gee, it wouldn't be code or anything, would it?

I think the national media knows this--and even the Clinton backers.  They don't really mean "white, working-class voters".  They mean a certain kind of white, undereducated voter east of the Mississippi.

Without editorializing, I can say that what people are either narrowly calling an "Appalachian problem" or broadly calling a "white" is more aptly an East Coast and East-Midwest problem.  

The "race chasm" argument discussed in a few prominent articles a few weeks back shed the most light on the circumstance.  From Massachusetts to Mississippi, the Eastern half of the United States has a strong pedigree of racial tension (to put it lightly).  People are uncomfortable talking about it, but it's always near the foreground of consciousness here.  

By contrast, in states West of the Mississippi, where there are few traces of 1800's style segregation and very low AA populations, Black-White tension isn't as pronounced and exists more as a theoretical matter than a pragmatic everyday confrontation, Texas and Southern California being the exceptions.  Hence, "dog whistle" arguments appealing to interracial fears fall on more deaf ears.  They don't "get" the coded references to crime, or liberation, or "welfare queens" (Reagan 1980) because the tension isn't in their backyard.  

This isn't to say necessarily that the West is more enlightened.  It's just easier to say "what's all the fuss about?" when you live in a region that's been largely removed from the country's history of Black-White tension.  

All this renewed talk about Appalachia reminds me that Obama privately promised John Edwards that he'd undertake a poverty tour in the general election. Why not take that tour, with Edwards at his side, right through the heart of Appalachia?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/26 /obamas-appalachia-problem_n_103557.html

I hadn't seen this article although I knew that Sirota was a big Schweitzer fan.

How politically ambitious is this guy?  It seems that he'd be happy being governor for another term and then head back to his ranch.  Baucus and Tester block his route to the Senate.

Having read this article, I'm less sure that he and Obama would get along.  They certainly come from different political environments - maybe too different.

Careful acknowledging around here that Kos was right... again.

As Ron Reagan said, "If Appalachia were a country, Hillary could be president."

He lost the white vote in many states outside of Appalachia.

Kos, as usual, is cherry picking to make himself and his followers feel better.

He lives in his own land of happy thoughts.

The anti-Obama talking point has been much of the plains and the mountain west, until Oregon (everything besides Utah IIRC), has had caucuses and not primaries.  This, along with the fairly close results in the Washington and Nebraska "beauty contests" was enough to make some people (largely Clinton supporters) suggest Obama didn't really have a strength in the west, just a strength in caucuses.  

With Oregon, this rationale started to creak, and I think next Tuesday, it will collapse.  

Sometimes this whole thing feels like the last panel of today's Opus...

Singer has been fair and balanced here for a while now.  Mostly.  :)

Ah, I see.

Montana is actually full of lazy hardworking white people.  I need to call my sister and her boyfriend in Helena and tell them to start working, though I'll wait until after the primary so Obama can win.

Now if only I can get their lazy asses off the couch to a polling place...

In those Western States like Idaho,Montana,Utah,Wyoming,Colorado- The White Working Class voter is more Libetarian. They believe in a lassiez fare economic policy. They are a strong advocate for States Rights.

In Southern States like Kentucky and West Virginia. The White Working Class voter is more traditional. They are frequent church goers. They oppose a candidate who has a Foriegn name.

Sometimes I'm a hardly working white person

so you believe the exit polls that say she does better among lower income voters, but NOT the exit polls where a full 1/4 of her voters say race was important?

Actually, the Appalachian voters cast themselves as racist.

"that theory", if it's the one I think you're referring to, actually predicted that West Virginia would likely be one of Obama's worst states, because it's the worst of both worlds for him.

1. As a geographically small state surrounded by larger states with much larger cities, it is effectively in their media markets, and those states (VA, PA, MD, OH, KY) are "race chasm states" - hence, the race chasm media narrative is a familiar part of politics.

2. However, WV itself has hardly any black voters to offset the effect.  In "race chasm states", the black population is too small to actually give him a win, but it is large enough to offset the effect somewhat.  That part is missing in WV.

Now, there's actually another dynamic that theory didn't cover, which is the particular problem the Appalachian-Ozark population belt has with Obama.  However, even without that, WV reinforces that theory (and remember, Sirota made this prediction well before the WV primary).

