Primary Day in West Virginia

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Democrat Joe Manchin was a popular guy when he was West Virginia's governor.

But that was when West Virginia was still a Democratic state.

Now, as Manchin seeks his second full term as a U.S. senator from West Virginia, he is regarded as one of the most vulnerable Democrat incumbents in this cycle, and three Republicans are vying for their party's nomination to oppose him in the fall. West Virginia Republicans are going to the polls today to decided which one it will be.

President Donald Trump has already made it known which Republican he hopes will not be the nominee — Don Blankenship, a former coal baron who served time in prison. In a Tweet from the president yesterday, Trump urged the voters of West Virginia to reject Blankenship on the grounds that he can't beat Manchin in November and compared him to Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican who lost an open Senate seat in a special election last year.

Trump recommended that the voters choose either Rep. Evan Jenkins or state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the leading contenders for the nomination. Three other candidates are in the race, but they have been drawing only modest support in the polls.

The most recent poll I have seen had Jenkins in the lead with 25%. Morrisey was second with 21% and Blankenship was third with 16%. Polls have shown that anywhere from 12% to 39% of Republican voters are undecided so the race is essentially a tossup.

The race apparently has energized voters. The Charleston Gazette–Mail reports that early voting turnout was more than 50% higher than in the last midterm in 2014. Early voting numbers also exceeded the tally in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Why We Can't Have a Serious Talk

Last night, I read an article in the Washington Post about the recent electoral embarrassments that have been handed to Barack Obama in Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Obama, of course, is the incumbent, and he has drawn no serious opposition for the Democrats' nomination. Consequently, some people apparently believe, the Democrats in the primaries that are being held late in the process should line up like good Democrats and vote for the incumbent.

Even if they have objections.

But the voters in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky have thrown Obama an off–speed pitch when he was looking for a fastball. About two–fifths of the Democratic voters voted for token opposition — in West Virginia, that meant voting for an inmate who is presently incarcerated here in Texas — rather than for the president, who long ago secured his nomination.

The Post's Chris Cillizza writes that many Democrats have a ready excuse for the political resistance they have encountered within their own party — they "ascribe the underperformance by the incumbent to a very simple thing: racism."

Most Democrats speak disparagingly of George W. Bush. And I have no fondness for him, either.

But this is a tactic those Democrats share with Bush and his supporters — and they have been every bit as gleeful in its use and in anticipation of its power to squelch serious discussions.

Sure, it was disguised differently when Bush was president. In those not–so–distant days, anyone who disagreed with Bush on anything was labeled unpatriotic.

End of discussion. Once you have been tarred with that brush, you might as well stop trying.

No matter how strongly you may feel about the issue, no matter how many legitimate concerns you may have, no matter how many hours you may have spent arguing with yourself about it, if the other side has labeled you a racist or unpatriotic, there is nothing you can say to reverse that conclusion, no logic you can offer, no facts you can provide.

But that doesn't mean the allegation is true.

Oh, to be sure, there are people today who do permit race (or religion or gender or sexual preference or anything else) to determine how they will vote, just as there have always been people who were racist (or sexist or homophobic or whatever). And there are people among us who are not patriotic Americans — they have always been with us, too.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in a free society.

But it's not so easy to know who the racists and unpatriotic citizens are. In my experience, they usually don't advertise the fact or leave tell–tale clues behind. They might share their views with like–minded individuals, but they don't usually tend to share them with strangers.

"The problem with that theory," Cillizza writes, "is that it's almost entirely unprovable because it relies on assuming knowledge about voter motivations that — without being a mindreader — no one can know."

It's true that Obama lost all three of those states in 2008, and it is quite likely that he will lose all three in 2012. I don't see a racial backlash in these votes. I see a repeat of a phenomenon I have seen many times in the past — when a candidate locks up his party's nomination, disgruntled voters in the late primaries are emboldened to vote for any alternative on the ballot.

It's an electoral protest, and it should be taken seriously. My experience tells me Democrats shouldn't be dismissive about it.

