Down, but hardly out

Talk Business and Politics and Hendrix College pitted Sarah Huckabee Sanders against a “generic Democrat” in their latest poll. The generic Democrat didn’t do any better than an actual Democrat. He, or she, or they, staggered in at 34 percent, close to the modern peak for a Democrat in a statewide election in Arkansas.

But it was Sanders who wasn’t up to par. Having nothing to run against, she was left only to stand against herself. She came in at 44 percent.

So, somewhat notably, 56 percent of 961 respondents on Feb. 7-8 chose an option other than Sanders, either the generic Democrat, a generic independent or that they didn’t know or care.

Down only by 10 points statewide was the most positive sign for Arkansas Democrats since Mike Beebe disappeared on a golf course. It shows that Sanders is not entirely the juggernaut that I and others have suggested.

But the problem is not something that Sanders’ $7 million or more in cash won’t easily fix.

Eventually she’ll get an actual Democrat for her opponent. At that point, her money and the Republican smear machine will demonize that poor soul as an open-border woke socialist born from the union of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and wanting to upset the children by teaching factual history in school.

That will release most of the undecided vote to Sanders. Then the race will settle out to form in the vicinity of 60-40.

What’s happened to Arkansas over the last dozen years is not so much devotion to Republicans. Instead it’s fear, resentment and loathing of Democrats, who are now defined solely by national liberalism. The Internet, Fox and Newsmax have taken national issues into homes where previously state newspapers took state issues.

Somebody described the phenomenon more than a decade ago as God, guns and gays. It’s still that, using gay broadly as culturally different or sexually different.

Arkansas politics since 2010 has been solely about what people are against—abortion, gay rights, the simplest gun laws, Barack Obama, Obamacare, transgender bathroom use, and all the contemporary national culture warring that has next to nothing to do with the insular province of Arkansas or its state government.

Republicans have taken over the state with no agenda other than not to be Democrats.

The only statewide poll number still based on inside-Arkansas thinking is the governor’s approval rating. Asa Hutchinson’s approval rating in this same poll was 59 percent. Beebe’s ratings were even higher, perhaps because he had no pandemic.

This poll simply shows that Sanders isn’t yet getting all the default resentment vote that she’ll eventually get. And the poll probably is skewed further by the option of a generic third-party or independent candidate, who pulled 7.5 percent. No such candidate exists. The poll option simply gave another choice to respondents who, in the final analysis, will choose Sanders even despite herself because she’s not the Democrat.

It’s all about the Republican primary, and Sanders has that locked.

The poll sample contained 38 percent Republicans, 27 percent independents and 25 percent Democrats. In recent years most of the independents have gone with Republicans because they aren’t Democrats. And nothing about this poll suggests it’ll be different this time.

Sanders is a politico pro, hardened and perhaps cynical, and she knows how to stoke the resentments she needs. She’s been stoking them right along. She just hasn’t had a human form on which to draw the demon.

The winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary will provide the human form. And yet they seek to be it—five of them, announced at least, so far. Loyal opposition must be brave.