Sen. Hillary Clinton put recent media speculation that she may drop out of the Democratic primary race to rest with her victory speech following the Mountain State primary last night. More properly put, the voters of West Virginia did. Lopsided is not strong enough of a word to describe the magnitude of Clinton's win in West Virginia. She bested her rival Sen. Barack Obama, by 41 percentage points, 67-26. The rout was complete. Clinton won every single county in the state, most by more than 20 points, as Obama was only able to break above 40% in one county. Clinton won men and women, churchgoers and non-churchgoers, college educated and non-college educated, rich and poor, all by large margins.

At her campaign victory rally, Clinton delivered her victory address in understated tones, but the implications in her rhetoric came through loud and clear. She still believes that she is the stronger candidate to face Sen. John McCain in the general election, and she intends to continue campaigning until the primary calendar is complete.

"There are some who have wanted to cut this race short. They say, "give up, it's too hard, the mountain is too high," but here in West Virginia, you know a thing or two about rough roads to the top of the mountain. We know from the Bible that faith can move mountains and, my friends, the faith of the Mountain State has moved me. I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard."

Face Off returns! Two of our writers will be posting separate pieces on a hot-button topic. You can check out both and then vote for the one that speaks to you and aligns with your views.

Today the topic is Hillary: Should she drop out?

Check out today's posts:


Denise Williams writes:

[A] reason to stay is the situation with the rules-breaking Florida and Michigan. Clinton's advocacy (albeit selfish) for these two "disenfranchised" states keeps the heat on to find an equitable solution to seating their delegates in August. Without her continued pressure on Obama and the DNC, voters in these two states may be put off enough to stay home in November or go to McCain.

Continue reading Hillary Should Stay In...

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David Knowles writes:

Last night in West Virginia, Hillary Clinton came away with an impressive 41-point win over Barack Obama. She shaved his popular vote lead by roughly 140,000 votes, and used her surrogates to continue hammer away on the point that Obama can't win with poor, undereducated white voters. The spin from Camp Clinton is that all of this matters in her race race for the nomination with Obama. But the math -- Oh, the dreaded math! -- speaks otherwise.

Continue reading Hillary Should Drop Out...

For the third time this election season, the Democrats have stolen a House seat from their Republican counterparts. This time, it happened in Mississippi, where Travis Childers beat Greg Davis to send a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1994. Bush easily carried this district in 2000 and 2004, but that was before his popularity numbers plummeted.

Davis and the RNCC had run negative ads featuring the Reverend Wright and Barack Obama in an attempt to solidify white support. For the second time this year, the tactic failed.

In the towering wake of yet another defeat in a contest in which the GOP poured a great deal of resources, NRCC chairman Tom Cole fired off an S.O.S. to any Republicans who'll listen:

"...the political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general. Therefore, Republicans must undertake bold efforts to define a forward looking agenda that offers the kind of positive change voters are looking for."

In other words, the GOP needs to re-invent itself. Come up with some catchy, forward-looking buzzwords. Maybe even tinker with a proposal or two. All that negative change just isn't working out. Go figure.

UPDATE: You just can't make this stuff up. What has the Republican brain-trust decided on for a new slogan?

"The Change You Deserve."

Aside from being strikingly similar to Obama's "Change You Can Believe In," the funny thing is that slogan was already adopted by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for their anti-anxiety drug Effexor. Perhaps the GOP can kill two birds with one stone on this one. Pass out Effexor to all their candidates up for re-election, and borrow the slogan as well. Wyeth makes out like bandits and everybody's happy! Or at least until the drug wears off, anyway.

I just listened to Hillary's victory speech. As of right now she's leading 64-29%. Ouch! With numbers like that, this is the last time that West Virginia sees Barack Obama for, like, ever.

Hillary's speech was fairly unspectacular as usual, but in the first few paragraphs, I think she managed to squeeze in just about every West Virginia cliche about mountain people, going to the mountain, etc. Cringe worthy.

And then she started in with a rousing defense of why she's still in the race (remember, when you're explaining, you're losing) But she does have some valid points. She is the "strongest candidate" based on her ability to win swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That it has been since 1916 or so since a Democrat won without West Virginia. That's true, too, but it probably has more to do with West Virginia being a marginally leaning state, and Al Gore came within 300 votes of busting that record.

Anyway, it didn't sound to me like she was quitting, or even thinking about quitting. In her quest to stay in the race, she also received some unexpected support from Obama who stated that the race wasn't over yet. Hillary should send him a thank you card.