In 1980 (when another Democrat president was running for re–election), I was living in Arkansas. Gov. Bill Clinton was seeking his second two–year term as governor. He looked like a sure thing. He was young and charismatic, and his only opponent in the party primary was a 77–year–old retired turkey farmer who barely scraped up enough money to pay the filing fee.

Clinton's opponent had no campaign staff or finances to speak of, but he received more than 30% of the vote when the Democrats held their primary.

The governor's staff and supporters insisted that it didn't mean a thing, and, in Arkansas, it was generally accepted that it really didn't mean much. Arkansans, after all, had elected only one Republican governor since Reconstruction.

But they elected another one that November — narrowly.

Both political extremes use the term fascism almost casually in their references to each other, which I find to be alarming — as well as an appalling display of an absence of knowledge.

Neither side is truly fascist — at least, not yet. But, with their blatant use of what Adolf Hitler called "the big lie," it is clear that it probably wouldn't take much to push either one over the edge.

"Make the lie big," Hitler said, "make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

It was a lie when Bush's supporters accused his detractors of being unpatriotic. It's a lie when Obama's supporters accuse his detractors of being racist.

It has a chilling effect on dissent, and that makes it one of the most anti–democratic (that's democrat with a lowercase d) assertions imaginable.

Manchin's Fence Straddling

Most folks shouldn't be overly concerned about West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's revelation that he hasn't decided whether to vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney this fall.

Manchin, 64, was one of the few Democrats who prospered in the 2010 midterms, winning the seat long held by the late Robert Byrd.

His victory really came as no surprise. Electing Democrats is a long tradition in West Virginia. Since the Stock Market Crash of 1929, West Virginia has elected (or appointed) more Republicans to complete unexpired Senate terms than have been elected to full six–year terms — and there haven't been many of either.

And supporting Democratic presidential nominees has been a tradition there, too — at least, until recently.

But Manchin's margin fell short of what was to be expected in 2010.

The campaign in 2010 was only about who would complete Byrd's unexpired term, which still had two years left. Manchin knew that, if he won, he would have to go before the voters again two years later.

And, in 2010, as a popular governor, he was able to win the vacant Senate seat in part because he had insisted he would keep an open mind about whether to support Obama in 2012.

That's a promise he seems to be keeping.

Even if he has made up his mind which candidate to support, Manchin has walked a fine line in his home state, and he will continue to walk it for most of the campaign. Obama has not been very popular in West Virginia, and, although he was a popular governor, Manchin only won election to the Senate by less than 55,000 votes out of more than half a million cast.

There isn't much room for error, and Manchin is probably wise to keep his cards close to his vest. Even if polls show Obama taking an unlikely lead in West Virginia, my guess is that it will be tenuous, at best, and Manchin probably won't reveal his presidential preference publicly.

He's likely to retain the seat in a rematch with 2010 Republican candidate John Raese, reports Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, but Manchin doesn't want to take any chances of alienating anyone.

West Virginia has voted Republican in the last three presidential elections, and many voters there remain upset with the health care reform law that may be overturned by the Supreme Court.

In October 2010, several months after the law was passed, Manchin told the voters he would have voted against the legislation if he had been in the Senate at the time.

Even then, he was keeping his distance from the administration

As I said earlier, I think that will continue.

What does it mean? I'm inclined to think it doesn't mean as much as a lot of people would like to think. It strikes me as a political move, not a philosophical one.

After all, it isn't as if Manchin's fence straddling represents some kind of defection — or potential defection. Manchin wasn't a member of the Senate when it supported the so–called Obamacare legislation — but he did say early in the year that he supported it (only to reverse himself before the election).

And he drew a distinction between himself and other Democrats by resisting the bill to reduce carbon emissions — a bill that was unpopular in coal country.

Let's keep Manchin's electoral history in mind here. When he was elected governor the first time in 2004, he received 64% of the popular vote. When he sought a second term in 2008, he received 70%.

His 53% showing in the 2010 Senate race must have been a bit of a shock, but it appears to have conditioned him.

If Manchin had received three–fifths of the vote in 2010 — and if polls had shown him enjoying that kind of lead late in the campaign — he might still have spoken favorably of the health care reform legislation.

