Redstate

Posted at 10:12am on May 21, 2008 "The Hairy Ainu of Appalachia."

Hey, don't look at *me*. I didn't come up with the term.

By Moe Lane

Do you know what's more fun than giving good advice to Democrats, when you know that they'll ignore it? Watching a Democrat do it to fellow-Democrats. It's doubly fun when it's Salon doing it. Via RCP:

Why don't those hillbillies like Obama?

Obama's "Appalachian problem" is a symptom of his party's larger "rural problem." But a new poll offers hope for the fall -- provided the Democrats show rural voters some respect.

May 20, 2008 | WHITESBURG, Ky. -- In analyzing the returns from last week's West Virginia Democratic primary, a phalanx of reporters and commentators have explained Hillary Clinton's landslide victory by pointing out that West Virginians are a special set of Democrats, white, low income and undereducated. Some, like Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Jonathan Tilove of the Newhouse papers, have linked the lackluster performance of Barack Obama in West Virginia to a larger Appalachian problem. These writers connect the presumptive nominee's defeat in West Virginia, his previous losses in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and an anticipated poor outing in Tuesday's Kentucky primary, to the historical, geographic and cultural imperatives shared by Appalachian mountain people.

The legions of pseudonym-laden online posters who follow in political punditry's wake are less restrained in describing the shortcomings of Sen. Clinton's Appalachian supporters. They suggest it has to do with her voters being racist, toothless, shoeless, and prone to marrying their cousins. In short, they characterize these "special" Democrats in much the same terms they used in quieter times to describe Republicans.

Ouch.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Appalachia | Barack Obama | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (19)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:09pm on May 11, 2008 Getting just a little testy about West Virginia and Kentucky, are we?

Dueling. Banjos. Ye gods, and little fishes.

By Moe Lane

Those two particular states? Just not down with the narrative. You know, I'm reminded of a poem... one which it would seem that the progressive movement has finally decided to take to heart:

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

- Bertolt Brecht

Ironic, really: Appalachia has always been where the hard work's been. Coal, iron, steel... you can talk about the railroads, you can talk about the truckers and stevedores, you can talk about the textile mill workers and the garment makers; but this is where the labor movement - the real one, the true one, the one that existed before the 1960s mucked it up like everything else - built its spine. And if there really are two Americas, Appalachia's in the one that the progressives so often insist that they're worried about.

But I guess that we know how seriously to treat that pious assertion of theirs now, huh?

Moe Lane

Posted in 2008 | Appalachia | Kentucky | Obamafiles | West Virginia — Comments (33)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:14am on Apr. 1, 2008 No Really. Hillary Has A Decent Shot (caution -- long post with lots of maps)

By horaceox

Promoted from the diaries. This is some detailed work here, and gives us hope that the hits will keep on coming. – Neil Stevens

It has become something of a passtime among polling geeks like myself to use Jay Cost's primary vote calculator to predict the outcome of the Democratic race. Most who have played with it have come up with some kind of scenario where Hillary leads in the popular vote.

Now, I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but a few days before Jay's calculator came out, I had my own estimate coming to this conclusion. But this calcuator provides some more concrete ways of estimating the popular vote. Let's look at this in more detail (especially given all the calls for Hillary to drop out).

Before we do a state-by-state assessment, people who followed me from myelectionanalysis.com know about my obsession with political geography. In case you didn't know, I've hand-programmed maps for every congressional election going back to 1972, with about half the states going back to their origins. I love maps and their use at displaying political data. This Hillary-Obama race gives a perfect opportunity to analyze along these lines.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Appalachia | Archived | Barack Obama | Democrats | Hillary Clinton | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (25) / Email this page » / Read More »