Now, if you look at the graph he made to demonstrate the "race chasm", you'll see that Obama's narrow wins in Missouri and Connecticut are still part of the pattern.  Sure, sometimes he can do a little better in these states, but overall, he does much much much better in the mostly-white and heavily-black states than in the ones with a small but significant black population.

Apppaaaaaalaaaaaaaaaaaaa-chiaaaaaaa

If he "needs something" then what does Hillary "need" ?

the latest poll out of Ohio shows Obama beating McCain, and the average of polls according to RCP also shows him winning. polls out of NC show McCain beating both Clinton AND Obama. This is so misleading.

If Obama attacked Hillary as viciously as he could, would his larger margins in the popular vote satisfy you?  After all, he leads her $40 million to minus $30 million in campaign funds.  He could have swamped her message in WV and KY, forcing her to spend money she didn't have and picking up a couple hundred thousand more votes for himself.  Would you be happy then?

Actually, Obama only needs about 17 more supers given conservative projections of the remaining three races. At the pace he's been amassing supers, he should pick those up before June 3rd.  

If Jon Tester can win the state, so can Obama!  Such negative nellies....

I thought Montana had a Democrat Senator and Governor.  I guess I'm wrong.

The republican brand is in the toilet out here in the west.  

And yet Obama polls only 8 points down, and that is in a poll that included Clinton and didn't include Bob Barr.

I don't actually know how Barr will do here, but I would expect a serious Libertarian candidate who actually has a meaningful campaign to do McCain some serious damage in the Mountain West. He won't have the money to do Perot-like damage, but I would guess he won't be insignificant either.

It has 100,000 fewer people than the county I live in

Let's hear it for the guy making wild claims and trying to push divisiveness who isn't even an American, everybody!

Yeah, it's in play, Montana is no country for old men.

Wow, way to run down our party for a cheap political point.

Kerry won the under $50,000 income category against Bush, winning big in the under $30,000 category. He won the union vote (20% of the electorate had a union member in their household) solidly. He lost the no college degree vote by a small margin. To claim from that that the Democratic party in Oregon represents only rich people and hippies is insulting and false.

It those Southern States like West Virginia and Kentucky- There are a lot of BUBBA/COOTER/ZELL MILLER-YOSEMITE SAM Voters. These are voters who want to Challenge people to a DUEL.

The White Voters in Oregon- are more Environmental Freindly. Before Gordy Smith. The previous Republican Senators were Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood. Both were Moderate-Liberal Republicans.

to winning the election.  Lovely people, lovely states, but as this Huff Post writer says:

The Democratic Party, as a modern political party, dates back to 1828, when Andrew Jackson crushed John Quincy Adams to win the presidency. Yet without the votes of workers and small farmers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as a strong Democratic turnout in New York City, Jackson would have lost the Electoral College in a landslide. Over the 180 years since then, only one Democrat has gained the presidency without winning either Ohio or Pennsylvania, with their large white working-class vote. (The exception, Grover Cleveland, managed the feat in 1892, and only barely lost Ohio - but he was dependent on the post-Reconstruction solid South.) Beginning in 1964, when the Democratic solid South dissolved, every successful Democratic presidential candidate has had to carry both Ohio and Pennsylvania, even when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton picked up southern states.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-wilen tz/barack-obama-and-the-unma_b_103353.ht ml

More importantly, look at the primary contests with twenty percent or more AA participation and tell me how many delegates he netted from his race baiting.

you put it too harshly, but yes.  The sooner the party accepts the fact that most "Reagan Dems" are simply gone, and takes advantage of every other demographic that's coming our way, the better off we are.

Agreed. If the GOP wants the white supremecists, they can have 'em.  

NH: Clinton, 39%; Obama, 36%
CA: Clinton, 46%, Obama, 45%

If these are examples of Obama having a "problem" with white voters... it seems Clinton does as well.

In fact he's had such a terrible problem with the dominant racial demographic that he's winning the primary against a white person who started out the race with an overwhelming institutional and name-rec advantage.

This whole Appalachia argument is another example of the Obama supporters looking for an argument rather than the facts.

Lame yet typical.

I'll avoid the temptation to apply your willful selection of facts that suit your personal bias to all Clinton supporters... I don't have any evidence they've got their heads in the sand... but you seem dead set on ignoring examples across the country where Obama has readily taken the white vote... including some of the whitest states in the nation.

she's dead.