Joe Biden is the perfect choice for VP. Here's why.
Last year at about this same time I was having a rather heated political conversation with my family around the dinner table. It's okay, we enjoy the debating sort of thing. But I was surrounded by three women (which always leaves me feeling outnumbered, especially when my dad won't offer much help in these things) who cover the full range of the political spectrum. My aunt is the "no war for oil" liberal, my mom is the "I won't vote for people who kill babies" conservative, and my grandmother is the "a pox on both your houses" libertarian. Of course, they all have quite a bit more nuance than that--my aunt opposes abortion just like my mom does, my mom thinks no one should own a gun anywhere, and my grandmother...well yeah, she's pretty much the crazy libertarian. But I love them all anyway.
Ah, remember the Clinton blowout of Obama in the West Virginia primary? Remember the hard feelings from the "hard working American, white Americans" remarks?
Remember the cherry-picked racial remarks made by some of the primary voters?
Yep, I was one of those who was disgusted.
But there were other voices out there, including some here who said to not to rush to judgment and reminded us that is was Hillary Clinton that blew out Obama, and not John McCain. I admit that I didn't listen to those voices....I should have.
This story caught by Mark Nickolas over at Political Base deserves a lot more attention than it has received. It turns out that not only is McCain getting killed by the traditional media, his advertising campaigns just aren't working, either. Voters seem to be immune to the appeals of an angry, befuddled septuagenarian looking to preside over Bush's 3rd term.
Associated Press - no link for them - you can find it at the Charleston Gazette - is reporting Barack Obama continues to outraise John McCain by a 2-to-1 margin in West Virginia and has 4 times the number of donors.
McCain has raised nearly $121,000, including $32,300 donated in June.
Obama's $58,800 in June pushed him to $266,300 raised from West Virginians.
Jake Stump of the Charleston Daily Mail got it wrong about Big Oil's favorite West Virginian, the ineffective Bush Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito in today's paper:
On Wednesday, the Barth campaign attacked Capito for taking contributions from big oil companies like Exxon and Marathon in previous years, though Exxon has not given to her campaign this election cycle.
"These are very powerful and controversial special interest groups that have hiked up our gas prices and exploited working families," said Barth spokesman Mark Ferrell. "This campaign will not take money from big oil."
There's a rightwing pundit allegedly from my home state of West Virginia who thinks that doing the same thing repeatedly will bring a different result. Sound familiar?
Although he bills himself as "The Dean of West Virginia Radio", when it comes to providing stupid answers to real problems, Mr. Kercheval spouts half-truths with the worst of them.
In 2006, ineffective Bush Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito won re-election with 57 percent of the vote in a year that saw Democrats take over the House nationally.
Obama's primary performance in West Virgina was by all accounts pretty pathetic. He didn't win anywhere (although he did only lose Jefferson County 49/46), and there has been a lot of discussion about his "problem" in that part of the country. Notwithstanding that, this story is heartening, so I bring it to you to brighten your day.
In the last year, West Virginia has taken quite a few hits in the media. A journalist friend described it as a "target-rich environment."
The hits I'm thinking about now are images hurtling through the Web and airwaves portraying us as racist and xenophobic. Obviously, West Virginia, like other places, has its share of racists and bigots - and quite a few of them wound up talking to the press.
But I get upset when people paint the whole state and its history with that brush. West Virginia has a pretty interesting past in terms of race relations. Even before statehood, there were tensions between western mountaineers and the slaveholding elite that dominated Virginia politics.
I am writing as a concerned citizen of both the United States and your district to express my concern over you recent vote for the FISA bill. While I understand that we must act to protect America, we must keep in mind that we must also protect America from ourselves.
Ben Franklin said that the society that gives up a little bit of freedom for the sake of protection will soon have neither. As we go forward in the post-9/11 world, we must keep this mind. Already we have given up too many of our freedoms to the Executive branch, and a compliant congress stood by and did nothing for fear of political retribution.
I stumbled onto an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic which discussed one of the places in the West Virginia Panhandle, where I live, that I have shopped at: the local Wal-Mart.
Or, as he put it, the "crappiest Wal-Mart in America". An exerpt:
If you want to see the underside of the unregulated capitalist economy, the people who can't find the non-existent escape ladder from poverty and its pathologies, visit the Martinsburg, West Virginia Wal-Mart. Morbid obesity; spontaneous, public bouts of corporal punishment directed against dirty children; ten-year girls dressed as whores; tattoos running up necks and down legs; smoking like you only see these days in Baku; it's all here.
Part of this diary was originally published on June 9 at West Virginia Blue.
My connecting train was late tonight. It was hot as hell and I struck up a conversation with three young men, two black, one white, at the station about the heat and the lateness of the train. When we boarded, someone warned us the next car down didn’t have air conditioning working so I went up to the second deck and all the way to the end seat where I could stretch out. The other three followed me up and I had the end seat facing them as they sat sideways.
The man sitting closest to me, an African American in his 20s, was muscular with a tattoo of a flaming skull on his left bicep with "Protect Me From Evil" written around it (the skull not the bicep). He pulled out a book, Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father. His friends also began reading their books too though I could not see the titles.
Over the jump is a (hopefully logical) progression that came to me as I played with the question that will continue to engross us for the next couple of months - who would make the best vice-president for a President Obama?
I watched the truly excellent David Novack documentary ‘Burning the Future’ last weekend. The film focuses on the effects certain coal industry practises have on the communities of West Virginia.
It's is an all too (depressingly) familiar story about (literally) dirty business as usual, outrageous corporate abuses protected by outrageous political abuses.
Rasmussen notes that the previous poll was pre-Wright. My theory was that Obama's Democratic support had probably soften thanks to the primary. So it was time to dig into the internals:
5/29 Total Men Wom GOP Dem Other Obama 47 39 54 18 67 43
McCain 44 52 36 77 21 48
3/11 Total Men Wom GOP Dem Other Obama 50 47 53 17 73 50
McCain 38 43 34 79 13 37
Hmmm. Obama has weakened with independents, which could point to a Wright Effect. But he has also weakened a dramatic 14 points with Democrats, which is a clear Primary Effect. But unlike most other places, Obama hasn't bled female support. It looks like male Democrats have decided to step back and further evaluate the candidates (and even flirt with McCain). This state won't be competitive when everyone comes home.
Nor should West Virginia be competitive, but McCain is showing some surprising early weakness.
West Virginia
Rasmussen. 6/2. Likely voters. MoE 4% (No trend lines)
McCain (R) 45
Obama (D) 37
The crosstabs:
Total Men Wom GOP Dem Other McCain 45 41 50 78 32 36
Obama 37 40 34 13 48 39
Kerry only won Democrats in West Virginia by a 69-30 margin in 2004, so they are already not a bunch inclined to vote en masse for their presidential candidate. And it would take an epic McCain collapse for Obama to match those numbers, much less improve on them.
It appears that McCain's weakness with Republicans and independents is making this race artificially close. But when Republicans come home, and the Appalachian Democrats don't, this state will likely go Red. This is certainly one of those few states in which Hillary would've done better. (But of course, we already knew that.)