But Manchin had to fight for it — and he may have to fight for it again.

His main interest in 2010 is his Senate seat — and the absence of support for his party's nominee is not a reflection — either favorable or unfavorable — on the president's performance in office.

Now, if other embattled Democrats begin to defect, that will be another story.

The Dean of the Senate

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson was president.

He famously kept America out of World War I in his first term, but he failed to keep it out of the war after his second term began.

That was the world into which Robert Byrd was born in November 1917 — nearly six months after John F. Kennedy was born. And today, after more than half a century of representing his home state of West Virginia in Washington, he died at the age of 92.

I think it is important to remember that he was a product of a different time. It was a time when social class determined everything. On board the ill–fated Titanic only a few years before Byrd was born, social class played a prominent role in whether people lived or died.

Not much had changed in the America of 1917, where the Constitution said no man could be denied the right to vote on the basis of race, but in many places, the hoops through which blacks had to jump in order to be registered were so imposing that few could succeed. And most women were not allowed to vote in those days, although the Constitution would give them that right within a few years.

There is no doubt that the America in which Byrd died today was far removed from the America into which he was born.

Although Kennedy and Byrd were born in the same year, they were born into vastly different circumstances. Kennedy was born into a wealthy family; Byrd's mother died during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and the children were sent to live with relatives. Byrd was adopted by his aunt and uncle and raised in a coal–mining town.

Like many young people, Byrd was uncertain which career path to follow as he entered his 20s. And he found acceptance with the Ku Klux Klan, which he joined at the age of 24.

Does the fact that Byrd gravitated to the Ku Klux Klan at a time when segregation existed in most parts of the United States and the armed forces that were being called upon to repel the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific were still segregated have any meaning? I don't know. Young people often seek acceptance in questionable groups. Many times, they find that a group isn't what they thought it was, and they leave.

On the surface, that is what appears to have happened with Byrd. He belonged to the Klan for a short time, then he "became disinterested, quit paying my dues and dropped my membership in the organization."

But there have been other indications that Byrd was committed to the Klan's message of hate.

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"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. ... Rather I should die a thousand times and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

Robert Byrd
Letter to Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo in 1944

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It isn't possible — as far as I know — for any mere mortals to peek into another person's head and see what lurks there. Was Robert Byrd, as some have suggested, a racist?

Well, there are different opinions on that. Paul Begala writes, in The Daily Beast, that Byrd's "one–year flirtation" with the KKK in the 1940s left "a stain that marked him for life."

And yet, Begala acknowledged, there was also Byrd's opposition to the Civil Rights Act 20 years later. But Begala also observes the many ways in which Byrd tried to make amends in later years.

It was during his time with the Klan that the idea of a political career took hold. After being told that he had a knack for leadership, Byrd said, "suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did."

Byrd's talent for leadership may have reached its zenith only a few years ago. Many people voted for Barack Obama believing he would bring the war in Iraq to a speedy conclusion, but, if Byrd had had his way, America never would have invaded in the first place. He went on record voting against the war and lawmakers' authorization of George W. Bush to pursue what Byrd called "reckless and arrogant" policies.

He said Congress was giving Bush a "blank check," and he was right. But the check didn't remain blank for long. In their haste to give the president the authority to invade Iraq (which he quickly exercised), lawmakers from both parties stuck Americans with a running tab that now exceeds $1 trillion.

In many ways, Byrd was a visionary leader, realizing early on, as Newsweek's Eleanor Clift recalls, the power of television and playing a significant role in permitting C–Span to televise Senate proceedings.

I always thought that much of the resistance Byrd may have encountered was easily explained. The Senate may well be the most exclusive club around, but not all its members are gifted speakers and there were many then, as there are now, who preferred to keep their remarks between themselves. That wasn't a concern for Byrd. He "was one of the Senate's great orators," Clift writes. And, indeed, he was.

I found it intriguing when former President Carter said today that Byrd "was my closest and most valuable adviser while I served as president. I respected him and attempted in every way to remain in his good graces."

