DSeid, do kindly cease from creating fiction and putting my name on it.
As I’ve asked you before, whenever you’re ready to be *serious * here, let us know. That time has obviously not yet come, and the chances that it ever will come appear remote.
I’ve asked a serious question and have tried be respectful. My apologies if I have inadvertently offended.
Having from here gone to other threads I have read your implication that you will not support McCain. In the let’s call it hypothetical case that Hillary does not pull it off, what will you do and what manner of her exit and Obama’s actions afterwards would effect what you choose to do and how you choose to do it? If you have answered this elsewhere I have missed it.
Who ultimately won in the struggle to unionize the WV coal industry? This Wiki article on the Battle of Matewan and its aftermath doesn’t say.
Obama has picked up 20 superdelegates – including a defection from Hillary – since Tuesday. She has picked up two undecideds since then, and lost the aforementioned defector. That means that for the week of May 7th - 14th, the delegate count is already 20 to 1. If Hillary were to get every single vote in West Virginia (and therefore all 39 delegates) she’d get a net gain (over Obama) of 20 delegates on the week. If she were to get three quarters of the vote, beating Obama 75-25 she’d get about 30 delegates and he’d get nine… edging her closer to Obama by something less than five delegates.
Anything less than a forty point victory in WV makes this week a net loss for Hillary. I’ll predict Hillary by 40 points – she’ll get 70% to Obama’s 30%. She gets 29 delegates, Obama gets 10. Assuming no more supers decide or defect, that puts net scores for the week at almost a dead heat.
It may be just as well that Hillary not drop out now. If she did, she’d probably still win WV and even KY and PR, and the Republicans would spin that pretty badly for Obama.
Over the next 30 years, the United Mine Workers was very successful in organizing most of WV. Since then automation has cut miner employment dramatically and lead to the boom towns eventually becoming near ghost towns.
However, I don’t have any statistics but in the last 20 years it seems to me there’s been a significant rise in non-union mining. The UMW doesn’t seem to be the political force it was when I moved here in the 70s. In contrast, coal companies like Massey Energy seem to be flexing more and more power - especially in elections.
PC
Dude, you were making an apparently undirected comment in post 37 of a thread. You know there are these things called “quote tags” to make it clear who and what you’re responding to, when you’re responding to a post from two days and 36 posts earlier, rather than to something of more recent vintage.
You can roll your eyes all you want, but you went out of your way to earn being misunderstood. Credit where credit is due.
It’d be interesting to know what, if anything, Hillary claims she and Bill did to strengthen the hand of unions during their eight years in the White House. My sense is that they did precious little in that regard.
Wouldn’t that be happening with or without unionization, just at a perhaps different rate, due to the lower cost of Western coal and a general shift away from it as a main fuel anyway?
As in, isn’t the main context of elections in WV the effects of an economy that never became significantly diversified when it had the resources available? It seems like Appalachia is a relatively old and poor (and suspicious from life experience) electorate that would be very receptive to serious, credible plans to build its economy, not (necessarily) coal-based - and not to mere talk about hope.
My post was in response to BrainGlutton’s [post=9788014]inquiry[/post]. The only intended political points were the historical shifts in power since the Matewan Massacre. (And then only IMHO.)
PC
Indeed, if any of the candidates were offering such plans. As it is, they have to choose from the available menu.
Yup. West Virginia is poor (last in median household income among the states) and poorly educated in general (with some pockets of exceptions). Really the only resource they got is coal. Getting the educational level to be competitive in the intellectual global economy isn’t in the cards without a generation or two of serious investment. There is nothing there to build an alternative economy off of.
Both Hillary and Obama’s positions on coal are identical: clean coal technology would be great and deserves support for development; coal to liquid would be wonderful so long it ended up emitting significantly less lifecycle CO2 (20% less to be precise) than gasoline (something that doesn’t seem too likely). Obama may be from coal producing Illinois but he’s pivoted away from supporting coal as strongly as he moved into the national limelight.
