[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
Here’s a depressing piece from WV Public Radio last week. It interviews folks from the small town of Man, WV. (About 45 miles straight-line SSW from Charleston, 70 miles driving, 150 years away in some respects.) Listen to the audio for the best/worst parts.
http://dev.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=1538
[/QUOTE]
WOW! That was in the U.S. huh? It’s sad watching people who have no desire for change.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
WOW! That was in the U.S. huh? It’s sad watching people who have no desire for change.
[/QUOTE]
But maybe they don’t WANT to become Muslim!
…what’s that you say?
[QUOTE=BaneSidhe]
Granted, there’s all kinds of folk who are trying to make the state move forward but when you have such a large redneck population, it’s almost impossible, IMO.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, you leave us rednecks out of it. Those are hillbillies up there.
(…says the guy from Southern Delaware, the only county in DE that didn’t go for Obama)
Here is someone at least arguing that West Va does still matter … maybe.
Okay, it is a stretch. Hitting the popular vote metric by one or another of her new maths or by virtue of PR even would be possibly enough to get the supers to vote her way if she also had a story line of Obama’s weakness in the general that resonated with them. Blowing him away in IN (or at least a double digit win) was her last chance to create that narrative. But that sized victory could prolong her exit for quite a while longer and make it more contentious. It may matter after all.
Any one want to make predictions?
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Here is someone at least arguing that West Va does still matter … maybe.
Okay, it is a stretch.
[/QUOTE]
I had a feeling that they’d back away from “It’s over” before West Virginia because it made the remaining primaries and anti-climax, and it’s hard to do “it’s over” stories all week (or all month). It’s not going to matter if she wins the popular vote “by some counts.” She’ll have already lost the delegate race by then.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Any one want to make predictions?
[/QUOTE]
Hillary wins WV by ~63-37%, and by 18-10 or 19-9 in delegates. And nobody outside Team Hillary and a few of her most rabid supporters will treat it as being of particular importance.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
!!! Is it really that bad there?! (I’ve never been to WV.)
[/QUOTE]
When* I *lived there it sure was.
[QUOTE=Marley23]
… it’s hard to do “it’s over” stories all week (or all month)…
[/QUOTE]
Heck, *we’ve *been doing it for three now!
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
I think Senator Clinton will show up at the convention as a candidate, even if she has to go alone. Her husband might go, but probably as her date.
[/QUOTE]
I think he’ll go as a superdelegate, actually.
No, we don’t matter. But I’ll go vote for Obama anyway,
[QUOTE=jtgain]
The sad part is that these people think they are really being interviewed and not taking part in the “Can We Get the Hicks to Say the Word Nigger On the Air” contest.
So why do they go to Man? There are educated people in WV, and there are idiots. There are racists in Hell’s Kitchen, NY, but the media never goes there and finds the stupid people to say things..
[/QUOTE]
Ah, Man, WV…such a perfect example of Redneckville, USA. It’s a wee, tiny town in the Southern Coalfields, to begin with [Wyoming Co] and hasn’t changed a bit since forever. My hubby had to do an inspection of a coal prep plant down there when he first started working for our agency and said that he’d never seen such an example of grinding poverty in a long time—and that was in 1986. I shudder to think what it’s like now.
Funny thing about racism in the North—it’s hidden quite well and you have to really dig and poke to get it to rear its ugly head.
One other thing I find really :smack: is that there was a significant AfAm population in the coal fields back in the 1800s-early 1900. They worked right alongside everyone else, lived in the same towns, etc.
I just don’t get people.
[QUOTE=BaneSidhe]
One other thing I find really :smack: is that there was a significant AfAm population in the coal fields back in the 1800s-early 1900. They worked right alongside everyone else, lived in the same towns, etc.
[/QUOTE]
I grew up about an hour away from Man, in Welch, WV. I’ve not been back very much since the mid 80s, but as I recall the population of the county was about 1/3 black. There were also a lot of folks of Italian and and Eastern European descent. At various times the mine owners brought in various groups of outsiders to try and break the unions, but the new workers just ended up joining the union for the most part. John Sayles’ film Matewan is a dramatized but still fairly accurate depiction of some of the events leading up to the mine wars, including the importation of black and Italian strikebreakers.
And for the four or five of you who may have seen the movie, my hometown has another connection other than being nearby. After Sid Hatfield was acquited of murder charges related to the Matewan Massacre, he was subpeonaed to appear at the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch. He was assassinated on the courthouse steps by three Baldwin-Felts detectives; they were never charged.
[QUOTE=Phlosphr]
WOW! That was in the U.S. huh? It’s sad watching people who have no desire for change.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I tend to agree with you, but I’m going to give it to you from the perspective of someone from that area, and maybe some of the other current/former West Virginians can agree or disagree with me.
