Our View

Our View

It’s OK, one side is always going to lose the election

Sadly, and unfortunately, there are still a number of concerned Democrats mourning over the fact that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton and the fact that the once influential name of Clinton didn’t mean a thing to the majority of Arkansas voters when it came to voting for former President Bill Clinton’s wife.

In fact, Arkansas voters haven’t voted for a Democratic president since 1996 when they helped elect Bill Clinton, who had previously been Arkansas’ very popular governor.

It was the general consensus among Clinton supporters, particularly many in Arkansas that Hillary would easily beat Trump so much so that there was plans for a major fireworks display and celebration on election night. As election day approached and at the last minute that event was canceled.

Clinton loyalists were under the misguided belief that her last name, her husband and their ties to the state when he was governor would have turned Arkansas from red to blue.

On the contrary, Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won in only eight of the state’s 75 counties, capturing a mere 33.7 percent of the total vote.

As expected, Clinton fared best among the state’s poorest region and those counties predominantly black, but even at that she failed to match President Barrack Obama showing in 2008 and 2012.

The counties that supported Clinton were primarily along the delta region where there are large numbers of citizens who are dependent upon government subsidies and are primarily occupied by blacks. Those counties included Crittenden, St. Francis, Lee, Phillips, Desha and Chicot. The two remaining counties that voted Democrat were Pulaski and neighboring Jefferson.

It was interesting to read an election analysis from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that Trump led 67 percent to 28 percent among the state’s whites without college degrees.

And, he captured 62 percent of the rural vote. Only 56.2 percent of Arkansans live in urban areas; nationally the figure is 80.7 percent.

It comes as no surprise that Trump also secured an impressive 81 percent of the white evangelical vote.

Despite the aggressive and deliberate attack by the liberal media, particularly constant comments from the print media columnists in Little Rock it was clear the majority of Arkansans paid little or no attention to such political fodder.

The stories the state’s so-called expert political pundits are putting out say Democratic leaders were counting on Clinton, an Illinois native to fare better than Obama.

One political science professor said a lot of Democrats assumed that their recent decline in numbers were because of Obama.

Republican Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin told reporters Clinton cut most of her ties with the state when she moved to the White House in 1993 and the Clinton’s decision to live there instead of Arkansas.

Oh, and there are such excuses she lost Arkansas because she was a Democrat, that she never developed the kind of bonds with Arkansas that her husband had and that her liberal social issues didn’t fare well among the majority of the state’s Christian conservatives.

For better or worse there are those hardcore liberals who must accept our Democratic process just as those anti-Obama foes had to do eight years ago.