Uh-Oh

Robert Byrd is 91 and quite unwell. Ambulances raced to his house today because he got up too fast. Democrats may gain one seat in Massachusetts by the end of the week if the appointment law goes through, but Byrd has been in and out of hospitals for months and is rarely seen on the Senate floor.

Nobody wants to tell Robert Byrd to retire - he's been in the Senate since 1958 and he probably wants to die right there on the Senate floor. But for the good of the country he ought to resign and not have his illness affect the quality of life for millions of Americans. West Virginia allows for a temporary appointment, Governor Joe Manchin is a Democrat, and within a matter of days the Democrats could have 60 able-bodied members. But instead of that, and instead of coming up with a process where Byrd can vote by proxy, we are hampered with endless filibusters based on Robert Byrd's physical health, which I don't think was the founders' intentions.

Always Left To Right

Obama is kicking tail in early voting, clearly because they're making it a priority and they have better ground organizing. This will mean that McCain will have to swamp the polls on Election Day, and every vote you already have before then is a win. The question is whether or not we will have those votes.

Yet again, voting problems in WV. Early voters in West Virginia have reported vote switching on electronic machines. Both counties where problems have occurred have Republicans in charge of voting, along with our GOP secretary of state.

The first was a report from multiple voters in Jackson County, one of the few GOP-leaning counties in WV:

"When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain," said Matheney...the poll worker in charge "responded that everything was all right. It was just that the screen was sensitive and I was touching the screen too hard. She instructed me to use only my fingernail."

Even after she began using her fingernail, Matheney said, the problem persisted.

The second occurred over the weekend, for voters in Putnam County, WV:

"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.

"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way."

Funny how every single one of these stories I've heard results in the votes switching from Democrats to Republicans. Never the other way around.

Yep, just funny how that goes.

Gainin' On Ya

Looks like Barack Obama has a spare few million to spend in West Virginia:

Leading in polls and exuding confidence, Democrat Barack Obama is edging into traditionally GOP states -- now including West Virginia -- as Republican John McCain looks to protect his turf less than three weeks before the election.

On the heels of the campaign's final debate, the Democrat is launching TV ads in West Virginia, which George W. Bush won four years ago and hadn't been on the list of target states until recently, according to two Democrats with knowledge of the strategy.

Obama lost West Virginia in the Democratic primary to Hillary Rodham Clinton as he struggled to win over working-class whites. But Democrats say the economic turmoil in the hard-hit state and TV ads Obama has been running in its neighbors have made West Virginia competitive. These Democrats spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the campaign.

I'll bet he goes back into North Dakota and Georgia before this is over, too. And the article is talking about Kentucky. Kentucky!

And the improved environment for Democrats generally, combined with the incredible ground game from the Obama campaign, has rallied a late push into state legislative races:

The Democratic National Committee is waging a last minute injection of as much as $20 million into state legislative races in key states, hoping to take advantage of Democratic momentum this cycle.

A senior Democrat familiar with the conversations said: "We are looking at options, races, where we can be helpful, as we did in 2006. This is the time when some races pop."

DNC chairman Howard Dean has made it a priority to help Democrats win down the ballot, so that if Obama wins the presidency, Democrats will have a larger majority in Congress. But with states planning to redistrict their congressional boundaries in 2012, control of state legislative chambers is all the more important, people close to Dean said.

Very sharp strategy. Dean has learned from the bottom-up conservative movement that started in the states.

Drudge can cheer himself with cherry-picked polls all he wants, but this is a bloodbath.

And Clinton Wins West Virginia

Exit polls show a projection of 2-1, so about a 35-point victory. It's about a 10-delegate pickup for Clinton in a race where she's down by 175. If there are 450,000 voters, it'd be a win of about 300,000-150,000, so a 150,000-vote pickup.

Good win for Senator Clinton, now I can get on with my day.

Not to be flip, but the race is essentially over from a mathematical standpoint, so a small state victory that was destined by the demographics isn't thrilling me. I'm glad she's bringing the Democrats back in West Virginia, I'm glad that the turnout was good in the state. When she endorses Sen. Obama, I'm hoping that she'll continue to press those West Virginians about the importance of electing a Democratic President this year.

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.

Huck-Mentum!

NBC News reports that Mike Huckabee wins the early-morning West Virginia caucuses, 52-47 over Mitt Romney in the second round of voting (McCain lost out after the first round). Huckabee doesn't like to call himself the spoiler, but I think it's pretty clear that he just cost West Virginia for Romney.

Of course, if Huckabee takes a little here and Romney a little there, maybe this race gets extended. Not gonna happen, but a guy can dream...

UPDATE: Looks like there was some wheeling and dealing to deny Romney the victory. This might have been coordinated, but also activists are generally just more knowledgeable about politics, and know that stopping Romney would help McCain.