Kentucky Democratic Primary 2012

[Taft]

Didn't Obama lose this state by like 40-50% in 08? He's an awful match for those states.

This is a stupid response.

Bush lost alot of states by like 40-50% in 2000, and how many of them did he not even receive 60% in the 2004 uncontested primary? None, the answer is none.

Same w/ Clinton, and Bush 1, Reagan, etc etc etc.

In none of those states did that President lose 30% of their party's vote in the General.  Fact of the matter is most of these states still have quite a few registered Democrats that no longer vote Democratic in a national election.  None of the others have it to the same extent.   You throw in the act that these are mostly conservative poor uneducated rural southern whites, and we have a Harvard educated black liberal, there you go.

First of all, two posts up: The extreme diversions from the national mean in so many states are a fairly recent development...and were more common pre-1960 (there were parts of New England and the Midwest that weren't too far off of the Solid South in some regards).

Second, on the situation in KY, WV, etc...that's not unlike what you saw in much of the South proper in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Look at '64 for an extreme example.

[Taft]

Ignoring non-hostile favorite sons, the only cases of major primary opposition to an incumbent that I can think of were:
-Buchanan to Bush, Sr. in '92, if that counts
-Ted Kennedy to Carter in '80
-Ronald Reagan to Ford in '76
-Gene McCarthy/RFK to LBJ in '68
-George Wallace to LBJ in '48
-Estes Kefauver to Truman in '52
-William French to Hoover in '32
-Hiram Johnson/Robert LaFollette to Coolidge in '24
-Theodore Roosevelt/Robert LaFollette to Taft in '12

Potentially, we can add the votes for Richard Russell at the Democratic Convention in 1948 to the list, but I wouldn't count the opposition to FDR in '44, '40, or '36.

In most pre-1968 years, there were also favorite sons on the ballot in various states, but generally they were simply electing "their" people to act as delegates for the incumbent, who wouldn't file in those states (witness the GOP in 1956, where there were four such slates on different states' ballots...three of which were pledged to a local governor/senator and one, in WV, that was unpledged).

1964 is an odd hat...for example, LBJ wasn't on the ballot in Maryland (he had a local stand-in) or in CA (where two stand-in slates fought it out).  Still...in a way, I think that primary is the best analogue to today, just with the odd variation of stand-in slates (the most recent equivalent to those that I could envision happening would have been if an Obama-backing Congresscritter from MI (I think John Dingell would have been the best possible equivalent) had filed in the primary there while Obama pulled out).