Of course, that is the kind of thing one is expected to say on the occasion of someone else's death, and I have long been an admirer of President Carter, but it occurred to me that, if he really did hold Byrd in such high regard when he was in the White House, his attitude almost certainly must have changed by the time he sought renomination for the presidency in 1980.

As Clift points out, Byrd supported Ted Kennedy's bid to unseat Carter, and that must have been a sore spot for Carter, who was snubbed by his rival on the podium at the party convention that summer. "Byrd thought Carter didn't show proper respect for the Congress, treating it like the Georgia legislature," she writes. "Every chance he could, Byrd stuck it to Carter and pushed Kennedy as the candidate of the Senate Democrats."

After 30 years, I guess Carter got over the bad experience. He had complimentary things to say about Kennedy, too, when he died last summer. Time heals all wounds.

I'm inclined to wonder, though, if Robert Byrd, a product of his times, was always at heart that pragmatic politician whose skills were first noticed by an associate in the Ku Klux Klan and whose use for anyone depended upon what that person could do for him, whether it was to give him a vote or help him rehabilitate his image.

And, in that sense, he remained open to shifts in popular thinking. Whether he agreed with the shifts may not have mattered. The only question he may have asked on many issues was, "Which way is the wind blowing?"

"In many ways, Byrd had more in common with the culturally conservative Carter than he did with the liberal lion," Clift writes, "but he joined forces with Kennedy on more government spending for social programs, and Kennedy in turn brought him along on civil–rights legislation, helping him to bury his long ago past as a member of the Ku Klux Klan."

When I review the totality of Byrd's remarkable career, I can only conclude that he was a man of contradictions, not so different from most. He made his mistakes and tried to make up for them. Not so different from most guys.

Except for his gift for oratory.

From the Front Lines of the 'War on Drugs'

While perhaps written partly tongue in cheek, Joe Klein makes some good points about legalizing marijuana in his article in TIME, "Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense."

"[T]here are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice," writes Klein. "[T]he U.S. is, by far, the most 'criminal' country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one–third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana–related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public."

Or how about this? The money that is currently being squandered could be used to track down the dangerous elements of society — the murderers, the rapists, the identity thieves. Putting those people behind bars might make life livable for the rest of us.

On the economic side of the ledger, Klein observes, "there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone."

And California, with its budget woes and double–digit unemployment rate, could certainly use an annual infusion of more than $1 billion.

Not to mention that the black market would be eliminated — along with the violence that accompanies illegal trade.

At the other end of this discussion is the proposal that was made recently in West Virginia to give drug tests to applicants for public assistance.

Republican Craig Blair suggested "randomly testing people receiving state and federal assistance through unemployment, food stamps or welfare programs." The proposal died in the legislature on Tuesday.

I don't know if such legislation would be on solid legal ground when it comes to testing applicants for welfare or food stamps. But unemployment benefits are insurance that people pay for when they are employed. Seems like giving drug tests to people who are applying for unemployment benefits would be opening a big can of worms — one I'm not sure Blair or anyone else really wants to get into these days.

More than 660,000 jobs were lost in March, bringing unemployment to 8.5%, and drug testing can be costly. It doesn't seem like the wisest expenditure for cash–strapped governments, state or federal, although officials in several states are exploring Blair's proposal.

But, for the sake of argument, how would this random testing be accomplished? Would this be a matter of age or racial profiling? If young, black men were targeted more often than any other group, in much the same way they are disproportionately represented in the populations of state and federal prisons, wouldn't that leave the governing entities wide open for lawsuits? How much would the taxpayers have to pay to defend the government against those?

Or against charges of false positives? Not all labs are meticulous about their procedures.

And how likely would those lawsuits be to succeed? I guess that depends on the individual circumstances.

For that matter, giving drug tests to applicants for welfare and food stamps seems illogical as well. Even if someone tests positive, how does that prove that the public assistance funds would be used to buy marijuana?

If the concern is substance abuse, how would government prevent public assistance monies from being used for alcohol?

Drug tests don't even measure impairment. They only confirm the presence of molecules in the system, molecules that may be days or weeks old.

And that would only confirm that someone had taken the substance within the last several days or weeks, not how frequently it was taken or whether the person who tested positive was the one who purchased it.

