In 2006, ineffective Bush Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito won re-election with 57 percent of the vote in a year that saw Democrats take over the House nationally.

Obama's primary performance in West Virgina was by all accounts pretty pathetic. He didn't win anywhere (although he did only lose Jefferson County 49/46), and there has been a lot of discussion about his "problem" in that part of the country. Notwithstanding that, this story is heartening, so I bring it to you to brighten your day.

In the last year, West Virginia has taken quite a few hits in the media. A journalist friend described it as a "target-rich environment."

The hits I'm thinking about now are images hurtling through the Web and airwaves portraying us as racist and xenophobic. Obviously, West Virginia, like other places, has its share of racists and bigots - and quite a few of them wound up talking to the press.

But I get upset when people paint the whole state and its history with that brush. West Virginia has a pretty interesting past in terms of race relations. Even before statehood, there were tensions between western mountaineers and the slaveholding elite that dominated Virginia politics.

To The Honorable Shelley Moore Capito:

I am writing as a concerned citizen of both the United States and your district to express my concern over you recent vote for the FISA bill. While I understand that we must act to protect America, we must keep in mind that we must also protect America from ourselves.

Ben Franklin said that the society that gives up a little bit of freedom for the sake of protection will soon have neither. As we go forward in the post-9/11 world, we must keep this mind. Already we have given up too many of our freedoms to the Executive branch, and a compliant congress stood by and did nothing for fear of political retribution.

I stumbled onto an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic which discussed one of the places in the West Virginia Panhandle, where I live, that I have shopped at: the local Wal-Mart.

Or, as he put it, the "crappiest Wal-Mart in America".  An exerpt:

If you want to see the underside of the unregulated capitalist economy, the people who can't find the non-existent escape ladder from poverty and its pathologies, visit the Martinsburg, West Virginia Wal-Mart. Morbid obesity; spontaneous, public bouts of corporal punishment directed against dirty children; ten-year girls dressed as whores; tattoos running up necks and down legs; smoking like you only see these days in Baku; it's all here.

Part of this diary was originally published on June 9 at West Virginia Blue.

My connecting train was late tonight. It was hot as hell and I struck up a conversation with three young men, two black, one white, at the station about the heat and the lateness of the train. When we boarded, someone warned us the next car down didn’t have air conditioning working so I went up to the second deck and all the way to the end seat where I could stretch out. The other three followed me up and I had the end seat facing them as they sat sideways.

The man sitting closest to me, an African American in his 20s, was muscular with a tattoo of a flaming skull on his left bicep with "Protect Me From Evil" written around it (the skull not the bicep). He pulled out a book, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father. His friends also began reading their books too though I could not see the titles.

Over the jump is a (hopefully logical) progression that came to me as I played with the question that will continue to engross us for the next couple of months - who would make the best vice-president for a President Obama?

I watched the truly excellent David Novack documentary ‘Burning the Future’ last weekend. The film focuses on the effects certain coal industry practises have on the communities of West Virginia.

I‘ve embedded a 2 minute preview of the movie below but there's an extended version on Coalmine’s youtube page and loads more information at www.burninghtefuture.com or at the Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now - CLEAN.





It's is an all too (depressingly) familiar story about (literally) dirty business as usual, outrageous corporate abuses protected by outrageous political abuses.

Connecticut

Rasmussen. 5/29. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (3/11 results)

Rasmussen notes that the previous poll was pre-Wright. My theory was that Obama's Democratic support had probably soften thanks to the primary. So it was time to dig into the internals:

Hmmm. Obama has weakened with independents, which could point to a Wright Effect. But he has also weakened a dramatic 14 points with Democrats, which is a clear Primary Effect. But unlike most other places, Obama hasn't bled female support. It looks like male Democrats have decided to step back and further evaluate the candidates (and even flirt with McCain). This state won't be competitive when everyone comes home.

Nor should West Virginia be competitive, but McCain is showing some surprising early weakness.

