Transcend the national

We covered a lot of ground Saturday when the small group that is the state Democratic Party’s executive committee invited me to drop by and lend a grizzled perspective.

I’m doubting anyone ever before encouraged a state Democratic Party executive committee to put filters on computers to block missives from the Democratic National Committee.

The bottom dropped out on long-controlling Arkansas Democrats when, on or about 2010, our state politics became wholly nationalized. Arkansas Democrats’ only chance now is to un-nationalize their politics. And the only way to do that is with compelling local candidacies offering compelling narratives transcending whatever is coming from Washington.

But what about national party money? Don’t Arkansas Democrats need that?

Why, yes. But their recent congressional candidates haven’t been sent any, or much, because they were pre-emptively deemed to be what they were, which was not competitive.

Would you like to know how to get a good chunk of that money? It would be for a locally independent Democrat to offer a compelling candidacy and compelling narrative transcending national talking points. It would be for that independent Democrat to draw close enough in polls that somebody in a cubicle in Washington would say, hey, look here: Some guy in the 2nd District of Arkansas is close.

The state party would need at that point to take the money only if the nationals would stay the heck out.

Think about Vic Snyder transcending national politics with a strong personal story and obvious integrity that had Republicans admitting that, while they disagreed with him, they respected that he had sincere beliefs and the courage to advance them.

He took no money until election season. He fought to repeal the state segregation amendment. He fought to repeal the anti-sodomy law. And he received votes in Saline County when he ran for Congress and won. I don’t think Democrats have received any votes in Saline County since.

Think about Bill Halter running for lieutenant governor by championing a lottery, which appealed to working folks who wanted a dream of easy riches and to everyone else by setting up a system of college scholarships.

Maybe think about this government teacher at Catholic High, Paul Spencer, who is pondering a Democratic run in the 2nd District with a history of citizen initiatives for reforming big money in our politics. His early exploratory communications suggest that he wants to tie the abuses of money to the healthcare issue, even to a general economic message.

That’s smart, and righteous, for these reasons:

The Republican affront to health care is not a disgrace merely for throwing people off health insurance. It is a disgrace because it is a scandalous sop to the Big Pharma lobby and the Big Insurance lobby.

It is a disgrace because it takes money from working people’s health and gives it in tax breaks to the richest.

It is a disgrace because it is a death blow to rural American health care.

It is a disgrace because it would cut money for asset-depleted grandmothers spending their tragically demented years in nursing homes that employ working people in service to others.

It is a disgrace because it would take money from state governments and render them unable to cut your taxes and extend the current level of services.

I asked—rhetorically, I suppose— why Democrats don’t have a draft of a proposed constitutional amendment to undo the hideous essence of Citizens United that big dark money is free speech. Why aren’t Democrats waving such an amendment on every street corner? Why aren’t they forcing Republicans every day to defend this notion that our politics should be dominated by those with the most money throwing it around with the greatest secrecy?

Why aren’t they explaining that the absence of such an amendment is the very reason the rural American economy is about to take yet another hit, and state government budgets are about to implode, and health care is about to become less available to working people, and more money is about to be transferred from those who need it to those who bribed to get it?

A woman responded that, at the last DNC meeting she attended, Democrats wound up fighting among themselves about whether they should take unregulated money while they argue against it. They beat themselves up rather than Republicans. It’s a Democratic tradition.

Igot asked afterward what advice I’d give Democrats about bridging the growing divide between the Bernie Sanders’ movement and mainstream Democrats.

I suppose it’s to welcome the Sanders movement and accept singlepayer health insurance and free college tuition as sincere and serious messages and have it out in primaries over idealism versus pragmatism.

Primaries that are vigorous and about issues that matter to people might interest voters and help make Democratic nominations worth something, which, in Arkansas, they’ve not been in the last few cycles.

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.