When Democrats should vote for Republicans

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

A couple of thousand mostly Democratic-leaning participants gave Sen. Tom Cotton an earful last week during his rowdy town hall meeting in Springdale. While civic engagement is good (and civil discourse would be even better), most of those folks would accomplish more by voting in the Republican Party primary.

That’s because, for the foreseeable future, Arkansas is going to be a mirror image of what it’s been for much of its past, and that’s a reliably one-party state. After 150 years of being dominated by Democrats and a brief period from 2008-12 when it was competitive, the state will be ruled by Republicans for a while, if not the rest of most of our lives.

Cotton knows this, which is why he was willing to endure an uncomfortable couple of hours that will not change the way he votes. He knows the people who took their shots at him represent a fraction of the state’s voters and were not going to vote for him anyway.

Most parts of Arkansas are dominated by one party at the state and national level – mostly the Republicans except in urban areas and parts of eastern Arkansas with high minority populations, which are decidedly Democrat.

That reality means we don’t have competitive races hardly anywhere. In the 2016 elections, President Trump beat Hillary Clinton 61-34, none of the congressional races were close (and only one even featured a Democrat), and only seven of the 41 competitive state legislative races were decided by less than 10 points, five in the Republican candidate’s favor. Three of those seven involved a Democratic incumbent losing to a Republican challenger.

So each May, Democratic voters in a lot of places may have to make the same choice some Republicans used to have to make: Voting in the other party’s primary for the candidate they can live with, and then voting in the general election for the doomed candidate they want – assuming their party fields a candidate.

Moving forward, the most important divides in Arkansas politics often are not going to be between Republicans and Democrats but between Republicans and other Republicans on an issue by issue basis. To use one example, at the national level, there’s a very real difference between how Cotton sees trade with Cuba (continue the embargo) and how Sen. John Boozman and U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford from the agricultural 1st District see it (open it up some).

At the state level, a number of issues are determined not by what the two parties argue about, but by which Republicans occupy Republican-dominated seats. A big issue this legislative session has been a proposed tort reform constitutional amendment that would cap the amount of punitive and noneconomic damages awarded in lawsuits. Democratic legislators are completely against it, and presumably so would be most of the attendees at the Cotton rally. But the issue has also split Republican legislators, some of whom oppose the proposal. Health care is on the back burner while everyone waits to see what happens in Washington. Once there’s more clarity there (whenever that happens), there’s going to be a huge fight at the State Capitol, often pitting Republicans against other Republicans.

If this sounds like I’m offering unsolicited advice to Democrats – I’m not, although somebody surely should. This message is for anyone of any persuasion who wants their vote to matter most. Aside from very important ballot initiatives like medical marijuana and tort reform, the state’s political direction will be decided at least as much in May party primaries as in November general elections. In fact, in Arkansas, that’s pretty much the way it’s always been.

By the numbers, 645,000 Arkansans voted in the 2016 primaries while 1.1 million voted in the general election, a difference of 500,000 people.

No doubt much of that was driven by the presidential race, which was a foregone conclusion in Arkansas in November but still competitive in May. As a result, in a state with 1.7 million registered voters, Trump won the Republican Party primary (and inevitably its six electoral votes) because 134,744 voted for him then, while the rest were voting somewhere else, for someone else, or not at all.

Those 134,744 voters had a lot louder voice than anyone at a town hall, it turns out.

Could Democrats become states’ rights party?

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

People tend to think about how things work in relation to how well they’re working for them. That’s why some Democrats, who’ve won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in two of the last five elections, want to get rid of the Electoral College, while many Republicans say it’s a pillar of democracy. If the results had been reversed, so would have been the arguments.

Which leads us to the 10th Amendment, sometimes known as federalism or states’ rights.

The 10th Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” As the national government has grown in recent years, it has been the most ignored amendment outside of the 18th, the one that prohibited the sale of alcohol, which was repealed by the 21st.

Some conservatives have called for bringing back the 10th Amendment, particularly during the last eight years when they didn’t like what the federal government was doing. They say states have different cultures, economies and histories and should be able to enact policies that fit themselves. Moreover, states should have the freedom to be laboratories of democracy, where ideas are subject to experimentation and then can be copied, modified or rejected by other states and the federal government.

