Back to Appalachia
The New York Times has a little device, one of those maps you can click to turn red or blue. They start it with their current calculation of “swing states”, one which various blogs of note have observed have a skew which has “leaning McCain” with states he’s narrowly ahead and “leaning Obama” with states he is ahead by double digits. I note that the map has, within the last two weeks, ebbed New Hampshire from the thin “undecided” sliver to Obama’s camp, moving his total from 260 to 264 votes. I also note how this effects the “random close states” function, which assigns states randomly to Obama and McCain — today, if you click that 50 times, Obama wins 48 out of 50 times. Two weeks ago, I was not counting, but I am guessing it came down to something like … 40 out of 50 times.
But the map has shifed somewhat. Sarah Palin made an appearance in West Virginia, and gaver her little ditty about Jack and Dianne. This is a little weird — in the primary season, West Virginia together with Kentucky was Obama’s Sahara — arid beyond arid, he lost by over 40 points as the media descended upon the states and dredged up any number of voters whose answer on why they voted for Clinton was, quite bluntly, race. But the stunning thing is that West Virginia is not Reagan Democrat Country — it voted for Carter in 1980 and Dukakis in 1988, two of the three elections which you have to say would define the term “Reagan Democrat” — or tied with Massachusetts. When the primary season came to West Virginia, I looked back and saw the media right up for the state’s election. It was something of a surprise and out of the blue that they voted for Dukakis, and was attributed to Dukakis’s late charge in adopting the languate of “economic populism”. A bit forgotten, in the debate Dukakis asserted “I am a Liberal in the tradition of Truman and Kennedy”, to which Bush “burned” him with “Finally. He comes out and says it! Liberal!” Believe it or not, this stabalized a floundering campaign somewhat. Somewhat. Enough to win West Virginia. And nearly win the grand prize of California. Which would have, if nothing else, been like getting a face saving touch-down to whittle a lost football game from 35-14 to 35-21. Or something.
But Gore dared raise some regulation proposals for the Coal Industry, and then Bush went on to stiff up the tarrifs to protect the Coal industry, and so it ran him from 7 points a victory in 2000 to 14 in 2004. The population continued to age, the best and brightest of the young fled over to North Carolina and Virginia for better opportunities as opposed to dying industry, and the seven points more per election cycle seemed to be where it was going for Obama as Clinton choked him out by 40 points. Unless, my observation in reading the 1988 election reports, things somehow went really bad.
Though the “No Democrat has ever won without West Virginia” remains a little inoperable either way.