The first couple of paragraphs of Shaila Dewan's New York Times article about how the Obama campaign is making no effort to win votes in Arkansas could be describing the Arkansas in which I grew up."Arkansas has a Democratic governor, an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, two Democratic United States senators and three Democratic Congressional representatives out of four," Dewan points out — which is precisely the breakdown that existed when I was in school in Arkansas 30 years ago.
The names have changed, but the party affiliations are the same.
(In the 1970s, both John McClellan and J.W. Fulbright had been representing Arkansas in the Senate for three decades. Today, the senators are Mark Pryor — son of McClellan's successor, David Pryor — and Blanche Lincoln. And Wilbur Mills represented my district in the House for nearly four decades. My old district elected a Republican for awhile, but it is again represented by a Democrat.)
Some things have changed, though. As Dewan points out, "The Democratic presidential primary ... drew 80,000 more voters than the Republican one." (Actually, according to the vote totals I've seen, the Democrats had 314,000 participants and the Republicans had about 210,000.)
When I was growing up in Arkansas, the Republican Party was virtually nonexistent in almost every corner of the state — except in presidential elections.
In Arkansas, Democratic primaries typically had enormous advantages in voter participation — in 1976, about half a million people voted in the Democratic presidential primary while less than 35,000 people participated in the Republican primary between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
But it was a different story when November rolled around.
In the last 40 years, Arkansas has supported only two Democratic presidential nominees, Jimmy Carter (in 1976) and Bill Clinton (in 1992 and 1996) — both Southern governors, and Clinton was a native son.
But despite the Obama campaign's insistence that it is conceding none of the states to John McCain, Dewan seems baffled that Obama has, so far, devoted few campaign resources to Arkansas.
"Obama campaign officials have made much of their desire to expand the traditional Democratic playing field into states like Idaho, Indiana, Missouri and Montana and have promised they will run a 50-state campaign," Dewan writes. "But in the red-bloc South, the campaign has begun a push only in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia."
Dewan acknowledges that Obama's campaign has some hurdles to face with the Arkansas electorate.
"In Arkansas, unlike other Southern states, Democrats have maintained dominance by keeping white, conservative, rural voters — the ones that need the most convincing by Mr. Obama — in the fold," Dewan writes.
"Arkansas’s population is whiter than the rest of the South; it is only 16% black, compared with 30% in Georgia and 21% in North Carolina. Its voters are older and less educated and include fewer transplants from outside the South."
Much has been made of efforts to register black voters in the South, but, as Dewan's figures suggest, the black voter pool isn't nearly as deep in Arkansas as it is in some Southern states.
The key to Democratic success in Arkansas lies in persuasion, not registration.
The voters who can win the state for the Democrats are already on the voter lists.
To win over the white, conservative, rural, older, less educated voters in states like Arkansas, Obama must be persuasive.
And reassuring.
These voters were not reassured by Obama's remarks on guns and religion. There are many voters in Arkansas who own guns, and there are so many churchgoers in Arkansas that (when I was growing up there, at least) it was often called the "buckle of the Bible belt." It is predominantly Protestant, primarily Baptist.
Nor were they reassured by the abrasive images of Obama's pastor and his diatribes against America.
Or when Michelle Obama said she was proud of her country "for the first time" because of her husband's success. Even if that is the way she feels, tact demands that she not say so — or, at the very least, that she find a better way to express herself.
Many of those voters, in fact, could relate to Obama's white grandmother and her confessed discomfort with black people. It was not reassuring to them to hear him dismiss her as a "typical white person."
In a presidential campaign, every little thing is magnified under a very public microscope. You can't expect to win a national election by giving off-the-cuff responses to every question that comes your way.
And appearances matter, too. Even if you don't think they should. Americans like to see American flag lapel pins on their leaders. Even if that isn't Obama's preference, is it asking too much of him to put one on, anyway? Would it be a repudiation of things he believes in?
To the rank-and-file voters, an American flag lapel pin is a symbol of commitment — the same as the presence of a ring demonstrates one's marital commitment.
Even if the truth is that neither of those symbols has much meaning anymore, wouldn't it be prudent to give in on this point — if it makes it easier for voters to support you?
Arkansas handed Obama a pretty decisive defeat in its presidential primary in February. I'm not so sure that racism was a huge factor in his loss. The Clintons, after all, have a long history in Arkansas. When the state's Democratic Party chairman was murdered this week, they could honestly speak of knowing him for many years and the personal loss they were experiencing.
Because of the hard-fought battle between Hillary and Obama for the nomination, there is a wound among some Democrats that will take time to heal. The Democrats in Arkansas are, understandably, torn between their desire to defeat the Republicans in the election — and their desire to not seem disloyal to Hillary.
One of Hillary's Arkansas supporters, who is now supporting Obama, was hesitant when asked by the Times if she would put one of Obama's signs in her yard. “Hillary threw my bridal party,” she told the Times. “So it’s just hard for me to do that. I just have to decide how far I want to go.”
You could hear similar stories in every county in Arkansas. It's been many years since they lived there, but the Clintons still have many friends in Arkansas.
The article hints at "buried racism throughout the South." Personally, I have no doubt that will be a factor in the election — and it will be part of the public response to Obama's policies, if he is elected.
And, while it will be a factor in Arkansas, it's not the only one. Remove the racial element from the equation, and Obama's record still puts him out of sync with most Arkansas voters. He has more in common, philosophically, with John Kerry and Michael Dukakis than Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
As the results in November are likely to show.
If Obama's campaign staff doesn't believe he can convince Arkansas voters that he's the kind of Democrat with whom they can be comfortable, then they are wise not to commit too many campaign resources to the state.
But if the Democrats can't be competititve in Arkansas, I believe it is extremely doubtful they can be competitive anywhere else in the South.
No matter what the black population in a given state happens to be.
Perhaps Obama's acceptance speech will help to persuade some fence-sitting voters.
It will be a tough sell for many — and a crucial test of Obama's ability to lead a nation that is divided in so many ways.
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