...from a old spreadsheet done in early February. He's outperformed this one, it showed him with a 67 pledged del lead and her with a 50 superdel lead after the primaries in June.

Recent polls say Obama will be extremely lucky to get 30% in WV today. They also show neither Hill or Barack will win WV in November. And as we all know red states don't count do they?

http://insightanalytical.wordpress.com/

"Williamette, Oregon Weekly’s HILARIOUS/Scary Portrayal of Obama"

This is the most over the top thing I have ever seen!!!
And the editorial ends in drivel….

The image is a must see....if you can stand it!

You all are way too generous. Obama is the "presumptive nominee". When Kerry was in '04 was he losing many contests? Why shouldn't Obama be expected to win? He's not only already won, he's the second coming. Anything but a 30 point win for Obama is a rejection of the press AND the DNC.

So, if Hillary wins West Virginia by more than 12%, Obama loses.

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how this conclusion follows from the data.

What I see is:

Nobody has 2209 (or even 2025) delegates, so nobody wins or loses.

The salient feature of Sen Clinton's lead is the 50 extra superdelegates, so even if Sen Clinton gets 1 delegate from WV, she leads in this analysis.

This looks like a worst-case scenario from Sen Obama's strategists.

and it has 2-to-1 registered Dem voters compared to Repubs. Dubya won it twice tho, but historically it's Blue.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/0...

"... Not that the GOP would be able to take much of the credit if it does. "Democrats who lose West Virginia don't do so due to Republican voters," said Curtis Wilkerson, a Democratic strategist based in Charleston. "They do so due to their own Democratic voters." Once upon a time, Michael Dukakis could carry West Virginia by five points, one of only 10 states he won in 1988. And Bill Clinton won the state twice. But cultural issues -- "God, guns and abortion," as Charleston's Republican Mayor Danny Jones put it Monday morning on local talk radio host Hoppy Kercheval's show -- finally moved West Virginia toward the red column in presidential elections, dooming Al Gore and John Kerry here. Now Democratic Party chairman Nick Casey isn't even sure the state is up for grabs in the fall. "We were a swing state, and we swung the wrong way the last two elections," Casey, who hasn't endorsed either candidate, said in an interview. "We got bamboozled, fooled, lied to -- whatever the word is -- by the inside-the-Beltway Republican Karl Rove machine. ... I don't know if people are considering us a swing state or not anymore."
...

The problem for Obama is that if any state is tailor-made for registered Democrats to abandon the ticket in droves if he's on it, it may be West Virginia. ...
This may be the state where one of the Clinton campaign's arguments about electability -- if you don't win the state in the primary, you can't win it in the general election -- comes closest to being true. West Virginia casts a bigger shadow in Democratic history than it should based on its size; John F. Kennedy's win here in the 1960 primary helped prove a Catholic could win the presidency.

..."

Even Dukakis won it--that should tell you something.

Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.

Man: Here's one.

Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.

Dead Body: I'm not dead.

Dead Collector: What?

Man: Nothing. There's your ninepence.

Dead Body: I'm not dead.

Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.

Man: Yes he is.

Dead Body: I'm not.

Dead Collector: He isn't.

Man: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.

Dead Body: I'm getting better.

Man: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.

Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.

Dead Body: I don't want to go on the cart.

Man: Oh, don't be such a baby.

The Dead Collector: I can't take him.

Dead Body: I feel fine.

Man: Oh, do me a favor.

The Dead Collector: I can't.

Man: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.

Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.

Man: Well, when's your next round?

Dead Collector: Thursday.

Dead Body: I think I'll go for a walk.

Man: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?

Dead Body: I feel happy. I feel happy.

[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]

Man: Ah, thank you very much.

Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.

Man: Right.

Link

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Rudy and Thompson were their other picks-- but both were way too damaged to be saved with spin and boosterism--Rudy was definitely their GOP pick in the beginning, with their old love McCain as fallback--they thought McCain was old news at first, and the rightwing noise machine wasn't pushing him--they've always not trusted him.

This year really is different--Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, etc--weren't the press's picks at all, but in fact mocked and trashed from the very start. This is the first time i can remember that the DC Democratic Establishment's pick was also the media's pick.

From a comment thread at Balloon Juice:

Yeah, why can’t a negro win a big election in Appalachia, anyway? After all, it was Appalachia that led the way on Civil Rights, right?

_________________________________________________

I’d love to see a geographical and age demographical breakdown. I’m guessing Morgantown and Charleston and wherever Marshall is goes 80-20 Obama, and the rest of the state’s smaller podunk towns go 90/2/8 Hillary/Obama/write-in of someone named “ANY1 BOT TEH NEEGROW”

__________________________________________________

I think today’s victory is going to mark the real beginning of Hillary as White Pride candidate.