The War on Drugs is being fought against our own people, most of whom are law–abiding citizens. Most people who have to apply for assistance don't want to do so. If someone has lost a job, do we want to make the situation worse by requiring that person to pass a drug test to receive assistance?

"[T]he costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable," Klein writes. "Would legalization be any worse?"

It's a question that deserves better than the blithe dismissal it received from the president last month.

Why Is McCain Favored in West Virginia?

One of the golden rules of American politics — before the year 2000 — used to be that non-incumbent Republican candidates for president didn’t win West Virginia.

A Republican candidate had to be an incumbent running for re-election (and on his way to a landslide victory) before he had a chance to win West Virginia.

Bob Dole couldn’t carry the state against President Clinton in 1996. George H.W. Bush failed to carry it twice. Ronald Reagan didn’t carry West Virginia in 1980, but he did carry it when he ran for re-election four years later.

Reagan’s experience with West Virginia was much like Richard Nixon’s. Nixon lost West Virginia to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and to Hubert Humphrey in 1968, but he won it in his re-election campaign in 1972.

And so it goes … all the way back to 1928, when non-incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover carried West Virginia against the first Catholic nominee for president, Al Smith.

West Virginia began as part of the state of Virginia, but the mountainous section of the state (which had few slaves) seceded during the Civil War. The state began its existence allied with the Republicans, like most of the Northern states in the Civil War and Reconstruction days (although there were probably as many West Virginians who fought and died for the Confederacy as the Union side).

And the shift to the Democrats seems to have been based more on economic factors than anything else — West Virginia began to support the Democratic tickets around the same time that labor unions were emerging in coal country and jobs became more scarce in the Great Depression.

In 1928, though, the national economy was humming along, and the unions hadn't yet made their presence known in West Virginia. And the religious suspicions of the Protestants may have played a key role in Smith's defeat in West Virginia. I know that general anti-Catholic sentiment hurt Smith elsewhere in the United States that year, but the apparently strong economy may have helped Hoover and the Republicans even more.

Certainly, the suspicions that West Virginia’s Protestant voters held about John F Kennedy in the state’s primary campaign 32 years later are the stuff of American political legend.

But, by 1960, enough Protestants in that state were persuaded to vote for the Catholic candidate that he was able to win the primary and secure the nomination, demonstrating his broad-based political appeal.

Ironically, as Theodore H. White observed in ”The Making of the President 1960,” Kennedy’s sole remaining active primary challenger, Hubert Humphrey, had effectively been eliminated by his recent finish in the Wisconsin primary.

”If, realizing this, Humphrey had withdrawn at that moment, Kennedy would have faced zero opposition in the West Virginia primary,” White wrote. ”[T]hus, any Kennedy victory there would have proved nothing and been meaningless.”

One can only wonder what would have happened to Kennedy’s presidential ambitions if deprived of Humphrey’s opposition in that primary. Certainly, history might have been changed if Kennedy had not been able to triumph over the ”religious question” in West Virginia.

Anyway, the stock market crashed in 1929, and for the next seven decades, non-incumbent Republicans never managed to win West Virginia.

But trends change. If George W. Bush had not carried West Virginia in 2000, the outcome in Florida would not have mattered.

Today, many political observers say they believe John McCain will become the second consecutive non-incumbent Republican nominee to carry the state.

In 2008, of course, religion is not the issue. In fact, today, West Virginia’s governor is Catholic — and he’s very popular.

The issue in 2008 is race. Nearly 95% of West Virginians are white.

But West Virginia's history should imply a supportive nature for Obama's candidacy.

Will Obama’s experience in West Virginia be like that other ground-breaking Democratic nominee, Al Smith, or will it be more like John F. Kennedy’s?

Glancing at the demographics, you’d think that Obama would be favored against John McCain in West Virginia. It’s a Democratic year, and 57% of West Virginia’s voters are registered Democrats.

But McCain appears to be popular in West Virginia, a state that has already voted heavily against Obama in its primary.

There are two major statewide races in West Virginia this year, and both offices are held by popular Democrats.

