“The Easy Part”
It was a swell week for Arkansas Democrats at the national convention in Denver. But partying down with the lobbyist crowd and patting one another on the back was the easy part, and now they have to return home and sell the people of Arkansas on a Barack Obama presidency. Aaron Sadler of the Stephens Media Washington Bureau (who’s been doing some punchy blogging from Denver, if you missed it previously) reports.
In the meantime, Congressional Quarterly has been keeping score, and they rank Arkansas in the GOP column:
Republicans say they will have no trouble portraying Obama too far to the left. “He has a voting record in the United States Senate that is more liberal than Ted Kennedy and an economic policy that is not consistent with most Arkansans,” says Asa Hutchinson, a former House member and GOP candidate for governor two years ago.
McCain is likely to do well with the state’s rural white voters, a bloc that Obama had difficulty courting in the primary. The traditionally Republican House district in the state’s northwestern corner gave Bush 62 percent in 2004 and is McCain’s surest wellspring of votes, though the other three districts also supported the president’s re-election.