__________________________________________________

If Obama wins the nomination, expect a strong surge of Home Depot and Lowe’s customers east of the Mississippi and southwest of Delaware interested in buying only two pieces of wood, a few nails, and loads of gasoline.

This promises to get ugly

___________________________________________________

Plus, Hillary will only win by 15-25% Not anything close to the 40% in some polls, because, while bigots may be quick to share their opinion (or use racial epithets), they are generally lazy assholes, and they won’t get off their butts and go to vote. Plus, her own supporters will be too depressed by the media’s “it’s over” theme to come out in the numbers she would get if there was still some sort of mathematical chance.

Plus, American Idol is on tonight…

__________________________________________________

That was from a total of 34 comments.

The official OFB wankmeme appears to be "West Virginia doesn't count because they're all racist hillbillies."

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Pretty nifty. But what would I know?

I'm a racist.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

It is a scripted dance. I started to write "wankfest meme" but my fingers had other ideas.

Appropriate, no?

---------------------------------------------------
“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Remember when it was important for the Democrats to nominate candidates who could appeal to the salt-of-the-earth demographic via plain speech and populist economics, and Kos pushed hard for Jim Webb and Jon Tester on exactly that basis?* Time was, class was the predominant vision for how to conduct Democratic politics and win. In those days of yore. 2006.

* Not to mention that the original appeal of Howard Dean was that he was not only opposed to the Iraq war, but a pro-gun farm-state fiscally conservative governor.

There is great incentive for rightwing piece of shit trolls (redundancy) to add divisiveness and hatred to promote Obama, who they see as the beatable candidate. They don't want to face Hillary. The only way to combat this is for all sites to eliminate this type of hatred from their comments. Of course this may hurt their cash flow, so the division and hatred will continue. We already know the reaction of this by HRC people, questions of whether or not they will vote for Obama if he is the nominee.

It just occurred to me that for years we have been calling our Right Wing bloggers and posters "tools", "wingnuts", "Kool Aid" drinkers. It seems to me from reading the Dem bloggers and posters that we have evolved into the same since this became a two person primary. Write something unfavorable about Obama and they attack like the Russians are at the back door.

The Right Wing has advanced into trending of all things. Go figure.

It's not like there have been any recent presidents who have run on a campaign like, oh, say: "uniter not a divider". Gore Vidal is right, we are the United States of Amnesia. At least in the so-called Democratic intelligentsia. So it goes. History will judge them appropriately.

His long years of experience on the national scene. His full-throated passionate advocacy for progressive casues. His tireless work since becoming Senator to end the War in Iraq. The mastery of policy details over windy "hope and change" rhetoric. The Greatest Speech Evah! Electability through the 48-state strategy. Clearly no rational reason exists to vote against Obama. Racism is thus the only explanation and counting Obama's losses would just legitimize that racism!

be yet one more sign that the Democratic Party (as opposed to democratic party voters) will permit Obama to create his - and their - reality by declaring Mission Accomplished on May 20. The media has decided it, therefore Obama will be the nominee. The Democrats have rolled repeatedly in the face of GOP/SCLM lekking, I see no reason why I should expect them to not roll in the face of Obama/SCLM lekking.

an image of the Wounds of Christ. I'm no Bibilical scholar, but I suspect the Obama supporter who created that picture is equating Obama to Jesus Christ.

I may be nuts, but not as nutty as some of the crap going down this primary season...

http://insightanalytical.wordpress.com/

Lambert's post is the most depressing observation to come out of the campaign, perhaps even moreso than nominating a gutless, program-less, equivicator. Obama will come and go, but the MSM is the gift that will keep on giving.

I was reading an article in "In These Times" about how everything got bad in the Soviet Union after Yeltsin took away the reforms. As they described the way elections and the press were manipulated, I couldn't help but substitute "US" for "Soviet Union". At first I thought the "state-run" propaganda efforts didn't fit the model, but then I remembered Bush paying for stories about Iraq, paying for stories hyping various of his programs and the recent Pentagon experts furor, and the match was complete.

Sad what we've become.

"I find it ironic that Hillary has been done in by the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy"--Dennis Miller

Anglachel says Appalachia was an original hotbed of abolitionism, since way before the Civil War. Most of its residents sided with the Union in the Civil War, that's why West Virginia is no longer part of Virginia.

It's fun for the real racists, the creative class, who stick to their "good" schools and "good" neighborhoods, to laugh at other people as "racists." Projection, anyone?

