After devastating statewide losses in the last
two general elections in Kentucky, bluegrass Democrats are frantically trying
to figure out how they can stem the rising Republican tide in what was once a
stronghold for their party.
Jack Conway’s surprising loss to Matt Bevin in
this year’s gubernatorial election, coupled with Alison Lundergan Grimes’
poll-busting failure to unseat incumbent U. S. Sen. Mitch McConnell last year,
has the Kentucky Democratic Party scrambling to answer questions about their
future.
One answer, frequently mentioned by the more
liberal wing of the party, is that Conway and Grimes were too conservative.
These activists believe the best way for Democrats to win elections in Kentucky
is to nominate leftist candidates.
Republicans have to be salivating at those
prospects. One can almost see the party leaders, in the best tradition of Brer
Rabbit, yelling, “Please don’t throw us in that briar patch!”
For years I’ve maintained that Kentucky Democrats
are nothing like their cousins from Massachusetts or San Francisco. Kentucky
Democrats are generally much more conservative on cultural and moral issues
than are Democrats on the coasts and in the northeast. Someone like the late
Teddy Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi would have a great deal of trouble being elected
anywhere in Kentucky besides the liberal enclaves of Louisville and a few ZIP
codes in Lexington.
Conway and Grimes had to stake out positions to
the right of the national party in order to have any chance at all of being
elected in Kentucky. To do otherwise would have resulted in even greater losses
than what they suffered. There aren’t enough true liberals in Kentucky who could
have rallied to their sides to offset more conservative Democrats – what used
to be called “blue dog Democrats” – who would either vote for the Republican
who more closely represents their beliefs, or not vote altogether.
The Democrats’ theory got a bit of a test last
year. Elisabeth Jensen, an Elizabeth Warren-wannabe, challenged first-term
incumbent Andy Barr for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barr had
defeated an incumbent with a golden Kentucky political surname, Ben Chandler,
two years prior despite the 6th District having been gerrymandered to be more
favorable to Democrats. Not only does it contain Democrat fortress counties
like Franklin and Fayette, but three other counties where Conway beat Bevin
(Bath, Bourbon and Nicholas). And that fails to mention Wolfe County, which is
also now in the 6th District but has absolutely no business being there from either
a geographical or sociological perspective, which also went for Conway over
Bevin. Despite those advantages, Jensen lost to Barr by a larger margin than
Grimes lost to McConnell.
If Kentucky Democrats need more liberal
candidates to win elections, then why didn’t a liberal like Jensen beat Barr in
a favorable district? Possibly because hard-core liberalism doesn’t go over
well in most parts of Kentucky?
Liberal pundits and some activists, however,
continue to pound home the point that liberal candidates can succeed; and are,
in fact, the only obstacle keeping Kentucky from future Republican dominance.
They’ll get a perfect chance to prove that assertion next year, when Democrat
voters go to the polls in May to choose a presidential nominee.
To hear national liberal crusaders tell it, Sen.
Bernie Sanders is the perfect candidate. He wants to tax everyone into oblivion
and then give free stuff to everybody. He’s represented Vermont in the Senate
as an independent for years, but he’s an admitted socialist, which would seem
to make him the ideal candidate for the Democratic National Committee. Sanders
makes Hillary Clinton, herself a fairly radical liberal, look like a
conservative.
If Kentucky Democrats are serious about their
party needing more liberal candidates, then they should turn out in droves to
nominate Sanders. But that’s not likely to happen. Sanders will be lucky to
pull 25 percent of the vote in May, and Clinton will win the Kentucky primary
in a landslide. And then she will lose in the general election despite her
husband’s sustained popularity here and despite the support of the state’s
leading Democrats like Grimes and Greg Stumbo.
Democrats are losing their grip on power in
Kentucky for several reasons. Not being liberal enough is not one of them. Much
of the electorate’s dissatisfaction with them stems from their failure to move
Kentucky forward despite decades of control. A sudden lurch to the left isn’t
going to fix what’s wrong with their party or their policies.