And McCain is about the same without the limitation that coal-to-liquid have less lifecycle CO2 than gasoline.
If they vote their economic prospects then McCain should win them over by a nose.
So have you decided WV does matter after all? :dubious:
Elvis reading your posts directed at me is strangely evocative of reading those Onion bits of “Ask the …” in which the answers have nothing to do with the questions.
To recap my take on my own op: West Virginia’s results will not effect the outcome of who will be the Democratic nominee but are part of an end game the nature of which will have potential positive or negative impact upon the pivot to the general election to come. I am aware of a scenario in which blow-outs there, in Kentucky, and in Puerto Rico can get a popular vote victory by at least some means of counting but that isn’t enough without being a bit closer in the delegate count (maybe 100) and also a strong narrative of her superior electability. She minimally needed a very solid win in Indiana to make that case and she failed to deliver that punch. The supers will not be effected by a Clinton blow-out there, no matter how large.
West Virginia will be a hard sell for Obama in the general: poor and poorly educated Whites who will be somewhat less badly off if McCain’s unfettered coal-to-liquid policy (no matter how much excess lifecycle CO2 is produced) is implemented than if the Obama and Clinton version is implemented.
Obama may be better off ceding it to McCain in the general but forcing him to defend the “the CO2 emissions don’t matter” position to the rest of the population to do it. It is defensible from the POV of energy independence but it may lose McCain some of his global climate change concern credibility with those crucial independent voters.
OTOH Obama’s approach to contest the state in the general would be the overall argument that McCain’s economic views are more of Bush’s failed policies. No, he doesn’t have anything to offer West Virginians in particular, but the incumbent party may get some blame for the overall poor condition that the economy is in and they may vote Democrat anyway.
WV does not matter in terms of the Democratic Primary, as per the question in the OP.
As far as whether it matters in terms of the election in November, that is a completely different question. Do try to keep up ElvisL1ves.
In term of the general, WV is a “purple state” – carried by each party twice in the past four presidential elections. See here.
Of course, in none of those was there an African-American candidate.
Strangely, one of the AP articles today points out that when Democrats win the White House (since 1916) they always take WV. Correlation is obviously not causation, but the trend is interesting: it hints at a future where Obama’s fortunes in WV are similar to his performance in the general.
Maybe Obama can come up with a liquefied coal gas proposal that benefits WV, and call it something catchy… like “West Virginia’s got Black Power.”
Very cute Jurph. The problem is that some of those hot on climate change (so to speak) are very down on coal. True 'nuff that coal will be a major part of our future for years to come even if we were able to roll out more renewable power source faster than most reasonably predict is possible. We’d better find less dirty ways to use it. But coal-to-liquid is unlikely to decrease lifecycle CO2 over gas and may even increase it significantly. And this year environmental stewardship is a go-to point for many of the battleground groups.
It’s actually Hillary’s campaign that’s floating that.
For one thing, it’s since after 1916 — in other words, since 1920. Woodrow Wilson lost West Virginia in 1916.
Second, it doesn’t hold the other way. Stevenson won West Virginia in 1952, but lost the presidency to Eisenhower. Also, in 1968, Humphrey won West Virginia, but lost to Nixon.
Connecticut, on the other hand, with 2 more electoral votes than West Virginia, has been in the winning column of every election since (and including) 1916, and Obama won the Connecticut primary.
From 1932 to 1996, the Dems only lost WV in three elections where they got routed: 1956, 1972, and 1984. IOW, it was one of the most reliable of blue states. So of course when they won, they always won WV.
It wasn’t quite like “when Democrats win the White House, they always take Massachusetts,” but almost.
WV flipped from blue to red in 2000, with respect to Presidential elections, and doesn’t look likely to flip back in a close election. But that hardly means the Dems can’t win; there are lots of paths to 269 that don’t require WV’s five EVs.