Progressive Politics

Holy shit - that’s a HUGE margin

It's partially that but there are other factors too. The national Democratic party pretty much abandoned Arkansas after they got destroyed in elections during the early 2010's. There hasn't been a truly serious candidate for national office and maybe one serious candidate for governor since then. Lot of offices have had Republicans running uncontested. There were a handful of positions on the ballot yesterday with no Democratic contestant. Every position had at least one Republican candidate.

Hell, Tom Cotton ran for re-election uncontested in 2020. Tom Fucking Cotton. A collosal dick that basically no one likes. Oddly enough, think he might actually have some serious competition this time and I think his campaign is actually nervous. I don't have any data to back that up. I'm just going off the sheer volume of spam texts I've been getting along the lines of, "Hallie Shoffner wants you to believe she's a farmer. Now I know she can fix a John Deere tractor with a paperclip and seems to know an awful lot about livestock and row crops and her dad's dad's dad was a farmer in the town named after her family but don't you let that fool you. Hallie Shoffner is no farmer. Hallie Shoffner is a supporter of the TrAnS AgEnDA."

Like, that's all they've got. Bullshit and bigotry. And it looks fucking weak. It's going to be an uphill battle but if Hallie is wise enough to actually drive around the state and go talk to people, she might actually have a chance at unseating Tom Cotton.

If the Democrats want to retake states like Arkansas, they're going to have to accept that no amount of sardonic tweets or carefully planned social media campaigns are going to replace going outside and talking to people.