Bill Straub: What to make of outcome? Dems plain blew it; Bevin played culture card; voters slept in

So, what to make of Republican governor-elect Matt Bevin’s smashing victory over Democrat Jack Conway Tuesday night?

Bevin, a Louisville businessman, reaped about 52 percent of the vote despite never having held an elected position before. He displayed an alarming unfamiliarity with the truth on a more than occasional basis, consistently refused to release his tax returns to provide voters with a look into his personal finances, displayed a downright nasty disposition with his propensity to pick a fight with whoever was standing in front of him, insulted both of the commonwealth’s U.S. senators, including one running for president, and flip-flopped on so many positions that it remains impossible to ascertain where he stands on just about any issue confronting 21st Century Kentucky.

Otherwise he ran a great campaign.

Elections never hinge on a single factor. They are like a stew – a whole lot of ingredients go in, some enhance the flavor, others might transform it into a something reminiscent of dishwater. This contest was no different but several aspects stand out.

The first is turnout. A paltry 30 percent of Kentucky’s registered voters bothered to make their way to the polls, an embarrassing total given the fact that they were being asked to select a candidate to run the state for the next four years.

As usual, Republicans did a superior job turning their folks out. Democrats, it seems, are only capable of finding their way to the polls once every four years, that coming when a president is being elected. One person, can’t recall who, noted that the U.S. is a center-left country every leap year, and center-right the rest of the time.

That is not only a failure of registered Democrats but the organization as a whole. The party doesn’t concentrate on GOTV and it pays a steep price for what seems like a neverending breakdown. It has cost the Dems a great many state legislatures, those groups in charge of redistricting every 10 years, so it winds up hurting the party in the U.S. House of Representatives as well.

Ultimately, the failure to get out the vote results in a weak bench because there exists a dearth of elected officials in lower offices that can then be promoted for higher positions. That was apparent in this year’s state auditor’s race. Incumbent Adam Edelen, a Democrat who, by all measures, performed admirably in the post, was considering a campaign against Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green. He lost his re-election bid because the party failed to get its supporters to the polls. Now Paul and the GOP will more than likely get a free ride.

Until Democrats perform the unromantic drudgery of convincing their folks to actually go out and vote they’re destined to the fate that befell them on Tuesday. This all goes back to the Democratic National Committee, which too often seems concerned only with electing the next president. When Howard Dean was chairperson of the DNC from 2005 to 2009 he instituted, amid substantial criticism, what was termed the 50 State Strategy, committing the Democratic Party to winning elections at every level in every region of the country, toiling to organize Democrats in every voting precinct in America.

For reasons unknown a lot of Democratic insiders, people like Rahm Emanuel and Paul Begala, scoffed at Dean’s ambitions and he was ousted soon after President Obama assumed office. Now the party is paying the price, as evidenced by the returns in Kentucky where nobody showed up to vote and there are few viable elected officials available to seek higher office.

That’s why Kentucky Democrats wind up pinning their hopes on the likes of Conway, the attorney general who has now proved several times over that he simply doesn’t have what it takes. That’s not saying he wouldn’t have made a halfway decent governor but electrifying he was not. Conway’s presence on the ballot alone obviously wasn’t sufficient to bring Democratic voters out. They needed a spur, and the party at both the state and national level has simply refused to provide it.

Which brings us to Bevin, who may be the least qualified individual to hold the position in the commonwealth’s long history. The final totals show Bevin with 511,771 votes, more than the 464,245 Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, garnered four years ago and a whopping 217,737 more than David Williams, the 2011 GOP standard bearer.

So it’s pretty obvious Bevin was able to produce his vote. But the question arises: Why did so many people pull the lever for a neophyte who — and this is not being too critical – lied his way through much of the campaign and exhibited none of the temperament required to serve as governor of the commonwealth?

Most elections, at least in the past, have revolved around the economy. It was James Carville, in leading former President Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, who constantly reminded those around him “It’s the economy, stupid.’’ If that were the case in Kentucky this go-round, Conway likely would have won. Under Beshear, the state’s unemployment rate rests at 5 percent, slightly below the national average. Toyota opened up in new Lexus line just last month and the Georgetown plant is now the company’s largest facility anywhere in the world.

By historical standards, the Kentucky economy is doing okay. So, for the real story we turn to President Obama, in more ways than one. Back in 2008, during his first successful White House campaign, Obama spoke at a fundraiser in San Francisco, which is about as far culturally from most of Kentucky as possible, and uttered these words:

“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Now Obama was referring to working class voters in declining industrial cities at the time but he might as well have been talking about a substantial portion of the Kentucky electorate. He was widely criticized for his remarks. That figures since they were completely on target.

The 2015 election for governor in Kentucky was not based on policies or issues. It was based on culture. According to 2014 census figures, 88.3 percent of the commonwealth’s 4.4 million residents are white, making the state paler than the nation as a whole. Many of these folks fear their culture is under siege and they believe voting for someone like Bevin provides them with an opportunity to fight back against the forces attacking their way of life.

Kentucky as a state has always seemed more culturally mindful than most places. Bourbon and bluegrass and horses. There was burley growing high over the long summer and hung up in black barns that still dot the landscape. The aforementioned Carville once talked about how, in Kentucky, a candidate could talk about the beauty of the rolling hills, the stone fences, basketball, “My Old Kentucky Home’’ and tears would flow from the eyes of the electorate. Try that in some other place, like New Jersey, he said, and people laugh in your face.

There exists a strong feeling of place in Kentucky. And in many precincts there exists a nagging perception that the culture is disappearing along with a desire to see that it is preserved. A statement left over from the beginnings of the Tea Party movement – “I want my country back’’ – continues to ring with the clarity of a bell in much of the commonwealth.

Folks are wary of movements like Black Lives Matter. They don’t much care for 11 million undocumented workers, many of them brown folks from Central America, passing over the border. Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts. Organizations want to confiscate their guns and church attendance is on a downward slide – the Pew Research Center just revealed that the percentage of those who say they believe in God, pray daily and regularly go to church has declined in recent years.

And then there are the gay folks who now have the constitutional right to get married to an individual of the same sex. It would be a mistake to undervalue the impact Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis – who went to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples – had on the outcome. Bevin tied himself closely to the Davis cause.

Those folks were actually motivated and they voted for Bevin, who pulled all the right cultural chords. It didn’t hurt that he emerged from the political party that opposes Obama, the target of an almost incomprehensible hatred in many quarters simply because he views the national culture in a starkly different way, owing at least in part to the fact that he is African-American.

There were no decisive issues. Obamacare may have played an insignificant role but the consequences may change if Bevin follows through on indications that the system will change, hence depriving about 400,000 of the health insurance the program enabled them to attain.

It should be noted that the 2015 gubernatorial election offers absolutely no clues about the potential outcome of next year’s presidential election. Kentucky always was destined to support whoever the Republican Party puts up. That certainly hasn’t changed.

It’s like Paul Simon once wrote, “laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose, any way you look at it you lose.’’

And Joe DiMaggio is still gone.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.