LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.Best Political Blog Winner, 2007 Webby Awards, People's Voice and Jury.  
 
July 23, 2008
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Reports
No Easy Out for Obama
 * NEW! * Refighting the Vietnam War
 * NEW! * The Starbucks Economy

Ear to the Ground

A/V Booth

Arts & Culture

Digs
Inside the Data Mine

Truthdig Bazaar
Print Thumbnail

Exit Strategy

Mr. Fish
$90

more items

 
Ear to the Ground

Obama Ignores West Virginia

Email this item Email    Print this item Print   
Posted on May 13, 2008
Obama
Flickr / throwthedamnthing

Voters in West Virginia are widely expected to hand Hillary Clinton a huge, if moot, victory on Tuesday. Barack Obama will deal with the predicted hiccup by avoiding it altogether. The presumptive Democratic nominee will not be in the state and he will not give a speech, hoping that superdelegates either don’t notice or don’t care.

Obama did spend some time in the state, and even ran a commercial or two, but his campaigning was widely considered a token gesture.

New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama, expecting a shellacking on Tuesday, is ramping up his effort to behave like a general election candidate with a visit to Cape Girardeau, in the potential swing state of Missouri, for a town hall meeting later in the day.

The Lieutenant Gov. Peter Kinder called him, “the hardest left candidate ever nominated for president of the United States.”

But Mr. Obama’s campaign seemed to welcome the fight, not only as the hoped-for start of his campaign’s next phase, but also as a welcome distraction from the primary in West Virginia. The campaign is girding for a huge loss that it hopes will not provide a comeback storyline for Senator Hillary Clinton’s sagging campaign fortunes.

Read more

Email Newsletter

Get truth delivered to your inbox every week.

Previous item: GodTube Cashes In

Next item: China Quake Survivors Sought as Toll Tops 12,000

Jump to Comments

Advertisement


Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By isingbecausei'mhappy, May 14 at 8:31 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

President Obama spoke on the war in Iraq in North Carolina and the following day in West Va.

Check and see what S**t the Neocon-federates and Kkklintons threw up on the screen to obscruct your view that day and what noise they made on both days to keep the man from being heard.

These post modern race baiters obviously don’t know that West ‘By God’ Va became a state by seceding from Virginia when Virginia joined the original gray states confederacy. Your satement is not supposed to be “I Wish I was In Dixie.” West Va was, once upon a time, the progressive part of Virginia.

Mr. and Mrs. Kkklinton must be saying “screw the dumb s**t heads” or else they’d be schooling you on your history.

Report this

By Purple Girl, May 14 at 8:18 am #

Wow WV is a world within it self (they obvious breed like it too).Went WW raftign down the Gulley- the river was scary- but the locals were terrifiying (family tree like stick??)I’m Scotch Irish- so I try to refrain from Using the Term Hillbilly- But them there are real Life Backward ass hillbilly cousins to my ethnic background. I worried about the Copperhead- I feared the Banjo’s.
Teh aea’s I saw look right out of a Horror or Depression period Movie. Wow someone needs to send some Relief Workers down there (along with some teachers, real jobs, sex education instructors, Hygiene Products and explanations. Ain’t mean if it’s true) We need to at least bring them up into the last century!Do they even have a TV to hear Hillary? Can they Read a newspaper? I think my culture left some of it’s descendants to fend for themselves for far too long with far too few resource.

Report this

By isingbecause i'm happy, May 14 at 8:08 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

how are you and George W. Bush doing these days?

Report this

By rage, May 14 at 7:55 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Well, West Virginia is clearly Hillary’s base. So, I don’t blame Obama. Obama spent the compulsory 30 minutes in the WV and moved on to campaign against McCain, against whom Obama is running for President in November.

Hillary is in utter denial, just wasting her time and money she obviously does not have on this farce. There are no math tricks left to pull to manipulate the stats to put Hillary anywhere but back in the Senate, by way of Chapter 13 court in the fall. West Virginia is a Republican stronghold. West Virginia mines coal for energy. They are buddies with Cheney and Bush, and their unregulated Republican energy cronies. Were Hillary, by some fluke of nature and heaven, to actually get the nomination, West Virginia still wouldn’t be coming out for her in November. West Virginia just isn’t going to support the Democratic ticket, which is probably why Obama didn’t spend a whole lot of effort and resources courting their votes.

