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Obama's regional problem, Part II
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Candidate
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| Contributor | DFWDem |
| Last Edited | DFWDem Jun 12, 2008 11:16am |
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| Category | Commentary |
| News Date | Thursday, June 12, 2008 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By John Brummett
This will serve as a follow-up to the column Tuesday about the self-interested hesitance of conservative Democrats in our part of the country to embrace Barack Obama. It is hardly an uncommon circumstance affecting Southern Democratic politicians and those who have tended to win Democratic presidential nominations over parts of the last four decades.
On the day I wrote about a palpable lack of fire for Obama among Arkansas Democratic officeholders - such as Gov. Mike Beebe, who cited a "deep-seated fear" of Obama in Arkansas, and U.S. Rep. Marion Berry, who said his tank of enthusiasm had pretty nearly run dry - there was a related development in the section of Oklahoma that abuts the western Arkansas border.
U.S. Rep. Dan Boren is a third-term conservative Democrat representing the 2nd Congressional District of Oklahoma, which starts at the Arkansas line and runs to Kansas on the north and Texas on the south. It's just across the state line from Siloam Springs and Fort Smith and Mena and De Queen, not so far from Texarkana. It bounds our 3rd District, which is Republican already, but it also bounds our 4th District, which has a Democratic congressman in Mike Ross.
It's Arkansas extended - that's what I'm trying to say.
The point is that, for all the talk of a new day and of a race that is the Democrats to lose, the Democrats find themselves in old and familiar territory. That is to say they have a nominee whose competitiveness seems foreclosed in large sections of the country, primarily ours.
It is to say Obama will need every state Al Gore and John Kerry won, plus something they couldn't. It is to say that the vital final push likely will have to come not from the South, excluding the ever-competitive Florida, but from the challenging Ohio River Valley, or, more promisingly, in Virginia or out west in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. |
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