones are only awesome until the new model comes out and there are ‘early fall/late fall clothes now.
Wouldn’t it be great if the Dems were undone by all the ritalin they gave people? I mean the whole ADD mentality they engineered in society as a whole?
Oh the freaking irony.
Christians worship Christ as their Savior.
Clinton Democrats are the same, only different.
These terms apparently have no meaning anymore.
She is so Two Decades Ago. There is NO comparison of her “Pretty in Pink” interviews and the disheveled unkempt Senator of yore. Even her run up make over for 2008 was pathetic. Sorry Hillary, the end date on your packaging has expired and you need to go on off and be a grandma (if you can avoid a jail sentence for treason).
Clinton ,Clinton ,who the hell is Clinton
How truly crappy must obola’s poll numbers actually be that the dims would be desperate enough to turn to an albatross like the Clintons? I guess some parts of the bottom of the barrel look greener than others.
You shouldn’t compare the Clintons to iPhones. iPhones have many uses and work well. The Clintons? Not so much.
An old brain damaged lesbo with cankles, what other qualifications are there?
“My feeling is that the underlying fundamentals in the region work against the Democrats.”
The, ‘underlying fundamentals’ such as LIBERTY? FREEDOM? LOVING AMERICA? Those? ;)
I loathe these people. Just die, already! I’ll take the week-long love-fest form the MSM just to have it OVER with! Why are evil people like the Clintons permitted to go on and on and on? Enough! SO sick of them!
They do serve a purpose. buying them helps fund leftist causes. Abortion, social justice, land closure for ‘conservation’ ;)
That’s what our generation should keep saying. Stop any brainwashing of new voters from believing they are their saviors. Grifters, pure and simple
So this is what I’d imagine what it would be like to have to sleep next to an ogre every night. Geesh!
Hell or Bust!
Seems they are one and the same.
A dirty old man and a grouchy old woman? These are the best the Democrats can muster?
“Bill! Get off that bimbo! And get that bimbo off our lawn!”
No kidding. It DOES feel like punishment from above! As I was walking the dog on this BEAUTIFUL Fall morning, I was having a conversation in my head.
If my Governor, Scott Walker (R, WI) loses to the empty skirt running against him, I’m giving up. I am accepting the fact that this country has gone over and we’ll all be Socialists, if not outright Communists by the time I die (30 more years, hopefully.)
If we get Hillary! as prez, shorten that time frame. Significantly.
Me and mine will be fine. We’re already so far dug in and hunkered down that not much can touch us. However, it makes me so very, very sad.
I honestly haven’t been happy with or trusted Mother Government since the Reagan years. And even THEN, I now know I was kidding myself.
I don’t blame President Reagan. For me, he WAS, ‘the shining city upon the hill,’ more so than any other and it’s been downhill ever since. Grrrr!
If only it were so for all fifty states.
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