Democrats have looked skeptically at returning power to the states, largely because the idea of “states’ rights” has been used to justify racial and other types of discrimination, including in Arkansas. Moreover, moving power to the states would make it harder to enact sweeping programs at the federal level, such as Obamacare.

But now here’s what Democrats, particularly in blue states, are facing. President Trump occupies the White House and leads the executive branch, and he has already nominated a Supreme Court justice who will give conservatives a 5-4 majority. Among the four “liberal” justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 and Stephen Breyer is 78, while the sometimes swing voter, Anthony Kennedy, is 80. By the time Trump leaves office, the Court could have a conservative tilt for decades to come.

Republicans also control the House and the Senate. True, Democrats could take back the Senate in 2018, but they would have to overcome two challenges. First, Republicans tend to do better in midterm elections because their older, more conservative voters vote more often. And second, Democrats have more to lose next year. Of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs, eight are held by Republicans and 23 are held by Democrats, while the other two seats are held by independents who vote with Democrats. Ten Democratic senators are running for re-election in states carried by Trump in 2016.

Democrats also face another problem with the national map: where they live. Democrats tend to cluster in big cities while Republicans are spread across the country, which is why Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million people but lost the election, and why there are more red states than blue ones. Demographic changes – an increasingly more diverse population in many parts of the country – have been expected to counteract this, but they obviously didn’t in 2016.

The result of all this is that some blue states, particularly California, are really getting the short end of the stick, and will continue to do so. With more than 39 million people, California’s population is almost as large as the 22 smallest states combined, including Arkansas. The people of those states have 44 U.S. senators between them, while Californians have two. It’s no wonder California is a donor state, meaning it sends more money to Washington, D.C., then it gets back. And it’s no wonder that there’s a growing movement among Californians to try to secede from the union. In fact, blue states tend to be donor states across the board, while red states tend to be receivers.

So could Democrats, particularly in big blue states like California, embrace returning some power to the states? If states had more power, President Trump would be less important, his secretary of education couldn’t tell people how to run their schools, and blue staters could keep more of their tax dollars.

So we’ll close with two questions. First, will Democrats give the 10th Amendment a try, now that they aren’t in charge of any part of the federal government?

And second, will Republicans turn their backs on the 10th Amendment, now that they are in charge of all of it?

Cotton the populist

Sen. Tom Cotton

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Sen. Tom Cotton made a name for himself because of his combat service, support for the military, opposition to the Iran deal, and fierce criticism of President Obama. These days, he’s talking a lot about a top issue in the 2016 presidential campaign – immigration, and not just the illegal kind.

Cotton has expressed support for the president’s border wall with Mexico and for his refugee policies, while also raising the ante by introducing the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.

Cotton’s RAISE Act would reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted into the country from more than 1 million in 2015 to a little more than 500,000 by the act’s 10th year. It would do so by eliminating preferences for some adult family members, eliminating a lottery system that is supposed to increase the diversity of immigrants but which Cotton says really doesn’t, and limiting the number of refugees to 50,000 per year.

Cotton’s argument is that immigrants are creating surplus labor, driving down wages in low-skilled jobs and making it harder for certain Americans (including the immigrants who are already here) to get ahead. As long as a new immigrant is willing to work a job for subsistence wages, then that’s what the job will pay. It’s a pretty good deal for corporations that profit off cheap labor, Cotton says, but not for blue-collar Americans.

These are not brand-new stances for Cotton, but they and other bread-and-butter issues are getting more emphasis since you-know-who was elected president. On Feb. 16, Cotton criticized the high cost of a prescription drug on the Senate floor by saying, “We should be channeling people’s ambition and entrepreneurial spirit into finding cures, not finding new and clever ways to make a profit.” It wasn’t long ago that few Republicans would ever use the word “profit” negatively in any circumstance.

For decades, the Republican Party has been composed of an increasingly awkward alliance between big business interests and culturally conservative Americans. Those two groups’ interests are not always aligned economically, particularly for Americans without a college degree, who have not recovered much in this economic recovery while the rich have gotten a lot richer.

