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Obama's regional problem, Part II Thursday, Jun 12, 2008 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. Boren's is a conservative district and one of the largest geographically in the country, owing to the sparse population. It went 66 percent for Hillary Clinton over Obama in the Democratic primary on Super Tuesday and it went heavily for George W. Bush in the general elections in 2000 and 2004. Boren, son of former U.S. Sen. David Boren, can read those returns. He told the Tulsa World that he could not endorse Obama. He said he admired Obama's rhetoric about a new politics, but pointed out that Obama had been rated the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. He said that didn't seem so new to him. He said he had to respect the will of his constituents. In a way this means nothing. Obama can't compete in Arkansas without Hillary as his running mate. Obama is going to get pummeled in Oklahoma either way because Oklahoma is Arkansas without those enlightened (or static, if you prefer) Democratic influences. 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. ____ One of Fox News' recent biased outrages cannot go unmentioned. One of its thigh-exposing, high-heeled blonde female announcers teased a story the other day about Barack and Michelle Obama's bumping their fists playfully that night the nomination was clinched. She did so by wondering aloud what the gesture represented and listing a few options, one of which was a "terrorist fist jab." Ask anyone who follows or plays sports. You bump fists for the same reason you did the old high-five. In tennis doubles it says, "Good shot there, partner." They've been doing it after home runs for a more than a decade. The blonde had to come back later and say she hadn't meant to call the Obamas terrorists. But I suspect her scriptwriter had. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
