Dan Whitfield for U.S. Senator
I am informed by those who are pleased with America’s current political structure that any vote not cast for either a Democrat or a Republican is wasted. I have argued in detail against this simplistic notion before, so suffice it to say here that this false dichotomy is what our two major—and generally right-wing—parties depend on to keep themselves in office. Nevertheless, given the extensive funding and infrastructure that they possess, it is worth attempting to steer them into greater responsiveness to the people when the opportunity arises, as is the case in this year’s Democratic primary and, it is to be hoped, general election.
For the Republicans, it is likely that John Boozman will receive the nomination to run for the seat that he currently holds, but as a leftist, I am unwilling to give up the field to him as the Democrats did in 2020. And in the primary to be held on the 24th of May, there is an alternative that I can give my at least qualified support to.
Three candidates are running to be the Democratic Party’s nominee: Jack Foster, Natalie James, and Dan Whitfield.
Foster has no campaign website available at the time of this writing, but according to an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, he is a former cite council member from Pine Bluff known for his litigious character and felony conviction for extortion—for which he says he should not have been convicted. As to why Arkansans should vote for him, he asserts that he “knows how to get things done.”
Indeed, including earning a no from me.
Natalie James may as well have been produced on the same assembly line that gave us Obama and Biden. Her website offers a lot of vague blather about supporting the current president and making sure that she and her party keep reminding the voters that they are most certainly not Trump for reasons that are she hopes will be obvious. Of particular concern for me are her promises to “defend and improve the Affordable Care Act” and to “reduce Senseless Gun Violence,” the latter being included on a page that is, I presume, unironically headed with “Justice and Liberty for All.”
She may as well have said that she promises to be a cipher, but as I suggested above, this makes her fit solidly in with the leadership of her party, a bunch of hand wringers who see America’s problems as opportunities to feel marginally directed empathy and to show themselves to be in possession of mostly the same corporatist policy offerings, be they with a somewhat more polite phrasing on behalf of favored minority groups. I would suggest to her that this is precisely the sort of thing that will guarantee her a loss in November, but if she does not already know that, I cannot imagine that she would be willing to learn it from me.
The third option is one that drew my attention in 2020. Dan Whitfield attempted to get on the ballot that year after the expected Democratic candidate dropped out, but was unable to qualify, thanks to the disruptions of the pandemic and, if I may speculate here, to the party’s inability to get organized against Tom Cotton, leaving me to wonder what their response will be when the latter runs for president. Whitfield is a political neophyte, having been a working man so far in his adult life. This, alas, will create challenges for him if he wins the Senate seat, particularly in being able to resist the corrosive influence of the party bosses, but he would be able to get advice from (and to light a fire under) Bernie Sanders and to use Ted Cruz as an illustration.
What is of most interest to me are his positions. He would like to have marijuana decriminalized, leaving the states free to decide what they want to do with the drug, while expunging related federal convictions. This is a softer stance than I have taken on the subject, but it would be significant progress. On healthcare and education, he and I are in broad agreement that Medicare for All is the answer to America’s profitable illnesses and that student loan debt should be eliminated while making education past the secondary level free for all who attend public colleges or vocational schools. He identifies himself as pro-life, but also pro-choice with regard to abortion, which may be inevitable in Arkansas, but by this he means something akin, I suspect, to Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare” line in that he wants to make contraceptives readily available and to preserve the choice to have an abortion. This is not as far as I would go here, but then, I am not running for office in a deeply conservative—politically and religiously—state.
Of particular interest for this magazine, Whitfield views the taking away of guns from the law-abiding to be unconstitutional, and though he offers the concession to gun control advocates of supporting some version of universal background checks, in keeping with his above stance on marijuana, he would like to see gun owners or buyers free to follow the drug laws of their states, rather than being forced by the federal government to choose one or the other. He also opposes “bans on possession or transport of firearms,” whatever that might mean.
All of which is to say that though I would like to see him firm up some of his stances and have minor disagreements with some others, if the Democratic Party is to have an interesting candidate to offer in the Senate race of 2022, Dan Whitfield is the best choice. He receives my qualified endorsement.
Does he have a chance to win? I am reminded of the campaign stop that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made in Kansas in 2018. If the Democratic Party is to win meaningful majorities—and more importantly, if the left is either to pull the Democrats back across the center or to build a viable third party—someone has to take the fight into the heartland of the opposition. Republicans have had free rein to characterize progressive policy goals for decades, and while it is my view that they write better campaign advertisements for the left than the Democrats ever do, they should not be allowed to lie about what guaranteed healthcare and higher education, for examples, mean without our voices to correct the record. Dan Whitfield offers Arkansas a working-class Democrat, and he will receive my vote this May and, I hope, this November.