In election after election, Republican candidates have bridged that gap by mixing pro-big business politics with culturally conservative stances on social issues, all seasoned with promises of tax cuts that everyone likes. The formula has worked particularly well among whites without a college degree. According to the Pew Research Center, John McCain won that group of voters 58-40 percent in 2008, while Mitt Romney, the ultimate big business elite candidate, won by an even bigger margin, 61-36.

In 2016, Trump ran a different kind of Republican campaign by appealing to those culturally conservative voters on both social issues and economic issues, helping him pick up just enough new voters to win key states. Trump ran as a populist, his message being that the common man is being hurt by the kind of “unfair trade deals” that big business Republicans (and big business Democrats) have often supported. As a result, according to the Pew Research Center, Trump won the votes of 67 percent of whites without a college degree versus only 28 percent who supported Hillary Clinton, a bigger spread than in 2012 or 2008. That gap is one reason he won 107,000 more votes than she did in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, just enough to make him president.

It’s a potent formula in certain parts of the country, including Arkansas. At the moment, Republican elected officials in those parts oppose Trump at their own peril. So we’re watching one of two things happen: either a historical anomaly that will correct itself in four years, or the transformation of a party as it better aligns itself with its own voters and potential voters. Democrats, who lost in 2016 after nominating a candidate who didn’t match their own voters’ mood, probably will undergo their own transformation in 2020.

The country’s already cynical enough, and I try not to add to that cynicism. Cotton’s recent emphasis does not equate to insincerity. I’m not saying his principles have changed, but it’s fair to say he has made an adjustment in his politics in the age of Trump.

So have a lot of other Republicans, and if they haven’t, they’d probably better.

Tort reform: Shades of gray

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas legislators sometimes cast difficult votes on shades-of-gray issues where values conflict and where it comes down to which side they think is more right or less wrong. In November 2018, so will voters.

That’s because the biggest race on the ballot won’t involve candidates. Instead, it’s looking like the biggest issue will be a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit how much juries can award in a lawsuit. It’s going to be a heck of a fight. In fact, it already is.

Every two years, legislators are allowed under the Constitution to refer three amendments to the voters, but this time they plan to limit it to two, one each from the House and the Senate. Thirty-one amendments were proposed between both chambers, but it’s been clear for a while that the Senate would focus on a tort reform measure. Senate Joint Resolution 8, sponsored by Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, has 14 co-sponsors in the 35-member Senate and 53 co-sponsors in the 100-member House. It is backed, strongly, by a coalition of powerful business groups under the umbrella of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.

The amendment would do four things. First, it would cap punitive damages – those that really punish a bad actor – at three times the compensatory damage awarded each claimant, with an exception created for intentional conduct. Legislators could vote to increase the cap with a two-thirds vote. Second, it would cap non-economic damages (pain and suffering) at $250,000 per claimant, or $500,000 to the beneficiaries if the victim dies. Third, it would cap lawyers’ contingency fees at one-third the total judgment. Finally, it would give legislators the final say in various rules for the courts and the Arkansas Supreme Court, a provision included because supporters say the Court otherwise could just ignore the rest of the amendment.

On Tuesday, the all-Republican Senate State Agencies and Government Affairs Committee advanced only that measure to the full Senate, politely hearing but never seriously considering the other Senate proposals. But it only passed 5-3, even though you would think Republicans would be totally for it because it’s pro-business and anti-lawyer. One senator who didn’t raise his hand, Sen. Terry Rice, R-Waldron, said afterwards only that he “wasn’t ready to vote.”

On Thursday, the full Senate approved it, but again, not overwhelmingly. A number of senators initially declined to vote until they saw the initial count, and then one by one, the number rose until it had enough votes. It was pretty dramatic, actually.

It still must pass the House, which it should do. Assuming it makes the ballot, then voters will be lobbied hard by well-funded opponents – the business community and the healthcare community on one side versus the legal community on the other.

Supporters will say that under current laws, businesses and healthcare providers must defend themselves against dubious lawsuits with the threat of a jackpot verdict always hanging over their heads. Small business owners live in fear of a lawsuit that will put them out of business. Doctors and hospitals pay sky-high medical malpractice insurance rates and order unnecessary tests and procedures to keep from being sued. Without tort reform, big employers will bring, or take, their jobs to other states.

