Talk Elections

is it gone for good from the dems.  has it become an extension of the solid republican south.

i knew bush would carry wv.  but the margin of victory was surprising.

West Virginia > Virginia

Man, I never would have guessed it.

Here's one I prepared earlier:



The Greatest Cock Up in History

West Virginia is perhaps the best state to show the problems of the Democrats in the cultural arena.  I'm sure they got killed there because of it.

It still remains a nominally Democrat state locally, though I will say that if KKK Byrd retires in 2006, Republicans will definitely have a very good shot of winning a Senate seat there.

Nationally, West Virginia will only be up-for-grabs again to a cultural conservative inside the Democrat party.

That reliable source is being hopeful.  I think that after the RNC in September, which was when Kerry pulled his resources, he was probably behind by a solid 5 points.

Then the culture stuff and the NRA came to the forefront and he got killed afterwards.  The party bosses could have also helped with this defeat too.

He's pretty sure that things were being covertly pulled out in the Spring. Very slowly. So that no one would really notice. But he noticed less people week after week.

After the RNC Bush seems to have lead WV by about 5 points (this is true) but that's about the national figure.
Things got weirder and weirder after the RNC... if the National Kerry campaign wanted to lose WV, they couldn't have done a better job.


Don't forget those evil leaflets ("...wants to ban the Bible...") How to get Evangelical turnout soaring with minimal advirtising costs.

The dark art of black propaganda at it's very finest


True. Very, very true. Petty grudges and Local Politicians go together like nothing else.
----
As to the initial question: it depends on the candidates (like most states) and whether or not the DNC v WV Dems feud kicks off again.
The one cultural issue that hurts the Dems in WV (most of the others don't sway many voters) is Guns. The Dems need to make a clear distinction between gun control in Inner City Ghettos and Gun Rights in rural areas.

Al, would you also agree that the coal vote is no longer as large, unified and important as it used to be.

I have no problem that the state with the highest incest and domestic violence rates voted for Bush.

But seriously, have you ever driven to some of those isolated towns in rural West Virginia? It's downright scary and looks like it's out of a horror movie, I'm not kidding.

Well, I was surprised by the margin myself, but John Kerry didn't seem to want the state. It is interesting, though, because this is a state Dukakis carried.

I think they could be like the rest of the south in that the kind of Democrats the party selects for President don't represent the people in WV, so they may vote GOP.

Rural WV is actually quite nice, for the most part. Been up through there before. There are bad spots, but has anyone ever driven down into an inner city in the northeast? Talk about a horror movie setting!

  I will say this, if the Dems find the issues to win in WVA, they will win the presidency. I can understand petty issues such as the Swift Boat ^(*^& would swing 1-2% of the vote and would delviver WVA in close election, but Kerry losing by 13%, worse then what Mondale lost to Reagan by and only a few percentage points less than what Nixon won by in 72 speaks volumes of the issues the Democratic party is facing with areas such as these.

   The Democratic party needs to go to places like WVA, Ross county in Ohio(Chilicothe), and other economically "hard luck" areas and figure out what went wrong.

In the short term Byrd should hang on to his seat to alow Manchin to choose his successor if Byrd dies in office. If Byrd resigns I'd be surprised if a Democrat wins his seat (in today's climate).

On the national level: Mark Warner 2008!

Exactly the type of thinking that leads to the democrats getting slaughtered in rural areas.

al, wv was hotly contested as late as july.

I love rural areas....just not West Virginia's.

Seriously, take a drive through some of the dying small towns in northern West Virginia. You will be shocked. It is such a different world. It's actually quite amazing. I helped a good friend of mine (conservative) move into to a house down there. Full size home, built in the 50's....renting it for $100 a month.

sounds like when I drive on I-94 through North Dakota and occaisionally check out the little towns on the side out of curiosity. creepy.

Go to rural areas of PA. Seriously. Coming from a state that has thousands of Amish I believe you have very little room to speak.

I'm really into traveling dude....I've been through a lot of rural PA and I live very close to Amish country. Southwestern PA is a lot like West Virginia but it seriously gets twenty times worse once you cross that border. I don't know what it is.

Depopulation has reduced it's importance (not as severe as in Kentucky though), but this has been seriously exaggerated by low turnouts in the Coalfields two Presidential elections in a row.
The frustrating thing is that this time around there was a real chance that it could have soared... all Kerry had to do was make a big fuss over Bush supporting cutting safety regulations in Mines.

Talk about missing an open goal... almost any other candidate would have seized on that.

One of the mistakes Kerry made this year, was to do with Iraq; what he should have done was make a point of not making a point of it, and when pressed on it should have gone on about having no intention to play politics with all those personal tradegies.
You get the idea. Focus everything on the Administration, and when they try to make political capital out of it, go on about "playing politics" etc, etc, etc

Oh and make sure not be associated in any way whatsoever with the Anti-War movement.

Extremely cynical, but a vote winner in the sort of places where soldiers get recruited from (it might not look like one to political obsessives, but that sort of stuff has actually worked before)

It's not their fault that they are poor. Quit sounding like a Thatcherite. 

Besides Northern WV is nowt on parts of the Southern Coalfield for poverty. Go to McDowell county, one of the poorest in the entire U.S... the health care system is worse there than in many third world countries.
Oh and it voted 60% for Kerry. Have you got a problem with that? Damn those poor buggers soiling the number of votes for the candidate you voted for.

Immature insults are the last thing WV needs now

Sounds much like rural areas in the Eastern and Northern parts of Finland.