• Sen. Jay Rockefeller is running for his fifth term in office. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics reports that the state’s largest newspaper, the Charleston Gazette, endorsed Rockefeller in April with an editorial that anticipated that the popular Rockefeller would triumph ”with such ease he needn't bother campaigning.”
  
  It’s easy to see why Rockefeller is expected to breeze to another term. He received 63% of the vote in what turned out to be a surprisingly Republican midterm election in 2002, and he captured 77% of the vote while Bill Clinton was being re-elected in 1996.
  
  Rockefeller won his first term in 1984, when he took 52% of the vote while Reagan’s bid for re-election was being endorsed by 55% of West Virginia’s voters. He was re-elected with 68% of the vote in 1990.
  
  Rockefeller is paired against the same Republican he defeated in 2002, former state Sen. Jay Wolfe.
  
  ”Rockefeller should easily hold the seat,” Sabato says. I don’t think anyone disputes that.


• For that matter, I don’t think anyone disputes that Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin will be re-elected relatively easily.
  
  Manchin probably came to national attention during the Sago mine disaster in early 2006. There was a mix-up in which Manchin was assumed to have confirmed false reports that most of the miners had survived when, in fact, only one survived.
  
  Manchin acknowledged what had happened and emerged from the disaster apparently more popular than ever — and he was already quite popular, having been elected governor in 2004 with more than 63% of the vote.
  
  ”Manchin is sitting in the catbird’s seat,” Sabato writes.
  
  As of June 16, Manchin had more than $2.5 million in his campaign warchest; his Republican opponent, former state Sen. Russ Weeks, had raised a mere $10,000.
  
  Sabato has labeled the re-election bids for both Rockefeller and Manchin as ”solid Democratic” victories on Election Day.


• West Virginia has only three House seats. Two are held by Democrats, and both of those incumbents seem to be in good shape.
  
  Sabato is keeping his eye on the 2nd district, which has been represented by Republican Shelley Moore Capito since 2000.
  
  Although Capito was able to take 57% of her district’s vote in the Democratic year of 2006, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted her for defeat, and her opponent, Anne Barth, should benefit from the DCCC’s financial input.
  
  Even so, Capito’s district gave George W. Bush 57% of its vote in 2004 and 54% of its vote in 2000 — when West Virginia voted for a non-incumbent Republican candidate for president for the first time in more than 70 years.
  
  Sabato believes the district is ”likely” to remain in Republican hands.
  
  Capito will be counting on McCain to provide the kind of boost her campaign will need from the GOP's presidential nominee.

Not So Fast, My Friend

Is the race for the Democratic presidential nomination over -- as many writers and political observers have been suggesting, in the aftermath of Barack Obama's big win in North Carolina and his narrow loss in Indiana?

Only half a dozen states remain on the primary calendar.

One of those states is West Virginia, which holds its primaries next Tuesday.

West Virginia has the political stage all to itself, and, to a certain extent, it is resisting the notion that Obama has wrapped up the nomination.

West Virginia has a long history of being contrary. It once was part of Virginia, but after Virginia seceded from the Union at the start of the Civil War, the northwestern portion of the state itself seceded from Virginia and was admitted to the Union as a separate state on June 20, 1863.

In fact, to this day, June 20 is celebrated in West Virginia as "West Virginia Day."

In 2000, George W. Bush became the first non-incumbent Republican to win West Virginia since Herbert Hoover in 1928. The next four Republicans who were elected president won without the support of West Virginia.

Dwight Eisenhower didn't win West Virginia when he was first elected in 1952. Richard Nixon didn't win the state when he was first elected in 1968. Ronald Reagan didn't win West Virginia when he was first elected in 1980. And George H.W. Bush didn't win it when he was elected in 1988.

If the pattern had continued and Al Gore had won West Virginia in 2000, Florida's electoral votes would not have been enough to give the election to Bush.

I get the feeling that there are some editorial writers in West Virginia who feel that it isn't fair for the race to be considered over before West Virginians get the chance to participate.

I also get the feeling that participation in Tuesday's primaries will be good, even if the voters believe that both nominations have now been decided. There seem to be several competitive races on both ballots -- as one would expect in a state that has become increasingly competitive politically in recent years.

