Obama may win West Virginia

I knew for sure Obama would win a few counties in rural Appalachia, but I thought national Democrats were otherwise so stymied in rural America that West Virginia as a whole would be out of reach.

I know Dick Cheney's incest joke about the state should have dashed the GOP's chances, but the right-wing media didn't cover that gaffe enough to make as much of a dent as it should have.

I thought Obama may have been finished when he said the troop surge worked, but now it turns out that he's almost caught up to McCain in West Virginia. A new poll shows the Democrat down by only 5%, with almost 2 months to go.

More bad news for McCain in the Mountain State: Conservatives were vastly overrepresented in this poll. Forty-five percent of respondents identified themselves as conservative, even though only 33% of West Virginians did so in a CNN exit poll in the disastrous 2004 "election."

Twenty years ago, Republicans could forget West Virginia. Through much of this year, it looked like Democrats could forget it. Now I'm not so sure, especially because Obama is now doing better in West Virginia than in some nationwide surveys.

It's always satisfying when there's a chance a rural state like West Virginia can be rescued from swirling down the awful toilet known as Republicanism. If the Democrats can regain West Virginia, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Montana, and can maintain their edge in other states, they don't need Florida.

(Source: http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=26286)