I don't think that West Virginia will ever be Democratic state again in the same way like it was decades ago, but it's not yet that conservative state like the rest of the South. Bush got over 60 percent of votes in Alabama, despite that about 1/4 of state's voters are blacks. It seems that nearly 90 percent of whites voted for Bush. Only very few percent of the population of WV is Afro-Americans, what means that almost half of white people in WV still vote for Dems.   

One thing that may - will - make WV look scary to some people is Appalachian geography.
All those dark woods, winding valleys and secret glens...add a few slag heaps...

McDowell County's population has declined from over 90,000 fifty years ago to about 35,000 now - and according to some guy quoted by Michael Moore (is it in Stupid White Men or in Downsize This? Nevermind) very practicing physician there is an immigrant from the third world. The guy himself is a doctor, and a native of Ghana.
American doctors, according to him, wouldn't move there - no chance to make a decent living as too many of your customers will be unable to pay.

Isn't McDowell where that movie October Sky was set?

Another reason why the U.S needs an NHS

Why? So that immigrant doctors can't find a market niche for themselves?
:)

Yeah great idea. It's worked so well in Canada.

Glad you agree, although the British model is better for making living conditions bearable in Mining areas

[/sarcasm] It is bankrupting canada and it would be devastating to the US. Didn't this election wake you brits up to the fact that we REJECT your Euro/Metro style Communism(socialism).

Y'know I think the ridiculous and OTT subisidies of Quebec and Atlantic Canada's economic woes might be a bigger drain on Canada


Doubt it


What's "Euro/Metro style Communism(socialism)"?
Besides healthcare wasn't a big issue this year. Should have been, but wasn't.

America rejected European Socialism and gave the rest of the world the middle finger with the message, "We'll do as WE like and you'll not dictate to us." Of course to the British 59 million Americans are stupid.

What's "European Socialism"? The PES is really just a loose voting bloc in the European Parliament (took out that fascist nut though. Be proud) and is only the second largest bloc in the EP.
All the different parties in the PES have more factions and ideological differences than you can shake a (big) stick at.


I wasn't aware that the rest of the World dicated anything


Most don't (a small group very prominent in the media does though. Some of the recent headlines have been upsetting).
BTW the population of the U.K is 59 and a half Million

UK NHS is not very good I think (it's the picture that we have in Belgium). I believe that the best system is the Belgium/French system: it's not socialist, it's not liberal, it's conventional medecine: you can be a liberal doctor and you can fix your fees. But you can be a conventional doctor too and it's the gov who determines tariffs (the majority of doctors are conv). If your doctor is conv, you pay only 25% of the ticket (the rest is for your mutual) . This system, very good, not in deficit (behalve in hard times), but has the disvantage to be expensive, has financed by contributions taken on the wages.

Hence this system is the best in the world (UK must send some patients in France and Belgium because her etatic medecine sucks).


For WV, I'm very optimist if John Edwards is the next presidential candidate. If it's Hillary, I think that this state will be definitively lost.

The NHS was designed so that the Working Class actually had decent healthcare. It's not showy, but it's effiecient, costs less than most other systems, employs a hellofalot of people and on the whole does it's job well.
Some patients waiting for *minor* operations in the South East are *allowed* to go across the channel to cut down the waiting list.
But it's only been a handful waiting for hip replacements etc. that have gone so far.
The NHS gets a bad press from evil right wing journos, but most people like it, and opposing it is electoral suicide.
Besides, despite Private Hospitals not being allowed to treat people with heart attacks etc, death rates in NHS hospitals are lower than the few private ones.

Free at the point of use, is something that large sections of the U.S could really do with.

How things have changed lol

Not sure why you bumped a thread from 2004, but whatever, NOVA is actually pretty nice, if you ignore that it’s super liberal and has a lot of traffic, the houses are nice, and there is still a lot of beautiful views of the river

its fun to bump old threads sometimes


NOVA is nice but their are many metros that are far better(Dallas, Houston, Denver, LA, San Fran , Atlanta, New York, and from a biased point of view Portland and Seattle as well)

IceSpear?  lol

Lol interesting how similar this thread was to some of the threads and analysis we see today.

Dude ive been to portland and seattle and those metro areas are far better than la as a la resident I love it up their I plan on moving their when I can

In 2000 WV Easily , Gore could have won it if he didn’t distance himself from Clinton as much or take its EV for granted .

In 2004 WV just because Gephardt May have had a shot at it while Kerry , Edwards and Dean were not gonna win WV or VA in any realistic scenario . The only Dem who would have had a shot at VA in 2004 would have been Mark Warner and he didn’t run

It’s not surprising because many people go by this view of a state that votes for my party = list all the good stereotypes of that party , votes for other party = list bad stereotypes of that party

This thread is just... wow.

This thread is literally a f-cking fossil

Hi 2004 BTRD

Yep it's pretty awesome

Its funny as hell

Alot changes in 20 years is what I learned from this thread

Damn, my Pennsylvanian brother was way ahead of the curve here. Massive FF! Wish he still posted and didn't disappear in 2006. :'(

You likely have climate change to blame for WV turning from a safe Democratic state to a toss-up and then a safe Republican state from 1996-2004.

WV wasnt a Safe R state in 2004, if Gephardt was the nominee the state is probably Lean R , and if Hillary was the nominee in 2008 its likely a tossup.

Bumping this because it's so... I don't know how to say this... but now that McDowell County, WV has voted for Trump by 51 percentage points, this feels like, SO OFF.
(I agree about the fact that West Virginia doesn't need immature insults, but good God how things change)