I’m always tickled by how easily Hillary assimilates to her audiance. Am I the only one who caught her Appalacian twang during her victory speech? Not bad for the facetious loser pretending to be common people, who was born in an affluent Illinois suburb, and educated at a few elitist ivy league universities.

I wonder how Hillary’s new country persona is going to play in 2010 with New Yorkers. Albany is fickle, but has a long memory. Starched white collared, elitist, overly well ivey league educated Albany, New York champaign drinkers who brought us FDR and Eleanor were only fickle enough to push Team Billary along virtually unopposed because they hoped she was able to close the Presidential deal. Instead, Hillary’s become a beer and shot swilling, bowling, tabaccy chawrin’, denim pantsuited patron saint of mountain top removal coal mining, with an Appalacian drawl. I’ve got buddies who are natives of WV who aren’t as country as Hillary is these days. That’s a bit over the top, just to shamelessly exploit the fears and ignorance of her base of poor, white, hardworking, under-educated, blue collar folks whose jobs her elitist NAFTA efforts have sent overseas.

Report this

By Maani, May 14 at 7:16 am #

dihey:

Thank you for nailing the problem perfectly.  Why SHOULD the VOTERS in Florida and Michigan be punished for the “sins” of their Party?  What kind of democracy is THAT?  This is why I cannot understand those here (mostly Obama supporters, of course) who continue to believe that it’s just “too bad” on Florida and Michigan.

Those voters have a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to vote, even in a primary.  How can the rules of a particular political party override the Constitution?

I agree: if Florida and Michigan are not allowed a re-vote, then “the 2008 nomination will go into history as one gigantic farce by a most undemocratic party that deserves to disappear into its dustbin. Its nominee will be tainted forever as the candidate of only 48 states.”

Peace.

Report this

By dihey, May 14 at 6:02 am #

The following is still the fundamental problem for the Democratic Party. No voting results of past and remaining primaries will wash that away. The party was perhaps obliged to punish-by the rules-the bosses of the Michigan and Florida parties. However, it arrogantly overlooked the simple fact that it thereby also punished the voters of these states who were powerless to stop their party’s bosses. The DNC never offered these voters an opportunity to have a really democratic say at the Convention. That must have been especially galling for those Floridian Democratic activists who fought their hearts out in 2000 to have all the votes counted in Florida. They were then screwed by the Supreme Court and by Gore/Lieberman who collapsed into heaps of jelly. Now they are screwed by the DNC. The 2008 nomination will go into history as one gigantic farce by a most undemocratic party that deserves to disappear into its dustbin. Its nominee will be tainted forever as the candidate of only 48 states.

Report this

By amy jo, May 14 at 5:22 am #

Yes Obama did stop in WV but, it was not like he stopped in other states.  Obama didn’t even advertise on TV like it has been reported he has in other states. I am not a big TV fan but,my TV is on always for noise so if the words Obama or Hillary come up I usually see what is going on. 
Obama visited the capital and he visited Huntington (the Huntington visit was for Seniors only) If there was more visits they were very low key. I kept trying to find a event that I could travel to. The Charleston one was not available to me because of a Dr. Appt but usually when a candidate is in the state it is known all over the state with Obama it wasn’t.
I live near Parkersburg WV, this is the first time since I have been registered to vote that a Presidential Candidate has skipped visiting Parkersburg.  Obama’s visit to WV felt like a visit to your Aunt’s House that you rush in say hi and then make some excuse to leave before she starts asking the tough questions about your life.
As for reading that book and learning something..I am always open to reading and learning something *S*.

Report this

By cyrena, May 13 at 8:42 pm #

The title here, specifically the word ‘ignores’ is annoying. One could presume that Obama never even bothered to appear in W.VA, or to address the constituency there at all, and that obviously is NOT the case.

He was there, and he acknowledged that Hillary was expected to win there, and so what exactly is wrong with that? That he didn’t hang around until tomorrow? So what?

