WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton’s skin-of-her-teeth victory in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Kentucky is comparable to a contestant who wins a chance to play on “The Price is Right’’ but fails to earn a new car — thanks for participating, here are some parting gifts, now get lost.
That’s because, once the cold winds of November roll around and the former secretary of state’s name appears atop the presidential ballot, her chances of carrying Kentucky are about the same as Opus the penguin winning the 100-yard dash in the summer Olympics. Yes, she captured the primary, barely, but that’s as far as destiny appears willing to carry her.
The just concluded primary accurately charts the decline of the Democratic Party’s influence in the commonwealth and provides a hint that it is moving, perhaps begrudgingly, from its traditional center-right position on the political map toward a quirky, populist kind of progressivism that Kentucky hasn’t seen in some time.
In other words, this is no longer Happy Chandler’s Democratic Party.
Consider the numbers. Just eight years ago, turnout for the primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama reached 43 percent, totaling just under 702,000 votes. This year, Clinton and her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, attracted just a tad under 455,000 Democrats to the polls, about 27 percent, a significant drop off in anyone’s estimation.
Registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans by 393,000 but the gap is closing and much of the edge can be attributed to tradition. Mort Sahl once famously said Unitarians are atheists who can’t kick the habit of going to church on Sunday morning. In many cases, Kentucky voters are Republicans who can’t kick the habit of registering as Democrats at the county courthouse.
Those who remain loyal to the party this go-round stayed home. They may choose to follow suit in November or even head to the polls and pull the lever for the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, whose rhetoric has a certain pull with white, disaffected voters who are legion in the commonwealth.
The numbers for Clinton are stunning despite the fact she eked out a hollow victory, which she worked hard to obtain. In 2008 Clinton won the Kentucky primary against Obama with 459,511 votes. This year she drew significantly less than half that total – 212,550 – which doesn’t bode well for the Democratic ticket in its upcoming November showdown.
One startling statistic: Eight years ago, in the 2008 Kentucky presidential primary, Magoffin County provided Clinton with her largest margin of victory in any county nationwide, delivering 2,719 votes, or 92.98 percent. By contrast, Obama, the next president of the United States by the way, received 5 percent.
This time around, Clinton lost Magoffin County to a dedicated Democratic Socialist, pulling in just 511 votes, good for 42.73 percent.
Obviously something is going on here.
Some of that might have to do with the impolitic comments Clinton offered on the trail, telling an Ohio town hall earlier in the campaign that, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.’’
But there are little more than 120 coal mining jobs in Magoffin County these days and there’s no reason to think the coal economy is going to come rushing back to Salyersville any time soon. And anyone who doesn’t think Sanders is even more dedicated to keeping coal in the ground than Clinton is just kidding himself/herself.
Clinton also lost an advantage she had in 2008, frankly, in that Bernie Sanders is not an African-American from Chicago. It’s certainly possible Democrats went to the polls eight years ago in many jurisdictions and opposed Obama, who lost the state twice by substantial margins in the general election, more than they ever favored Clinton.
Despite these factors Clinton managed to eke out just the slimmest of victories against an opponent who wouldn’t have received a vote for dog catcher back in the days – not all that long ago – when Democrats really ruled the commonwealth’s political roost
But to this point, the Clinton name has always been a popular one in Kentucky political circles, owing, of course, to her husband, Bill (you might have heard of him) who carried the state twice in his two presidential election bids – the last Democrat to do so. The former president campaigned vigorously for his spouse in the state, drawing a huge throng as he ventured into downtown Lexington. And the candidate herself hit the commonwealth’s hustings on three different occasions.
Despite these factors she managed to eke out just the slimmest of victories against an opponent who wouldn’t have received a vote for dog catcher back in the days – not all that long ago – when Democrats really ruled the commonwealth’s political roost.
Sanders, as has been noted, is an unapologetic Democratic Socialist, although that description shouldn’t place him in the same category as other committed socialists, like Uncle Joe Stalin, for instance. Still it’s fair to say his positions place him far to the left on the American political spectrum, which has always proved unstable ground in Kentucky.
The commonwealth did dance with progressivism for a short period in the early part of the 20th Century under the administration of Gov. J.C.W. Beckham, of Bardstown, who took office after the assassination of Gov. William Goebel in 1900. Beckham, entered office and supported the building of roads, enhanced education and was a strong supporter of President Woodrow Wilson when he became the state’s first popularly-elected senator in 1914.
Beckham ran for governor again in 1927 but Kentucky voters were so fed up with progressivism by that time they actually elected, in a rare occurrence, a Republican, Flem Sampson, thus basically ending what stands as the Progressive Era.
Since then some moderate, barely liberal pols like Bert T. Combs and Ned Breathitt have served as governor. But Kentucky has understandably earned its reputation as a conservative bastion and its move toward the GOP shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise.
It figures, then, with traditional Kentucky Democrats either moving to the GOP or staying home because they feel alienated from the new Democratic Party, the state party is becoming more liberal because only the true-believers remain. All this despite efforts by old-style Dems to stay the course and present gubernatorial candidates like Jack Conway and Senate candidates like Alison Lundergan Grimes, both of whom, as you know, performed so well.
(Cough, cough).
How else to explain Sanders, the aforementioned socialist, who managed to attract more than 210,000 votes, nearly outpolling a perfectly acceptable moderate candidate with a track record who attracted the support of nearly everyone in the commonwealth’s Democratic Party establishment? What’s more, Clinton only managed to scrape by as the result of an all-out blitz, campaigning hard for a state that, ultimately, she isn’t destined to win in the general election anyway.
The rise of progressivism, as displayed in Tuesday’s results, may ultimately turn the Kentucky Democratic Party on its ear. But it’s unlikely those turning to the party of Nixon (cough, cough) and, now Trump, (cough, cough, gag) will bother to listen.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.