Horselover Fat

Obama's day in WVa--not only playing pool, and wearing a flag lapel pin, but : "... He drank lemon lime soda from a straw and introduced the retired military officers with him: former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig; John Nathman, a former Navy four-star admiral; and Jim Smith, a former Air Force brigadier general. ..." -- http://www.boston.com/news/politics/poli...

are not going to win Obama W.VA. Obama cannot play man of the people any better than Kerry could because he isn't one. This is just going to look like what it is - inauthentic and more than a bit condescending. Do you know what might work? Proposing policies aimed at solving their problems, like the cost of gasoline (via Talk Left, exit polls (unweighted) show 63% of West Virginians like Clinton's gas tax holiday proposal). For some reason, proposing things that put $30 in their pockets means more to West Virginia voters than lecturing them about how nobody is so pathetic as to need $30. Hard to believe.

I still say, once Hillary is out of the race, Democrats will embrace her proposal as a way to stop McCain's. It's terrific politics.

or is markg's predictability boring. He doesn't even try to be creative in his attempts to HAKA/wankfest us Hillary folk.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. [whatever the talking point of the day is.]

Yawn. A little originality would be nice. Could get us even more riled up or disheartened. But as is, it's not working.

Carville will be surprised that Hillary wins WV big and gets reinvigorated in his support. Expectations game is something Obama _________ers don't comprehend. But what can you expect from people who think "uniting not dividing" is a novel campaign theme.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/200...

"... Among Obama supporters, just 51 percent of West Virginia Democrats say they will vote for Clinton if she is the nominee. John McCain would get close to a third of Obama's supporters, and 14 percent said they wouldn't vote at all.

But an even smaller number of Clinton's supporters would back Obama: just 36 percent say that they would vote for the Illinois senator. About the same amount, 35 percent, say they would support McCain and 29 percent say they wouldn't vote or would vote for someone else. ..."

And MSNBC is showing Obama in MO, of course--he's listing problems but not his solutions for them, as usual lately.

AHH! his solution--1000 tax cut for families--but only Hillary and McCain pander, of course -- and govt matching private pensions?!? ah, he says they're not gimmicks, like that gas tax thing.

He's explaining the Savings you'll get with his healthcare plan, safeguarding Social Security and a whole lot more.

While SUSA's poll has Obama up comfortably, he leads those who haven't voted by 20%, but only leads those who have voted by 1%. http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollRepo...

these are weird numbers--"1,700 state of Oregon adults were interviewed 05/09/08 through 05/11/08. Of them, 1,554 were registered to vote. Of them, 615 were determined by SurveyUSA to have already mailed their ballot or to be likely to return a ballot in the 05/20/08 Democratic Primary."

"6 in 10 likely voters who tell SurveyUSA they will return their ballot before 8 pm on Primary Day, but have not yet done so."

so 615 out of 1554 will actually vote, and 60% of the 615 haven't done it yet?

NT

http://www.scottharperforcongress.com/

Check him out. He's a great progressive candidate with a very good pro staff (his campaign and field managers came over from Hillary's campaign). He raised more money by March 31 than any Dem candidate in this district has ever raised for a whole election. He's made second tier on the DCCC list, (another first in the 13th) not quite Red to Blue yet but they are watching him.

Biggert will be 71 years old in August. She promised to term limit herself to two terms in 1998 when she beat Sleezy Pete Roskam in the primary but quickly changed her mind saying she discovered she couldn't get anything done in congress without seniority. After being in DC for 9 years she finally rose to ranking member on one sub committee last fall when another wingnut died. All those years in service to the party voting with DeLay 93% of the time and with Denny Hastert in the adjoining district to help her she's done little more than collect a paycheck and bring some pork home.

ot, but omfg-- "For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” " -- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/050...

remember "now watch this drive"? -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn...

She is the worst possible advocate for Barack Obama.

I could do a better job and I don't like him.

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Presumptive nominees are supposed to win, right?

he's a loser but the media says he still wins, of course.

They're too bored for words at MSNBC, basically.

Hillary's gonna speak bet 8-9. A 2 to 1 victory, they say.

and so far they have had Obama supporters saying (nicely) that it means nothing.

Donna Brazile-Nut, Bill Richardson-Iscariot . . .

I switched back to "Everybody loves Raymond."

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

West Virginia is a massive repudiation of the MSM, the Blogger Boiz, the DNC cabal (Dean/Brazile/Pelosi/Kennedy/Kerry/ Richardson/Daschle/etc.)

If I were Obama supporting Dems at this point, I'd be getting a little nervous about November. The Democratic base in West Virginia just gave them all a big F-You.

Obama was crowned the nominee and lost by 2 to 1 despite having outspent Hillary on ads, having the states leading Dems in his corner, and having more campaign offices in the state. He had falatial coverage 24/7 while Hillary was pronounced DOA. Obama lost to a non candidate big-time.

Be afraid, Obama supporters. Be very, very afraid.

i see--and it's a lie, of course.

too

which he says he can get.