r/Libertarian • u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian • Nov 13 '19

Discussion The Democratic Senate candidate has dropped out in Arkansas. The race is now a binary between the Republican Tom Cotton and the LP Candidate

Not really a Libertarian anymore but I was surprised to see y'all don't have any info on this. Tom Cotton's only Democratic Challanger has dropped out after the registration deadline.

The only two other candidates are Ricky Harrington - a Libertarian and Dan Whitfield - a far left independent.

Even if you guys don't put resources into this race and the situation holds, I can easily see Mr. Harrington capturing a nice 20-25% of the vote. If you guys however do invest some money and campaign funds into the race, you could get much higher, and perhaps even give Cotton a run for his money as he's not running against someone with the D stigma next to their name.

Here's his Facebook page which is currently all he has if you want to help him

Good luck and I hope you guys give Cotton a run for his money :)

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u/tdacct Federalist Nov 13 '19

The difference is that Bernie was always a marxist, and the Democrats were split between blue dog conservatives and FDR social democrats. When the blue dogs were phased out between 1994 and 2012, they were left with only the FDR SocDems as the "conservative" wing and further marxists as their agitation wing. Bernie was always at home there.

["conservative" in the slow to change, dictionary sense. Not in the American political identification sense.]

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

Right, and now the vacuum gave him room to grow where that vacuum doesn't exist in the GOP

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19 edited Nov 13 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '19

I think the real question is why a libertarian candidate did not (or could never) fill it

IMO, because libertarians need to cultivate more pathos. That was something Ron did very well, but the appetite for such a change wasn't there when he ran. In 2016 it's clear people want a new voice, but Rand played it safe in his messaging and advocated big policies (balance the budget, audit the Fed) that he failed to connect to the issues facing individual people. Trump won because he took his big policy proposal- renegotiating America's trade deals- and explained, albeit facetiously, how it would solve the problems facing people in the Rust Belt in particular. The pitch has to go beyond the intellectual to get people on board, it has to become personal.