You Got a Purty Mouth!

Ah, West Virginia. The mountaineers handed Clinton a 41-point victory, with HRC getting 67% to Obama's 26%. John Edwards got 7%.

My initial thought is that Terry McAuliffe is quite the optimist! When I looked at the raw numbers (239,000 for Clinton, 91,000 for Obama), I wondered where the 1.1 million voters went that McAuliffe touted on Meet the Press Sunday when he was begging, "Let My People...Vote."

Silly me. He didn't mean EXPECTED voters. He meant ALL registered voters. Apparently, he expected the entire state, even the Republicans, to turn out for the D primary. If your argument is that Clinton can capture the popular vote lead, using 1.1 million voters is more impressive than 300,000.

West Virginia did as expected, though, and Clinton picked up 147,000 in the popular vote, bringing the delegate totals to 1881 for Obama and 1713 for Clinton.

Mighty White of you, West Virginia!

The New York Times today highlights the “salience” of race in this contest, which was touted in Ipopa yesterday. Keep up, NYT!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/politics/14dems.html?ref=us

Depending on your personal views, here is an either astonishing or not at all surprising fact culled from the exit polls:

Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said race was an important factor in their votes. More than 8 in 10 who said it factored in their votes backed Mrs. Clinton, according to exit polls.

Moreover, while Obama has consistently fared better than Clinton on trustworthiness, more than half of West Virginians say Obama is not honest and trustworthy. Those voters were also likely to say that Obama shares the views of Reverend Wright.

People may say, "This is about Reverend Wright. That doesn't mean these voters have racial issues." I'm not saying they don't want to let him sit at their lunch counter. But it's certainly clear that West Virginians give less benefit of the doubt to Obama than other states, which calls into question the underlying source of the mistrust. At some point, isn't the spread between Clinton and Obama so statistically significant that you have to believe it's at least partically race-based?

Having traveled to (and talked with folks in) every Indiana county, I know there is a sense that some still battle racist attitudes. I'll never forget talking to a well-known Democrat in a southern Indiana county who said the best thing Dwayne Brown, the first black man to run for a statewide office in Indiana, could do to campaign was to NOT come to the county and to make sure his picture was not on any of his campaign literature. Another party leader in a southern county advised, "Stay North of U.S. 40." Surely, they knew their own people.

Admittedly, this was back in 1990 when Brown was seeking to become the Clerk of the Supreme and Appellate Courts, so it might be better now. Let me take a look....

Okay, I just looked at the Indiana counties that went for Clinton by 75% or more: Daviess, Dearborn, Ohio, Scott and Switzerland. Both of the counties where these gentlemen lived are in that list. Not too inspiring.

(By the way, a big shout out to Morgan County! They gave Obama 37%. Many civic leaders there are truly trying to changing Morgan County's image, and it's a welcome change. I hope you can send your "new image" playbook to the aforementioned counties).

West Virginia had a staggering number of counties with seventy-five percent or better for Clinton, and in Mingo County, West Virginia, Clinton got EIGHTY-EIGHT percent of the vote. I'm just saying......that MIGHT be a good place to hold a klan meetin.'

But who cares about West Virginia, right?

Presidential history. And it cares deeply. Since 1916, there has not been a single Democrat elected who did not carry West Virginia. Gore and Kerry both lost WV. And HALF of the D primary voters said they would not back Obama in the fall if he becomes the nominee. That's concerning to a lot of party people, and Clinton knows it.

And make no mistake, West Virginia will be lost. Obama did not campaign there, which probably compounded the "not one of us" mistrust that he will struggle to undo in the general election. In addition, The National Review posited a rather conspiratorial view that the Clintons are engaged in a slash and burn campaign to make sure Clinton can come back against McCain in four years. Listen to this coded rhetoric from Bill Clinton that certainly helped ensure that Obama won't carry West Virginia:

"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say," Clinton said. "And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. She thinks you've got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be here than listening to that stuff I have to hear on television, I'd rather be with you. There is a simple reason: You need a president a lot more than those people telling you not to vote for her."

Bill Clinton is stoking the populist (and ominous) "they are all against you" argument, which allows WV voters to insert the hobgoblin of their choice as the "they." Clinton is also bonding with voters by telling them they're smarter than all the pundits. (Ed. Note - This is a dubious assertion, given that 70% of WV D voters never went to college. If it's Tim Russert vs. Billy Bob Bungalee from Logan County, WV on an SAT or IQ exam, I'll take Russert).

Can Obama make presidential history twice by overcoming a West Virginia loss? The Red Sox won the World Series by being the first team to ever come back from three games down in any professional sport, so sometimes history happens in bunches. Anything is possible.

The task for Obama's campaign is to come up with new "map math" to show that it can pick up "new" states, such as Colorado, to offset any potential West Virginia loss. But the longer Clinton stays in, the harder an Obama general election victory becomes. And she knows it.

You Got a Purty Mouth!