West Virginia

Rasmussen. 6/2. Likely voters. MoE 4% (No trend lines)

The crosstabs:

Kerry only won Democrats in West Virginia by a 69-30 margin in 2004, so they are already not a bunch inclined to vote en masse for their presidential candidate. And it would take an epic McCain collapse for Obama to match those numbers, much less improve on them.

It appears that McCain's weakness with Republicans and independents is making this race artificially close. But when Republicans come home, and the Appalachian Democrats don't, this state will likely go Red. This is certainly one of those few states in which Hillary would've done better. (But of course, we already knew that.)

Maybe this shouldn't be a shock considering its historically blue, but according to a new Rasmussen poll, Obama is down only 8 points to McCain after losing to Hillary Clinton by 41 points in the primary there.

Logically I've always known that a vote for Hillary was not a vote against Obama; and that primary results don't necessarily correlate with general election results. Still, thats a pretty massive swing. Especially when you consider that unlike the primary the general population contains many hundreds of thousands of Republicans.

So, remember a few weeks ago when the CW was that Barack Obama's dysmal performance in the West Virginia primary meant that there was no way he could win that state in the fall?

(For the sake of unity I won't rehash some of the things that were said, but I know you all remember them.)

Anyway, Rasmussen released a poll today that shows Obama well within striking distance of McCain in the state:

McCain 45%
Obama 38%

This news is significant on two fronts: it shows that a post-nomination clincher bounce is real for Obama, since Rasmussen tends to overestimate Republican strength and has shown Obama losing to McCain for a while. Also, the fact that Obama has a chance to make up ground on McCain in West Virginia is truly stunning, considering the supposed "can't win Appalachia" message has been spread.

On the flip.

The last two election cycles found West Virginia voting for George W. Bush. Why? In 2000, with a stable economy, issues such as God, Guns, and Gays allowed voters to give in to these fears. In 2004, it was the War on Terror. There are many veterans here and many serving in Iraq too. They were still convinced this war was honorable and could be won. Others believed that "we had to fight’em over there so we wouldn’t have to fight’em over here." Will these be issues that determine how West Virginia votes in the upcoming 2008 election?  

Marie Cocco, writing in the Washington Post and Real Clear Politics, says that "Obama Needs to Ask for the Votes." It's at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...  Her main point is summed up here:

The question for Obama now is not whether he will ask for the votes of Democrats who failed to support him in the primaries -- that is, roughly half the 35 million people who cast ballots. I am assuming he will. The puzzlement is whether he understands that one reason these voters remain so cool to his candidacy is that as yet, he has never really asked for their votes -- and at times has been downright dismissive of them.

More below...

Let me interrupt the celebration for a moment to invite you to a wonderful evening of music and politics.

But first a story.

We have to go back to the last presidential cycle. A few of you on this board remember me from back then. It seems like in many diaries now there's not many handles I recognize, but still some of us go way back.

So here was my final diary on the 2004 presidential race.

Cheney "apologizes" for calling West Virginians inbred.

West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd was hospitalized this evening. He reported feeling lythargic and had a fever. His home caretaker called him an ambulance.

This was reported on Olbermann mere moments ago. Keith added that West Virginia's governor was a Democrat in case a successor were to be appointed.

I have no more information but I will update this diary when anything else comes out.

I thought I'd take a look back at 1992 to see what the primary results were for Bill Clinton.  The map that emerges is strikingly familiar, yet with some key differences:

Click to enlarge.

The 1992 field was much more crowded at first.  Iowa's Tom Harkin and Massachusetts' Paul Tsongas drew support in their regions, but by mid-March it was down to Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown of California.  By May, Clinton was "so confident that he would go on to be his party's nominee" that he didn't bother to campaign in many states, although he did campaign in California to make sure he won against Brown (he did, by 6 points).

Yet in the West Virginia and Oregon elections, both in May, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Hillary Clinton in 2008 had similar results.  Why?

Below, in addition, updated maps for the 2008 primary (including national maps, cartograms, Appalachia, Jefferson, OR, and KY) and a detailed demographic look at two states.