These people have been shit on by outsiders throughout history. The coal companies came from out of state, raped their land, paid shitty wages, and for the most part have gone and left the land stripped and the people without jobs.
When the miners demanded decent pay and safe conditions, the mine owners brought in blacks, Spanish, and Italian immigrants who kept their mouth shut. Right or wrong, these people hated these groups for breaking their strikes/attempts to unionize.
In a large part, they are a victim of their own isolation. You won’t go to Man, Logan, Matewan, Hinton, Madison, or Racine unless that is your destination (and it wouldn’t be.) You don’t get there by passing through from New York on your way to Florida. Only in the last twenty years have four lane highways came through there, but you would take different four lane highways to get anywhere.
A lot of these towns have McDonalds, Subway, a Wal-Mart and some brand name convenience stores.
Their limited exposure to outsiders, and their whole experience with being shit on by the few that come in have left them very skeptical of anyone not from there. I was born in Clarksburg, WV and I felt, and was treated like an outsider in Madison.
And then a guy like Phlophr makes a statement like that. I agree with his statement and it is factually true. But these people have heard it and they resent it. It is their community and their life. They want to go to church and keep women subservient the way it has been done for hundreds of years. They have seen and heard of a thousand Phlophrs coming into their town and telling them how they should change for whatever reason. They hate it to the point of violence.
They are simple and uneducated, but they like their home, and don’t want change.
I’m not defending them, just trying to explain. Anyone else can feel free to help me out here or tell me I’m wrong…
[QUOTE=JohnM]
After Sid Hatfield was acquited of murder charges related to the Matewan Massacre, he was subpeonaed to appear at the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch. He was assassinated on the courthouse steps by three Baldwin-Felts detectives; they were never charged.
[/QUOTE]
Sid Hatfield was a great West Virginian, and a great American. I used to bang his great-granddaughter when I was in college. (Yes, for real) That got me interested in Southern WV history. She was a wildcat. 
You, Sah, are no gentleman!
[QUOTE=BaneSidhe]
One other thing I find really :smack: is that there was a significant AfAm population in the coal fields back in the 1800s-early 1900. They worked right alongside everyone else, lived in the same towns, etc.
I just don’t get people.
[/QUOTE]
Well you see within a few minutes everybody working the coal mine was black as … well coal … anyway.
If ithe nomination is all as over as you have so loudly and regularly (and dismissively, not to mention insultingly) proclaimed here recently, then no, WV obviously doesn’t matter.
So why are you wondering if it does? :dubious:
Please.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
If ithe nomination is all as over as you have so loudly and regularly (and dismissively, not to mention insultingly) proclaimed here recently, then no, WV obviously doesn’t matter.
So why are you wondering if it does? :dubious:
[/quote]
Are you addressing someone specific? I don’t see a lot of wondering if WV matters, in this thread. Maybe you didn’t bother to read the thread, and assumed there was a live debate here about whether it did?
Please, yourself. Getting all dubious and verbal-rolleyes about a discussion whose existence you’ve incorrectly imputed is ridiculous.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Are you addressing someone specific?
[/quote]
Yes. Not you.
Hell, try reading the thread title. :rolleyes:
ROFL!
Well perhaps he means me. I did wonder after all. (And I have been regularly stating that the election has been effectively over for a long time now … although it even now is not mathematically impossible … but insultingly, I don’t think so.) And I defend the POV that it does matter, if in no other way than in the how her final exit plays out and what effect it may have on the healing process.
For the record, I think she will win by an overwhelming margin there but without a huge voter turn-out. I’m still not sure how that will effect end-game and the process of pivoting to the general.
Elvis in my post #24 I linked to a source that lays out a scenario in which an overwhelmingly high turn-out victory in W Va coupled similar such victories in KY and Puerto Rico would at least allow her to attempt to make a popular vote argument. (Heck you weren’t speaking up so someone needed to argue the point!) Of course I argue that such is unlikely to find any resonance with the supers without having handily won Indiana. IMHO she had a chance to possibly make the narrative work (and I was afraid that she would!) but failed to seal the deal with the sort of win she needed. There will be no more chances.
Certainly I will be unsurprised to hear that you hold out hope that such will occur, that revotes will yet occur in Michigan and Florida, and that the supers will in one voice suddenly understand why only Hillary can win and save the party from disaster. Frankly I will be disappointed if you state otherwise.
But please do me the favor of indulging a hypothetical. What sort of exit and what sort of VP choice would be most likely to allow you to vote for Obama come November, and if you would vote for the Democratic nominee over McCain in any case, then to actually actively support his effort? Or is that well poisoned forever?