Opponents will argue the amendment sets penalties so low that they don’t even amount to a slap on the wrist for big businesses. They’ll say it puts a price tag on human life, weakens a fundamental right to a trial by jury, and assumes Arkansas juries will not make commonsense decisions. Even some Republicans say it interferes with individuals paying their lawyer whatever they want. Finally, the part about the Legislature telling the Arkansas Supreme Court how to set its own rules – that was one of the things troubling Sen. Rice.

Tort reform is a big issue, and it will be fought with big dollars. But for many voters, it will be about the small: the local hardware store owner afraid of losing everything he’s worked for; the rural family doctor contemplating closing her practice and moving to a big-city hospital that will take care of her malpractice insurance; the child who lost his daddy because of a corporation’s negligence.

In other words, there’s a lot of gray, or at least, there’s a lot of black and white on both sides. You ready to vote?

All politics is now national

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

“All politics is local,” the late U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, but that’s no longer the case. Now, all politics is national.

That’s according to Dr. Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political science professor who spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service Thursday.

Abramowtiz said straight ticket voting, where voters choose candidates from the same party in all races, reached its highest level in 2012 in the 60 years that it’s been studied, and preliminary research shows 2016 no doubt followed that trend. That’s increasingly true whether voters are strong partisans, weak partisans, or independents who lean toward one party or the other. Most of those last folks are just “closet partisans” who won’t admit to themselves or to others that they are really a Republican or Democrat.

Abramowitz said this trend is being fueled by two causes: the increasing influence of presidential elections on down-ballot races, and the rise of “negative partisanship.” That’s where Americans are increasingly voting in partisan ways not because they like their party more but because they dislike the other party so much.

It wasn’t long ago that states and districts commonly selected one party’s candidate for president and the other party’s candidates in some of the congressional and other major races. The most famous example in Arkansas occurred in 1968, when voters pulled the lever for independent presidential candidate George Wallace, Democratic Sen. William Fulbright, and Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. Even as Democrats dominated Arkansas politics until 2010, the state was voting for the Republican in every presidential election starting in 1980 except for 1992 and 1996, when a native son was on the ballot.

Back then, Arkansas Democrats could differentiate themselves from the national party even if they were more liberal than their constituents by restraining their impulses and emphasizing their independence.

Now, it’s all about the party and the presidential candidate. Asked by American National Election Studies to rate parties on a temperature scale with 100 being hottest and 0 being coldest, since 1978 Americans have consistently rated their own party around 70 degrees. However, the opposing party had dropped from just below 50 degrees to 30 degrees by 2012. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats rated President Trump at zero, and 56 percent of Republicans gave Hillary Clinton the same score. Sen. Mark Pryor’s incumbency and last name netted him all of 39 percent against Sen. Tom Cotton in 2014, when Pryor was one of four Democratic incumbent senators to lose in states that had voted for Republican Mitt Romney two years earlier. In 2016, all 34 Senate races were won by the candidate whose presidential candidate won the state. In fact, the only two incumbent senators who lost were Republicans in states won by Clinton. Of the 435 U.S. House seats, 400 were won by the candidate whose party’s presidential candidate won their district.

The old tools – incumbency, principled leadership, dedicated constituent service, even bringing home the bacon – simply don’t cut it any more. Pity the Democratic state legislators in Arkansas who try to buck the trend by explaining to 30,000 (in the House) and 86,000 (in the Senate) constituents why they’re still Democrats but different than Nancy Pelosi. That’s why Democrats in this state are either losing, not running for re-election, or switching parties, as three state legislators did following the November elections.

In hindsight, Gov. Mike Beebe’s 64-36 re-election in 2010 against a decent Republican opponent, and subsequent high poll numbers throughout the rest of his term, remain one of the most impressive political achievements of recent years. Of course, he didn’t have to run in 2014, as Pryor did.

Abramowitz did not offer much hope for Arkansas Democrats, or for the declining numbers of us truly independent voters, or for people who just don’t like partisan politics. We’re now trapped in a cycle. Politics in Washington, D.C., is becoming increasingly confrontational, which fuels voter disgust mostly with the other party, which encourages even more confrontational behavior in Washington, D.C.

So for the foreseeable future, all politics, or at least most of it, will be national. I wonder what Tip O’Neill, the dealmaker, would have to say about that. I wonder if he even would have been elected.