The Obama campaign doesn't talk about it much, but will admit when pressed that they started this process knowing that there was a small, but not insignificant, segment of the population that just will not vote for an African-American.

Running just below the surface in the campaign and in the media, is the undercurrent of racism still to be found in pockets around the country - rural, urban and suburban. While Senator Obama's message is inclusive and pan-racial, the workers on the ground have felt the sting that the campaign itself does not wish to highlight and the media has mostly ignored.

The Washington Post today has some harsh stories of field workers, phone bankers and surrogates having doors slammed in their faces, being called the most derogatory of racial terms and physically threatened.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

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That line is what we in the biz call a logical fallacy. As logical fallacies go, it's pretty innocuous, even comical. I picture an apoplectic bureaucrat somewhere screaming into the face of the 987th person to come to the window and ask, "What's wrong with my Driver's Manual?"

A far more dangerous logical fallacy is all the rage now, and it has a lot to do with intentionally blank pages. The press has given John McCain a free ride for years now, and as a result, 45% of Hillary Clinton's supporters have something like this to say:

If Hillary Clinton doesn't win, I will vote for McCain in November.

It is a happy accident that David Knowles wrote about this phenomenon earlier today, unbeknownst to me. This serves as an excellent companion to that story.

Now, I understand disappointment, and a certain amount of bitterness toward an opponent in a hard-fought contest, but this makes about as much sense as rooting for the Red Sox if the Yankees lose, unless you're Rudy Giuliani, or saying that if you can't have your favorite flavor of ice cream, you'll take cyanide instead.

My theory is that many of these voters have the same general idea about McCain that the rest of America does, that he's a free-thinking, maverick moderate who even leans to the left here and there, a great down-the-middle choice. Let's test that theory out. This poll is for Hillary Clinton supporters only. Take it, and then read on.

My prediction two weeks ago on Indiana and North Carolina proved to be total folly, today's foretelling will likely prove to be superfluous.

Today West Virginia Democrats cast their votes in a primary. They have 28 delegates.

Hillary Clinton will win West Virginia. And with a comfortable margin (8-10 points).

But it won't matter.

It appeared on a lonely street corner in Chicago: a stenciled silhouette of Barack Obama holding a microphone that connects to the United States. Immediately one wonders, What does it mean?

We can assume that this graffiti, somewhere on the streets of his hometown, is a gesture of support for Senator Obama. But it's hard to deny the bleak effect it has on the viewer.

Obama stands on a street corner--one hand holding a microphone, the other hand pleading--while on the other side hovers the United States, streaked with dripping paint. The only link between the Senator and his country is a long, meandering wire that he seems one step away from tripping over.

The raw loneliness is also marked by the image's physical disconnectedness. A passerby on one side of the street only sees Obama speaking to a rally, while someone on the other side sees nothing but the U.S. floating from a frail string. Only a person turning the corner or standing on the other side of the street sees the complete image. Even then, the street corner's three-dimensional divide is hard to ignore.

But, what about the image itself? Is the Illinois senator and probable Democratic presidential nominee speaking to us or through us? Is the fate of our nation inexplicably linked to this agent of change, or are we simply the vehicle or amplifier for his personal message and ambitions?

B. Brandon Barker is the author of the novel Operation EMU.

First Read's Domenico Montanaro makes a good point about why things aren't looking good for Hillary Clinton even though she'll win big in West Virginia today. The problem? Numbers:

Obama has now picked up 25 (with Romer would be 26) [superdelegates] this past week. That's more delegates than Clinton will net out of the West Virginia's 28 delegates at stake. And if Obama rolls out four more, he'd have gained more superdelegates in the past week than there are delegates at stake in West Virginia.

First Read is apparently sorely in need of a copy-editor, but the inference is a valid one. With the superdelegates now going over to Obama in droves, the remaining delegates that Clinton will net from West Virginia and Kentucky will be all but negated. Even James Carville seems to know the end is nigh.

If there's anything positive to come from the Clinton campaign chairman's Meet the Press appearance on Sunday, it's this: There is Scotch in heaven.

During a passionate defense of Senator Clinton's narrowing chances for the Democratic nomination, Terry McAuliffe invoked a vision of his late father and host Tim Russert's father "both in heaven right now probably having a Scotch and looking down and saying, you know what, this fight goes on."

Which hits us all right here. The only problem is, Tim Russert's father is not dead. In fact, according to the Meet the Press host, he's "sitting on a barcalounger" somewhere. [YouTube via Wonkette]



B. Brandon Barker is the author of the novel Operation EMU.