Apparently, There Are Some States That “Don’t Count”
Yglesias pokes fun at the importance of West Virginia:
What’s even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim.
Very droll. To put this in a slightly different light, even Michael Dukakis won West Virginia, or, to put it more starkly, even Jimmy Carter in 1980 won West Virginia. Someone might object that Kerry came very close to winning without carrying the state, which is true, and someone could argue that Gore still won the popular vote and didn’t carry it, which is also true, but it remains the case that had Bush not carried West Virginia in 2000 he would not have become President after Bush v. Gore, because there would have been no great recount drama, the results in Florida would have been irrelevant to the final decision, and Florida could not have swung the outcome to Bush anyway. In 2004, it mattered considerably less, because West Virginia tends to back incumbent Presidents regardless of party. So the inability of the Democratic nominee to carry West Virginia when no incumbent President was running gave us eight years of George Bush–think on that for a moment and then tell us that it doesn’t matter whether the Democrat can win there.
In any case, the larger point in talking about competing in West Virginia (and Kentucky) is that weakness there seems to reflect significant weakness that carries over in other states that the Democratic candidate does need to win, such as Ohio or Missouri or Pennsylvania.
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4 Responses to “Apparently, There Are Some States That “Don’t Count””
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Everything about this is either glib or false. For someone who is generally pretty thoughtful, you exhibit very little knowledge of or instinct for electoral politics. I’m unsure why that is.
Of course West Virginia matters. Every state matters. But in the grand scheme of things it’s equally good for Obama to win Colorado, Nevada, and/or New Mexico. I know this is tough for conservatives to get sometimes, but things change. West Virginia is historically part of the Democratic coalition. It in no way follows that it must always be for Democrats to win any election. (Shockingly, if Gore had won any one of New Hampshire, Nevada, or Ohio, he also would have won in 2000. Your cherry-picking game is cute but not very informative.)
Also, it’s amazing someone with “significant weakness” in Pennsylvania could be polling so well there right now. You really just don’t understand any of this, do you?
Using WV as a signpost assumes that WV hasn’t changed in relation to the rest of the country over the years. Fact is, either WV has changed, or the country has and WV has stayed the same. Demographic shifts have rendered WV an anomoly, not a bellwhether. Nevada has as many electoral votes. It does seem rather obvious from recent pre-Obama trends that WV is becoming much more conservative and republican over the years. The facts you state - that even Carter and Dukakis won WV 20 and 28 years ago, but Kerry and Gore could not 4 and 8 years ago, suggest a trend line that would exist whether or not Obama is the candidate. Likewise, there are plenty of other states that used to be carried regularly even by weak GOP candidates which are now starting to trend Democratic. What a surprise - the world just doesn’t stay the same. Who’d have thought?
I guess this is a general paleocon bias. Paleocons seem to like to see the world as basically staying the same. If an historically Democratic-leaning state like WV starts trending GOP, it must be some weakness in Obama, rather than actual changes in the country. The fact that Obama is clearly a stronger candidate than either Carter in 1980 or Dukakis in 1988, and yet still losing WV, suggests that there’s something different going on in the country now as opposed to then. What makes Obama a stronger candidate overall may actually hurt him in WV. This suggests big changes in the overall electorate, and even state-by-state.
Oh, things change–thanks for the tip! There’s actually very little about this post that’s glib. If you want glib, go read Yglesias. There’s even less that’s false. Obama isn’t running terribly well in Pennsylvania–he’s polling in the high forties in a state that has been trending heavily Democratic in the last four years (and where Casey won by almost 20 points just two years ago), and which Democrats should not have to compete very hard to get. In many polls, he is behind in Ohio and Missouri, and in some he is behind in Nevada, Virginia, New Hampshire,
Minnesotaand Wisconsin. Early polling has hinted that he will have some difficulty in New Jersey–New Jersey, for goodness’ sake! But, of course, I understand nothing, and it doesn’t matter that Obama is running behind Kerry in states that Bill Clinton easily carried twice.Obviously, I cannot account for change, even though I am always talking about how different states have been trending Democratic in recent years and why that makes Obama’s anemic polling in those states particularly noteworthy. For the record, I have never called WV a “bellwether,” and no one would claim that it is.
This is one of the most absurd things I’ve read all year: “Paleocons seem to like to see the world as basically staying the same.” I don’t know of anyone who makes more arguments about the way the world has changed, usually for the worse, than paleocons. Eight years ago a Democrat couldn’t carry WV and lost the election because he failed to win a state that Democrats had won in every post-war election in which the Republicans weren’t running an incumbent President. Things haven’t changed *that* much in eight or twelve years. Just as Ohio will, at some point, no longer be integral to the GOP electoral map, and it will cease to be true that Republicans have never won without Ohio, it will also be true at some point that a Democrat will have won without West Virginia. I don’t think we’re at that point, and Obama’s lousy poll numbers up and down the Ohio Valley suggest that I am right.
A “bellwether” is a castrated ram. Must be my beloved California!