Saturday, May 10, 2008

Kentucky and W. Virginia...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/09/west.virginia/index.html

West Virginians will head to the polls Tuesday for the state's Democratic primary between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But what will the vote there really mean after new delegate totals show Obama with a sizable lead?

I don't see what difference W. Virginia and Kentucky will make. Even if they go to Hillary with huge margins, that's been the expectation from the start. It will not come as a surprise that the old, white, largely uneducated populations of these states go for Hillary. Those people are her bread and butter.

Clinton has a 43-point advantage over Obama, 66 percent to 23 percent, according to a survey from the American Research Group released Friday.

While I doubt these numbers, even if she wins both states by this much it won't matter much. These are small states with very few Democratic delegates. They're some of the reddest of red states. They're not swing states. They're the very epitome of the kind of state that Hillary said shouldn't count in deciding the Democratic nominee (I guess traditional red states only don't count if they vote for Obama). How is she going to explain counting these states as "game changers" when she said the exact opposite of all the red states Obama won?

A big Clinton win will send a powerful message that there are a lot of Democrats not ready to get on the Obama bandwagon.

Everybody has to make a choice. Just because I voted for Obama in our primary doesn't mean I wouldn't vote for Hillary if she was the nominee. Just because these people may prefer Hillary doesn't mean they won't vote for Obama when the choice comes in November. People need to stop acting like everyone in America's rural heartland is an ignorant racist who will never vote for Obama just because Hillary happens to be their first choice.

"There was just an AP article posted that found how Sen. Obama's support among hardworking Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and how the whites in both states that have not completed college were supporting me," Clinton said in a USA Today interview May 7.

Hillary needs to stop making racist statements, it's not doing her any favors. Last I checked, whites weren't the group that votes 90+% Democratic.

"They would likely paint him, if he's the nominee, as a far-left liberal who is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-civil union. That will not play well in West Virginia. Social issues register very high on the meter here," Bass said.

Every Democratic President since Roe v. Wade has been pro-choice. I don't see how they would vote for all those Dems but not Obama.