Everyone expected Clinton to best Obama in WV. But by all accounts, Obama campaigned only one day in WV, and spent most of primary day in Missouri. I am quite dismayed.
WV is a swing state in the general election, along with PA, OH, MI etc. And like those states, it contains a lot of the now-famous demographic that heavily supports Clinton: relatively uneducated white working-class voters.
Facing a drubbing today, I can see how Obama would want to give the appearance of starting to run his general election campaign elsewhere. But if he is to convince me that he can win in the general, he MUST begin talking to this constituency. Avoiding them spells disaster in the general (if he makes it that far).
Please share widely!
this is perhaps why so many are still undecided.
Blood from a rhetorical stone.
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p>Dr. Phil can do a special at the beginning of July, Healing Hillary’s Shell Shocked Loyalists or as Carville would put it:
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p>From Stickin’ to just plain Stuck!
I will concede that Obama made overtures to what I’ll just refer to tonight as the WV Demographic in “the big race speech” a few moths ago. However good that speech was, though, it was long and didn’t focus on the WV Demographic. Obama’s got some major talking to do to democrats who think they don’t like him.
It also only has 5 electoral votes, so it hardly seems a big deal, so your dismay rings false. In any case, I am pretty sure Obama did campaign more than one day there. I know he made appearances there in the weeks leading up to PA.
not in the lead up to this primary.
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p>so you would write off wv since it only represents 5 electoral votes? remember how close the last few elections were?
Just not a top priority. As we all know Clinton and Obama appeal to slightly different groups so I would expect them to focus on sightly different states in the general election.
The Dem Party Chair of WV was quoted today in an article I read questioning whether WV was really a swing state. He also happens to be an undecided superdelegate.
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p>For the record, that article also noted that Obama spent four days in WV, and has something like 11 field offices there.
as i mentioned above, the timeframe of his recent campaigning is what i’m talking about.
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p>but i think my main point is being overlooked: when/how is obama going to start talking to the white working-class constituency?
because of the hyperbolic title of the post.
if you think the WV demographic will be important in november.
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p>note also that i ended the title with a question mark, not an exclamation point.
and the question mark defense is a typical Fox News tactic.
suit yourself! i’m trying to encourage you guys to get your candidate talking to a major constituency. but by all means, call me fauxy. that’s much more useful come november!
sco is trying to point out that by using hyperbolic language you are defeating your own purpose. You instead just bridle at the thought and refuse to do anything about it.
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p>Like it or not, “throwing” implies intentionally losing. Unless you think Obama is seriously entertaining the notion of intentionally losing, you’d be best served by changing your language.
i didn’t give a lot of thought to the title. but i still think “throw” is ok, if a bit dramatic, because it implies deliberate action. i assume that obama actively chooses his strategy – as in which constituencies to court, and which to just wave to in passing.
Well, then, I’ll just get on the phone to David Axelrod right now and tell him that I think he’s screwing this up.
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p>For the record, I agree that Obama needs to connect better with low-income whites, not necessarily in West Virginia, but everywhere. But frankly, nothing I do or say will have any impact on the strategy of the general election campaign, so what I plan to do is to, when the nominee is officially decided, work like Hell to overcome whatever bad strategy the campaign foists on us. That doesn’t, by the way, include complaining about how bad the strategy is.
well, i’m glad we agree on the fundamental point. however, i do think that individual opinion of supporters matters, especially if they start to make a stink on the political blogs. i think it’s called grass-roots something or other, or together we can… đŸ˜‰
Forgive me if we disagree fundamentally on the effectiveness of complaining about strategy on political blogs. In general, it seems to me to be more about covering oneself in the event of a possible loss than a good use of time.
honestly sco, why are we here having this conversation? isn’t this a political blog? don’t we all have opinions about ongoing policies, strategies, etc? i’m here to discuss those things, and maybe the best of the ideas will sift down to where they might be useful. this is a very obamaesque/patrick-like attitude i have, by the way. but you apparently think i’m just here to cover my ass…from something. if that is so, why did you bother to engage me in conversation at all? what a sad, cynical view you have.
So, I’ll just say that I’m sorry you think I’m sad and cynical and leave it at that.
Given how close the last few elections have been, it would be heinously myopic for any candidate to write off a swing state. If Bill Clinton could win the state in 1992 and 1996 – then why pretend that this state doesn’t matter?
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p>Actually, we know why. Some folks want to “pretend” it doesn’t matter because you’re criticizing their candidate for ignoring the state. However – I found this on the web:
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p>
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p>So, out of the last seven elections, it’s gone Democrat at least four times. Sure looks like a swing state to me.
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p>Bush beat Kerry 56-43. What is the threshold for narrow?
…Missouri is a swing state, too. With more electoral votes than West Virginia. Plus WV is getting harder for Democrats, while Missouri is getting a bit easier (think McCaskill).
