It’s time for firing conventional wisdom’s fickle arrows.
All arrows this time will fire upward, albeit it with the requisite qualification and occasional snark, except for two entries, one a ballot issue and the other a monument.
President Donald Trump—He’s deservedly well underwater in his positive rating versus his negative. But he was underwater when he got elected president despite a popular-vote deficit of 3 million votes. He won in the electoral college because of the way his deficit was packed into California and not scattered lightly around the upper Midwest.
Absent an impressive, engaging Democratic opponent—because you can’t beat bad with nothing—and if Trump’s trade war strikes working people in the upper Midwest more as a noble try to help them than a reckless danger to them, then the same popular-vote distribution could deliver him back-door White House re-admittance, even if impeached by a newly Democratic house and awash in criminality alleged or certain, unless …
Joe Biden—He is, at present, the “unless” invoked above. He is in some ways the worst conceivable Democratic challenger to Trump, being a two-time loser, and badly both times (1988 and 2008). At 77 by the time of the election, he’d be the least fresh face available to a Democratic Party desperately in need of a better one than Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris or Cory Booker.
But all Democrats have to do to win is tap the Trump resistance, which any Democrat could, and then pick up a smattering of white working-class votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Hillary Clinton alienated and whose language Joe happens to speak.
Speaking of speaking, Joe’s problem always has been that he speaks too much, and indelicately. There was the time in 2007 when he said Barack Obama was a new black political force because he was “clean” and “articulate.” Obviously, Obama let slide Joe’s seeming intimation that black people were normally dirty and unable to speak properly. Obama said he knew Joe and that Joe didn’t mean what came out of Joe’s mouth. Thank goodness. Between Trump’s tweets and Joe’s gaffes, 2020 could be a rare political adventure. Their debates would be near-octogenarian cage fights.
Asa Hutchinson—His governing problem is the threat of losing Medicaid expansion money and not being able to afford tax cuts. That could happen if the federal courts won’t let him be as mean to poor people as his right-wing base will insist if it is to keep going along with Medicaid expansion. But that’s no political problem. Trying to be mean to poor people and having a liberal court in Washington. D.C., stop you is pure political gold in the current Arkansas political environment.
Jared Henderson—They’re starting to say the Democratic gubernatorial candidate is a prospect and will have his day, though not soon. Asa lost three times statewide before voters let him bring his receding gray hairline into the governor’s office. Who knows what the Arkansas political landscape will resemble when Henderson is 64. At 88, I’ll write him up really good.
U.S. Rep. French Hill—Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight puts Hill as a 77 percent likelihood to win re-election. That’s based on polling and the 2nd Congressional District’s flaming-red behavior outside Pulaski County. Hill’s obvious strategy is to avoid a high-profile television debate and let out-of-state Republican money demonize Tucker and carry his own passive probability across the finish line.
Clarke Tucker—The Democratic challenger to Hill remains solid, appealing and surrounded by an energetic campaign operation and political base. But that will put him only in a position to have a chance to win, which could then only happen if he could go to, say, Harding University in Searcy and generate even a pale replica of the enthusiasm evident for him when he campaigned with John Lewis at Philander Smith College on Sunday. There aren’t quite enough Democratic votes in Pulaski County to save Tucker if he were to sustain the kind of two-to-one drubbing in outlying counties that Patrick Henry Hays sustained against Hill in 2014.
Roby Brock asked me on Talk Business the other day if this was a “base election” for Tucker or one that will be decided by independents. The answer to that is yes. No fervent base—no chance. No independents—no push over the top.
Issue 1—The state medical and business communities long believed they could pass so-called tort reform if they could just get it to the ballot and turn loose the big money. But then they over-reached, including a provision to cede court rules to a Legislature now happening to be flooded by raging corruption. Then the pro-life people took offense at the provision that the lives of the young and old, not earning income and building no net worth, could have their value capped for damages no matter what harm was done to them. It’s a real contest now. You still have to favor, in contemporary Arkansas, the odds for the wrong voter decision.
The Little Rock mayor’s race—This perhaps is the second-most interesting item on the ballot in November, after Issue 1. Frank Scott offers a fusion candidacy—African American in community advocacy but political establishment as a former Mike Beebe aide and highway commissioner and business establishment as a banker. And he’s a minister for good measure. Warwick Sabin offers a kind of outsider insurgency engaging new people on issues such as 30 Crossing. Baker Kurrus offers a record of heroic leadership, business accomplishment and a process-oriented candidacy that seems to be a kind of surrogate for the departing incumbent, Mark Stodola.
Ten Commandments monument—State Sen. Jason Rapert is going to win re-election overwhelmingly. And he’s a garden-variety conservative state senator if you ever can get him down from the pulpit. But I sense that the Ten Commandments dust-up is a grandstanding stunt a bit too far. It doesn’t advance his evangelical religious agenda as much as it invites reasonable detraction and extremist arousal. The notion that it’s a monument mostly to Rapert … I sense short-term traction for that, until the next grotesque public spectacle imposes our short attention span.
Chad Morris—He has established himself over the last couple of months as one of the best off-season college football coaches in America. He talks a game like Nick Saban coaches one. Chad lives in the left lane of talk and keeps the verbal hammer down.
We haven’t heard anything so optimistic since Bret Bielema said he came here not to compete with Alabama, but to beat Alabama. And, you know, he almost did—once. So, let’s see if Chad can coach from the sideline in any way comparable to the bang-up way he can hype from the podium.
Arkansas State Red Wolves—Meantime, the preseason college-football rankings would have us believe the Red Wolves, aided by the volunteer assistant coaching of retired alumnus Mike Beebe, are the best college football team in Arkansas. I suspect the UCA Bears might have something to say about that.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.