Obama's West Virginia Problem

So after locking down the nomination, Sen. Obama is going to get his hat handed to him tomorrow in West Virginia. It's not going to be close; if Obama gets up to 40% it'd be a miracle. Kentucky is going to be the same way. And people are justifiably asking why, and just as justifiably chalking it up to race.

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

I think making it entirely a racial construct misses the mark, however. While there have been a number of stories written with essentially this same racial theme in mind, they're all largely anecdotal. There does seem to be a trend with Obama doing the most poorly in counties in Appalachia. I'm going to attribute this to a couple of factors:

1) Demographics - if you're living in the Appalachian mountains, you're likely to be older than the general population, less likely to have a college degree, and almost certainly white. Demography has been destiny for the better part of this Democratic nomination fight, and these are some of Clinton's most favorable areas. There are plenty of mostly white areas where Obama does well, but they are higher-education whites, more affluent whites, and generally just a different group than you have in Appalachia.

2) The Digital Divide - West Virginia is one of only a few states without a Drinking Liberally chapter. There isn't a very powerful netroots there (there is in Kentucky, but it's largely the product of people in the college towns like Lexington and Louisville). The places that Obama fans congregate online are harder to find in Appalachia. And it's harder to get news of the non-corporate media variety, and we all know Obama has been pounded by corporate media recently.

3) People vote like thy neighbor - this was the subject of a great New York Times piece this weekend, and I've been saying this for years. People have self-segregated to a higher degree than ever of late, choosing to live in the same neighborhoods as their ideological soulmates. This has the effect of doubling any cultural divide or polarization. I think part of this is class and age, and part is just people congregating with who they find comfortable. In bigger states there is more of a diversity of regions within the state to balance these echoing effects out - not so in West Virginia, at least.

On the whole I agree with Attaturk - if there are those for whom race is a hurdle they can't get over in choosing the most qualified candidate for President then it's THEIR problem, and they can catch up to the non-racists rather than us having to hold back history for them. But I think he may be overstating how that's playing out in a place like West Virginia. There are other factors at work. And Obama hasn't chosen to really attack these other factors and present himself in a more palatable way to these voters - he's basically checked out on both states. I didn't agree with all of George Packer's disquisition on the subject, but I do think this is sound advice.

McCain began his speech in Inez by saying, "I’m not the son of a coal miner. I wasn’t raised by a family that made its living from the land or toiled in a mill or worked in the local schools or health clinic. I was raised in the United States Navy, and, after my own naval career, I became a politician. My work isn’t as hard as yours." His modest disclaimer seemed unnecessary—the local pol who introduced McCain had just finished calling him a son of Kentucky at heart, and the crowd was entirely on his side. But for Obama, who’s bound to strike people in places even less isolated than Inez as alien, this kind of self-presentation might be essential. Rather than analyzing them out loud, or pretending to be one of them, he should speak about the differences (and race is far from the only one) directly, candidly, in the blunt, personal language that made his Philadelphia speech so memorable. He should say that in spite of these differences, in spite of what he doesn’t know about or share in their life, he knows what Presidential leadership can do to improve their lives—as did Roosevelt, who was an aristocrat, and Kennedy, who was rich and Catholic.

Obama doesn't need to win West Virginia or Kentucky in the general election but he would do well to use this kind of presentation when speaking to those kinds of voters.