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p>But this list of swing state behaviors distresses me:
Florida: Barack wans their primary votes not to count. Then the state is left off a general election strategy memo.
Michigan: Votes similarly ignored, even after multiple ways to count the vote were floated, even a revote. Obama stood against them all.
Ohio: Obama lost big, and left this state off his general election strategy memo as well.
West Virginia: Loses so big even after his crowning as the presumptive, Obama can’t be bothered to show up on primary night, even after outspending Clinton in the state. Take that West Virginia!
Pennsylvania: Another big Obama loss.
New Hampshire and Nevada: Obama loses to Clinton narrowly.
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p>That’s a lotta swing states he can’t win, is actively trying to piss off, or both.
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p>As for the pledged delegate switching, his word is dirt. Feel bad for anyone so much as planning to split a restaurant tab with him in Denver.
all i have to go on is the turnout for this primary. with 84% of precincts counted, there were about 286K dem ballots cast, compared to a measly 92K repub ballots cast. and, mccain is still facing a stiff 25% protest vote (he only got 1% [yes, one] of the feb convention votes!). even obama, who got trounced by clinton, garnered more votes so far than mccain (80K to 77K).
What is this “general election strategy memo” to which you refer? Did I miss some sort of internal memo leak?
Chris Cizilla had it…here.
and NH is fine. Do you think Rendell will let PA slip to spite Obama? Ohio is Ohio. We’ve been duking that out for years. Same for WV.
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p>Partisan blather!
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p>You’re just hardcore. Good for you. Hope you’ll help in the GE.
Okay, facts you don’t like aren’t blather. ‘kay?
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p>By knocking out Michigan and Florida, Obama handicapped himself in those states. Maybe he can overcome those states — I think he will in Michigan with Hillary’s help — but I don’t like unforced errors.
Michigan!
In case anyone has been confused by the legend of Bill Clinton, Ross Perot defeated GHWB. Bill just got the office.
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p>William Clinton Albert Gore Jr. Democratic 331,001 48.41% 5
George Bush J. Danforth Quayle Republican 241,974 35.39% 0
H. Ross Perot James Stockdale Independent 108,829 15.92% 0
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p>
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p>http://uselectionatlas.org/RES…
So that would be 1 Democratic president in 40 years, and even that one was a fluke produced by Watergate.
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p>Only Democrats could so vigorously spurn their only effective national candidate since before most of us were born, and most of the rest were in grammar school.
the circular firing squad, haven’t you?
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p>Maybe that’s why we fawn all over his most worshipful; our high priest of utter awesomeness, Lord Barry-O!
… produced such a fluke one can hope for the impact of:
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p>Attorney-firing-gate
Can’t-convict-any-Guantanamo-prisoners-gate
General’s-propaganda-gate
Iraqi-contractor-rape-gate
Iraqi-reconstruction-gate
Katrina-gate
President-above-the-law-gate
Torture-gate
Spy-on-Americans-gate
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p>…and so on and so on.
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p>One would hope that the cumulative effect on this should rub off on the rubber-stamp GOP including their nominee McSame.
After all of these -gates, the Democrats nominate an outsider with “a new kind of politics” to take on Washington? Check.
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p>The candidate wins in no small measure because the Republicans have been just awful? Check.
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p>The administration has lots of great ideas, but little notion of how to acheive them? Maybe. The Axelrod precedent is not good.
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p>The administrations winds up politically isolated as a result of its inability to work with the Congress, and disappoints the left wing of the party? Again, the Axelrod precedent isn’t great.
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p>The administration’s political weakness is exacerbated by (i) skyrocketing gasoline prices; (ii) disasterous inflation; and (iii) the difficulty in getting off the defensive while being smacked around by Islamic extremists abroad? Ruh-roh.
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p>So which Republican do you expect to win every single state except Minnesota, Georgia, and West Virginia (!) in 2012?
that the new administration will have it any worse off with congress than any other?
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p>2. A general prediction that a Democratic Congress, though it gently remonstrates with a Republican president, even an emimently impeachable one, absolutely savages a Democratic one. See the only two Democratic presidents since 1968, and how well they did with their Democratic Congress.
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p>3. Back to the transcendent politics. Once elected, he will be forced to become a sellout old-style politician to get things done, thus disappointing his core supporters, or a new one who stays above it all, and gets little done. I should have realized this with Patrick, but didn’t. These guys put themselves into a box from the getgo, and it isn’t good to be hamstrung right out of the box.
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p>4. He’s green, plain and simple. One half term in the US Senate, plus a decade in a state legislature. Absolutely no executive experience at all. Although it greatly excites the contributors to this site (to the extent that they consider themselves a lawn) the community organizing thing is, in my view, at best double edged sword when it comes to being the Chief Executive.
