I would not have missed the trial I have covered for the last month for anything, but missing so much of one of the most interesting primary seasons in years is a steep price.
Oh, the primaries are interesting all right. I have already opined twice that the 2018 elections are not about Democratic Party resurgence. The 2018 elections are about Democratic Party survival. That is as high as stakes get for them. So the choices Democratic primary voters make when early voting begins Monday matter a great deal.
But as I watch the Republican primaries unfold, it seems the same question is asked in their primary too: Does the Democratic Party in Arkansas still matter at the state level?
The GOP primary candidates running against the governor and quite a few other incumbent state officeholders embody the belief Republicans in Arkansas should go much further to the right than they have -- and can afford to. They think the current office holders fall short. I still marvel at the idea of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, for instance, facing a challenge from the right, but there he is.
So far, the GOP has made tremendous gains -- stunning, really, when you remember where Democrats were when Mike Beebe was elected governor in 2006 -- without yet triggering a major election backlash. It seems an inherent vice of the two-party system, though, that either party will drive off a cliff when the other party is not effectively pulling on it.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are having so many primaries precisely because they think the GOP has gone too far already. The Democrats think things will now flow the opposite direction. Their primary candidate choices seem to ask how far each party's voters believe the backlash will go.
I could make a pretty good argument that this is how each of those party's true believers tend to view every election. Just because something is a cliche, though, does not mean it is not true. Some years, such things are acutely true.
The primary I most regret missing is in my hometown. The race for the Democratic nomination between Mark Kinion and Nicole Clowney for the state House seat being vacated by Senate candidate Greg Leding is the purest example I know of a race between someone who has fought in the trenches until help arrived versus the new, fresh troops who are arriving.
"New" and "fresh" does not imply inexperience here. Clowney is a notably successful grassroots organizer. This is her first partisan political race, though. One of the most interesting thing about her candidacy is to see how successful she will be in shifting one form of support into another.
Shifting one form of support into another is mainly what the 2018 elections nationwide are all about for Democrats.
Granted, Fayetteville's primary would be even more interesting if this downtown district was not one of the safest Democratic seats left in the state. The winner of this particular race will not face a GOP opponent in the fall.
Whatever the result of the Clowney-Kinion race, I will have to try hard to not read too much into it. I will be tempted to because it could reflect on a national trend. My job requires me to keep up with national trends even though they usually do not have a pronounced effect on Arkansas. For instance, there is a chance the GOP could lose control of the U.S. House. In Arkansas, meanwhile, we wonder if our four-man U.S. House delegation stands a chance of not remaining unanimously Republican.
One thing I keep reading in national political coverage is how the Democrats would sweep if "only" the party would give grassroots, activist Democrats the power, that the mean old "establishment" will not set the passionate lose and let the grassroots win.
If the power really is in the grassroots, the grassroots would take party control whether the "establishment" wanted to give it to them or not. The idea that a power base that cannot even seize control of its own party would sweep the majority party aside if only given the chance is naive.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will," as one of my favorite quotes of all time goes.
This year, in Arkansas and elsewhere, we will see how forceful a demand the grassroots can make -- in both major parties.
Commentary on 05/05/2018