I mean, isn’t that what Hillary has done with MOST of these United States? Unless they were ‘big’ states, (in her strategy)or likely to be ‘wins’ for her regardless, (Arkansas comes to mind) didn’t she pretty much IGNORE them all along? That’s what my memory tells me.

And, the results point to the fact that for the most part, (albeit with some exceptions like California and New York) Hillary won states that are generally ‘red’, conservative, and likely to go republican in the general election anyway. AZ, NV,OK and NM (though just barely) come to mind. Pretty much the same can be said of W.VA.

That isn’t to suggest that the people of WVA are ‘dumb’ as much as it is to say that historically speaking, it tends to run more along the conservative/republican vein. And, as I’ve mentioned multiple times before, HRC is a republican as far as I’m concerned. At least she has been since she entered the Senate, and has always been in with the neo-libs anyway. At the end of the day, there isn’t a whole bunch of difference between the neo-libs and the neo-cons.

AND...we need to change that ‘wording’ as well..the ‘neo’ in this case needs to be retired to reflect what they really are. A BAD ERA for US politics.

It’s time for the ‘new’ liberals and the ‘new’ conservatives to retire from the political scene entirely. They aren’t ‘new’. They’re destructive.

Report this

By amy jo, May 13 at 8:33 pm #

Up until right before the WV Primary I was on the fence over who to vote for.  When I found out that Obama was basically going to ignore WV and move onto other states it told me that he was saying WV didn’t matter and he didn’t think our vote counted.
Is it a coincidence that all of a sudden WV is again being stereotyped uneducated hillbillies in the news? All you see everywhere is that the statistics that how many people in WV have no college education or make less than 50,000 a year.  Is it taken into account that our economy in WV is not like the economy in the bigger cities our houses are not all going for $500,000 and up (yes they are rising in prices but a common house in a normal WV city like where I live is $100,000 to $200,000 yes there are more expensive houses but the regular family home goes for between these prices.  I am not saying our economy is not as bad as every other state because our gas prices are just as high, our food prices are rising like everyone in the US, and our people in WV are losing their homes like the rest of the country but, that doesn’t mean that our low pay rate makes us less worthy of a presidential candidate visiting our state and giving our people the right to hear him first hand. Bill Clinton was in WV 2 months ago and Hilary has been campaigning in WV ever since the NC/IN primary. 
Obama visited WV one day before the primary on Monday...and usually Presidential Candidates visit Parkersburg WV but Obama did not think Parkersburg mattered at all.
This is the first time I can remember that WV has had a voice in a Presidential Primary and yet Obama has basically said our voices don’t matter by not even showing WV any respect at all hardly.  Perhaps he thinks we in WV like Pennsylvania are bitter and hang to tightly to our religion.  WV is a bible belt but it doesn’t make us bad people and not all of us hang tightly to our religion some of us even believe in politics but, I for one no longer believe in Obama.

Report this

By KYJurisDoctor, May 13 at 7:54 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I would ignore west virginia, too.

Report this

By PatrickHenry, May 13 at 3:05 pm #

He is a far better candidate than McCain, in every department.

The Republicans have lost their way.

Report this

By Juanio, May 13 at 3:05 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

... has worked wonders for the conservative MFs who almost destroyed our country, so the Clintons, MFs themselves, also believe that if people bought the “I didn’t have sex with that woman” thy will certainly buy the “I’m a better candidate after all, screw the will of the people.”

I’m tired of deserving what a nation of morons continue to want to impose on me.

Report this

By Aegrus, May 13 at 12:18 pm #

“that the presumptive nominee can lose"…

Lose what? Obama has 170+ more delegates. This only effects the popular vote tallies, which will be made up later. Quit stroking Hillary’s campaign. It’s devoid of purpose. She’s Ron Paul.

Report this

Add Your Comment

Posts by unregistered readers are moderated. Posts by members
are published immediately. Why wait? Register today!






Notify you when others comment on this article?


Are you a human?
Retype the word you see here.


Please read and abide by our comment policy.
By submitting this comment, you agree to this site's terms and conditions.

Newsletter

Get Truthdig in your inbox

Privacy Policy

 
Click here to advertise with Truthdig
 

 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.