crossposted from Daily Kos - the link on Webb is to the dailykos version of that piece
We have had quite a few analyses of how Obama did in Appalachia, and why. But consider this:
Clinton said in her victory speech on Tuesday night that no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without taking West Virginia. True. But they all could have won without it. The margins of victory in those races ranged from 23 to 515 electoral votes. West Virginia has five.
That quote is from Skirting Appalachia, an op ed in today's NY Times by Charles Blow that I believe is well worth the brief time to read, and to examine the maps he provides. Come along for a further examination.
Blow ends his column like this:
Obama has proclaimed "change" his mantra. That change may well be evident in the electoral map come fall. Appalachia is all American, but America is not all Appalachian.And while I do not believe in ignoring any part of the nation, am a firm supporter of the 50 state strategy as practiced by both Howard Dean and Barack Obama, and have noted that adding someone like Jim Webb to the ticket could help in Appalachian counties (and in other states like OK and AR with a significant number of people of Appalachian descent), there is really nothing about which to fret looking at Obama's performance in Appalachia in the primaries.
Consider the following remarks by Blow about Appalachia:
In fact, it hasn't been Democratic country for the last two presidential elections. Only 48 of the counties voted for John Kerry in 2004, down from 66 counties (or 16 percent) that went for Al Gore in 2000. The only states with counties in the region that have consistently voted Democratic in the last four such elections have been New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.And here I would note that from 1992 to the present all three of those states have been Democratic - Dukakis lost PA and MD in 1988.
It is not a question of winning counties, but of winning states. And to some degree in a general, the loss of Appalachian whites (who have NOT been strong supporters of Democratic presidential candidates beginning in 2000) will more than be offset by the increased turnouts among African-Americans and young people. And I firmly believe that the margins we are seeing now in primaries - from OH to PA and WV and will see Tuesday in KY are artificially high in these regions. Some people are voting for HRC because of her husband, of whom they have fond memories. That does not mean, regardless of what they say, that none of them will vote for the Democratic ticket, regardless of who might be Obama's running mate. And I think a Jim Webb, Ted Strickland, or John Edwards (who will not run as VP) could bring a substantial number of these voters to the Democratic ticket, even absent the issues of economic equity to which Obama has now committed.
If you are interested in my thoughts about Jim Webb as VP candidate, you can read here.
But that is a tangent to the reason why I posted about this column. I think the talking heads are totally misinterpreting what is happening in these primaries - big surprise, considering how much else they have gotten wrong this cycle. There may be some states that are effectively off the table for Obama, but it is hard, given recent patterns, to describe states like WV and KY as swing states presidentially, not given their performance in the past two cycles. Either Gore or Kerry could have beaten Bush without them. Gore could have won with NH, which is certainly NOT Appalachian. Kerry could have won without any additional Appalachian states had he won IA, NM, NV and CO. OF course it would have been far easier to carry OH, in part Appalachian, or FL.
It is not inappropriate to examine data and patterns. But to look at things in isolation often provides a distorted portrait. It is understandable that the Clinton campaign would try to make an argument on such selective facts - after all, any examination of a larger picture makes clear how weak their argument actually is. That the MSM and talking heads buy into it is quite unfortunate.
Would I like to see the Appalachian region contested more? Certainly. But it makes no sense for Obama to strive mightily in WV and KY in a primary setting in which he has already effectively locked up the nomination, spending money and time when he will still get badly beaten. And in WV and KY some of that vote will be to give Clinton a boost on her way out the door. Why spend millions merely to cut a margin from, say, 41 to 30 points in WV? It has made far more sense for Obama to begin his focus on the general election now.
I hope and expect that Obama will not totally abandon Appalachia in the general. I do not expect that he would carry such counties, but one or two visits by him - or an appropriate running mate - can cut the margin of loss in those counties and put additional states into play. That includes my own state of Virginia. I note that Jim Webb lost the Appalachian regions to George Allen, but did better than other Democrats might have, so that his massive advantage in NoVa and other Democratic friendly regions was sufficient to propel him to a narrow win statewide.