I don’t think the thesis of Patrick::Obama is totally nuts, but it is shallow.
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p>I’d also suggest that when Patrick gets back to the style of interacting with the public that he had in the campaign, he’ll be successful. And we’re already seeing that. In other words, the “vision” and “transcendence” things only didn’t work when he gave them up. YMMV.
I suspect that you guys are cheap dates. But the term is nearly 1/2 over.
my critique of Obama is a bit shallow: the differences between the front runners in the Dem race are relatively minor ones.
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p>I just think that HRC has the potential to be both a better candidate in November and a better executive come January, at least with rexpect to the things that I regard as most important.
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p>This is what it is all about, my man.
… in the context of the electoral swing of WV. Your predictions about interacting with congress are post-electoral questions.
who couldn’t even bring himself to admit that the guy who won WV in 1992 won WV. Then I noted that it is interesting how Democrats can so thoroughly disavow their only guy in four decades not to get shelled in the general election.
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p>Think about it. Forty years. Nine presidential elections, installing 7/43 (17%) of all of the Presidents that the country has ever had, and exactly one success that is not directly attributable to the near impeachment of Nixon. And that guy is the one who gets kicked to the curb.
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p>The rest of the thread was a tangent based on that observation.
looks like Clinton won it to me. I don’t believe for a second that every single Perot voter would have voted for Bush had Perot not been running. That was not a Nader/Florida kind of situation.
Just trying to counter the “WV loves Clintons” stream of delusion. WV is a swing state, if Repubs can’t wield “God, Guns and Gays.”
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p>Not you, but I find it puzzling that we tend to poke at the Repugs for pandering to the “theocrats” and here we are trying to appease Appalachia. What am I missing?
nt
I know you’re just trying to illustrate a point, but please don’t use GOP talking points to do it. I hear this all the time from Republicans and it’s just not true. There is no way, Perot or no, the GHWB beats Bill Clinton in ’92.
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p>Exit polling showed that 62% of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton, stayed home or voted for another minor candidate. GHWB would have need 65% of the Perot vote just to catch Clinton.
But there is no doubt that the map for Obama may be a different one from that Clinton would have used – with its more traditional focus on trying to get Ohio and Florida. Here from an article in The New Republic:
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p>One thing we all have to remember is that while past history is important to consider, we cannot simply try and refight the same battles over and over again. The country changes between each election. Demography may be destiny, but destiny is about the future and not the past. Just because Obama got a pasting in West Virginia and may have little hope there in the general, doesn’t mean he can’t play in other equally important places.
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p>And to the point about speaking to this constituency. I’d like to think Obama has tried. He’s adopted a different style on the stump and focused on kitchen-table issues for more than two months. Rev Wright and “bitter” drowned a lot of that out unfortunately and helped seal his fate in places like West V. That said, when you look at his numbers in West V, versus in neighboring rural counties of Ohio (all pre-Rev Wright fallout), Obama has done no worse among the West V electorate – in fact a little better. You can check out this analysis here. There is no doubt Obama will also continue to bang the drumb on the economy going forward. He will keep trying with this constituency but ultimately a key life lesson is to focus on your strengths. Its also worth noting that 70+% of Clinton supporters in West V liked the gas tax holiday proposal. If that is price of “speaking” to this constituency than it may be a price too high.
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p>And I would also remind Clinton supporters here at BMG that your candidate wasn’t necessarily speaking to this constituency for much of the campaign either. Edwards was the only out-and-out populist from the start. She spent much of the first year of the campaign running to the center as a hawk on security and fiscal issues, preparing for the general. However, with her once-inevitable campaign on the slide since Iowa, and Edwards exit from the race after SC, then her run of losses through February – it just so happened that the States left on the calendar tended to be concentrated around Appalachia and made up of the worst performing demographic groups for Obama. Hillary just fell into her new found “pick-up and pot-luck” personality through her own failures and the dictats of the calendar and not by any natural inclination. These folks became the last card she could play in making her case to superdelegates and she is still playing it. Would they be so-called Clinton loyalists if Obama was not her opponent?
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p>But look, all the power to HRC and to her supporters. She is a really strong candidate (has gotten better throughout) and is well deserving of support. She doesn’t quit and neither should you. But, while clamoring for Obama folks to stop beating her up, you may want to take your own advice and start looking on the bright side about Obama – our almost certain nominee. The glass may be empty in West V but we can fill it in other places.
SPOT ON!
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p>Her campaign has obviously never heard the cliche, “you can’t re-invent the wheel.”
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p>PS. JRE for AG!
How can she win without the Patagonia/espresso vote?
or, er, maybe not đŸ˜€
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p>in any case, she does need to be able to rattle off without hesitation
double half-caf non-fat dry, please
and be able to talk spotted owls and timber jobs.