"Either Democrat will have a tough time this fall against Republican John McCain, whose service, policy experience and bipartisan accomplishments trump Hillary's," writes the Charleston Daily Mail in its endorsement of Hillary Clinton. "Of the Democrats, though, Hillary would be the stronger candidate."

The polls I've seen suggest that West Virginians agree.

Rasmussen Reports sees Clinton leading Obama, 56% to 27%. The remaining 17% either persist in supporting a candidate who is no longer in the race or continue to be undecided at this stage of the contest.

The numbers are virtually unchanged from a Rasmussen survey in mid-March.

American Research Group's most recent survey (conducted May 7-8) has Clinton in front, 66% to 23%.

How does one explain such a large Clinton lead in West Virginia?

In part, I would say the negative publicity surrounding Obama's remark about "bitter" voters "clinging" to guns and religion hasn't helped among West Virginia's more conservative electorate. West Virginia is, arguably, one of the most religious states in the nation. It is also a state where 7 out of 10 residents own guns.

Also, the demographics of West Virginia seem to lean more in Clinton's favor. Only about 3% of the West Virginia population is black, and about three-quarters of the residents went no farther in their education than high school. The so-called "Lunch Bucket Democrats" appear to outnumber the "Starbucks Democrats" in West Virginia.

And, in spite of the fact that West Virginia's economy hasn't struggled as much as the rest of the country, due to relatively good times for the coal mining industry, more than half of the state's households have incomes of less than $35,000/year.

The next administration will need to have a strategy ready to deal with the problems of energy prices, food prices, the economy in general.

But it's also important for Americans to decide in this election how they feel about the war in Iraq -- which will be 6 years old shortly after the next president takes the oath of office.

In this country, we celebrate those who are remembered as great warriors. But, as Yoda said in the Star Wars trilogy, "Wars not make one great." The ones who are remembered by history are the ones who show creativity and bold innovation on the battlefield in an attempt to shorten the conflict.

In fact, such a warrior died on this date 145 years ago. He was a Confederate general, and his name was Thomas Jackson -- better known by his nickname of "Stonewall." He considered himself a Virginian, although he was born in what is now West Virginia.

He died less than two months before the legendary Battle of Gettysburg. Many war historians believe the South might have won that battle -- and perhaps gone on to win the war -- if Jackson had been alive.

It seems clear that General Robert E. Lee knew what he had lost. Jackson actually died of pneumonia a week after the amputation of his left arm due to wounds he suffered in the Battle of Chancellorsville. As Jackson lay dying in the field hospital, Lee sent a letter and lamented to the chaplain, "[H]e has lost his left arm but I my right."

By the way, history also records that the battlefield wounds Jackson suffered were inflicted by mistake -- by Confederate troops.

Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies -- be it by design or by chance.

The management of a war that has dragged on for 5 years can hardly be said to be creative or innovative. The damage from the war -- like Stonewall Jackson's battlefield wounds -- is the result of "friendly fire."

In 2008, Americans must discuss the situation in Iraq and decide what the plan is going to be. We can't afford to sidestep the question the way we did in 2004.

It makes no sense to elect another president who will, in the words of Rick Martinez of the Raleigh News & Observer, "refuse to win a war."

And, since it may no longer be possible to win this war, we need a plan to simply end it.

It is neither creative nor innovative to continue to throw away blood and treasure to justify the blood and treasure that has already been lost.

There must be a clearly defined objective that will preserve what we still have and give us the opportunity to repair what damage it is possible to repair.

The Tsunami Begins

I can claim a semi-victory in one of my "Tsunami Tuesday" predictions. West Virginia's Republicans held their convention today, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won all 18 of the state's delegates to the national convention.

I predicted that Huckabee and front-runner John McCain would be the top two finishers in West Virginia. Huckabee got 52% of the vote at the convention, Mitt Romney got 47% and McCain got 1%

Huckabee, Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul apparently made in-person appeals for delegate support in West Virginia. McCain, as I understand it, did not make an appearance.

Polls are still open in the primary states so if you haven't voted yet, you still have time.