Look at the maps that accompany the Blow piece. And realize that the big picture is not so bleak as some - Clinton, MSM - might have you believe because of the losses Obama is suffering.
Peace.
Generally, back in the solid south era, the higher elevation, the better the Republicans performed. For example, in 1920, strong margins in Eastern TN helped Warren G Harding carry TN. Warren G Harding almost carried KY, losing to Cox by around a few thousand votes, a margin of less than 1%. Eastern KY was the reason for his almost-victory there. During the Sold South era, for example, in states like KY and even border states like MO, the Republicans were able to perhaps win a statewide contest every now and then. In places like North Carolina, Virginia, and other states, they were able to get around 35-40% of the vote. Their strongest support was generally up in the mountain counties, where they were able to win an office occasionally at the local level.
So you have to throw those counties out of the analysis. For a lot of those counties have NEVER supported Democrats. If the county didn't have coal in it, odds are that it remained Republican.Conversely, where you have coal, such as Pike County in KY, support for Democrats has been historically strong. For the record I think that Kerry and Gore prevailed there.
The better way to analyze this region is to look at the counties that Democrats have historically won, places like Pike County, all of WV, southern OH, and western PA. You can't do it by the whole region because you're going into include counties that have NEVER supported Democrats, which throws the analysis off.
Where Obama needs to do is better is in places like Western PA, SE OH (home to the 6th district, which swings elections in that state), and WV. He needs to do better in those counties and writing off KY, OH, PA, and WV is a recipe for defeat. Yes, while the math dictates that Obama can in theory find electoral votes elsewhere to offset those states, it leaves him with little room for error.
I do think that Obama should have visited both KY and WV more, if only to lay the groundwork for the general election. Unfortunately, at Daily Kos and other site, the attitude that I've seen from many Obama supporters has been very condescending toward those in KY and in WV. Many of them, though not all, have derided the voters of both states as being "racist and ignorant". One person at Daily Kos said that both KY and WV "need to join the 21st century". This is the major reason why he fared miserably there. If his volunteers have that mentality I can fully understand why he didn't sell in WV and won't sell in KY this upcoming Tuesday.
Obama does need to explain to these voters that 1) he respects them and 2) that they, too, have a place in his vision for America. What he needs to do is target counties where there has been a strong mining, blue collar, and labor union presence. That means the mining counties of KY, OH, and western PA. He should write off places like Eastern TN and those counties that I mentioned in KY, where no Democrat has ever won at all.
Finally the reason why KY and WV rejected Gore and Kerry were because they didn't relate to them. First of all they rejected Gore mainly because of Clinton's position on guns and the environment. They rejected Kerry because he was from New England. Bush was also able to portray Kerry (think of that infamous clip of him windsurfing) as being "elitist" and "out of touch with their values". (I find that ironic, given that, of the two candidates, Bush was clearly the more "elitist" one.) Kerry's positions on the environment and guns didn't help either. I don't think that Kerry even tried to fight for the state and that's why he fared miserably.
So the key mistake here is trying to analyze the whole region without breaking it down into its sub-regions. For more information on the region's historical voting history a good book that you might want to read is the Emerging Republican Majority by Kevin Phillips. While the book is 40 years old its recap of America's demographic history explains the origins of Applachia's current voting history.
I am certainly not dismissive of voters in WV or in SW PA (or SA VA).
I would say tht to extrapolate from Obama's performance in Dem primaries to a general election is frought with peril.
I do not think it likely, even with Webb or Strickland, that Obama would carry many of Appalachian counties. But I would expect him to work to cut the margin of loss in those regions in order to carry the overall states - that is how Webb did it in 2006 in the Old Dominion.
My main point in posting this is that the handwringing I see over how Obama did in WV is in my opinion very overwrought.