Tip to the Washington Post:

In Summary:

• McCain can compete in the west because of his stance on immigration with Latino's
• McCain wins Appalachia because poor white voters can't stand Obama.
• McCain is historically strong in the upper Midwest states of Wisconsin and Michigan.
• McCain doesn't need as much money as Obama to run his ops.

Sounds good, but points number one and two would seem to be mutually exclusive, as much of the opposition to McCain's immigration came from exactly those same poor whites that McCain claims as supporters in Kentucky, West Virginia, etc.

The McCain advisor Davis also claims that McCain outperforms general election polls, which is a good thing because he's off to a very bad start in the general tracking polls. In fact it seems that the rift in the Democratic party caused by Hillary is disappearing fast. Obama has moved up five points since June 4th while McCain is down a point, according to Rasmussen.

State by state polls are more important of course, but the general election matchups do indicate that McCain has work to do, but there is reason for optimism in the McCain camp.

Vice President (R-Obnoxious) needed to apologize to the entire population of West Virginia today after some impolitic remarks made to the National Press Club on Monday.

Via the AP/AOL News:

Talking about his family roots and how he's distantly related to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the vice president noted that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family.

"And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney quipped.

"You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

Yeah, you can, Dick. And you can contribute to the enduring legacy of this administration and assist in turning West Virginia blue again. Thanks, we'll take it.

Reaction from West Virginians - both Democrat and Republican - was swift:

The Senate's longest-serving member at age 91, Robert Byrd (D-WV), has been hospitalized, as announced by MSNBC and The Charleston Gazette, with symptoms of lethargy and fever. He was taken to a hospital in Falls Church and will remain overnight under observation at the advice of his personal physician.

Byrd was hospitialized back in February after a fall in his home. Our best to Senator Byrd and his family.

Karl Rove (Super Genius, aka The Architect) has been dabbling in maps. Courtesy Jake Tapper who says:

The big differences between Clinton and Obama, beyond the her larger number:

Clinton would make competitive some states that Obama would lose -- such as Missouri and New Hampshire -- and she would win others outright, such as Arkansas, Florida, Ohio and West Virginia.

On the other hand, McCain would handily win beat Clinton in some states that Obama made competitive, such as Colorado, North Dakota, and Virginia. Some states that Obama would win, such as Minnesota and Nebraska -- Clinton would lose to McCain.

And obviously the big key here is Florida and Ohio, the traditional swing states that Republicans in recent years can't win without. I don't think there's any doubt that in the current environment Hillary holds Ohio. She would do well enough in the cities and of course pile up votes in liberal Northeast Ohio. But it is in the Ohio valley, the most Appalachian part of Ohio where she would turn the tide. Kerry did poorly there in 2004 and it cost him the election. Kerry also faced overwhelming turnout in the suburbs and exurbs around Columbus and Cincinnati, and folks just aren't that excited about McCain these days. Governor Strickland has also been campaigning for her for weeks now.

Editor's note: Tommy Christopher was found early this morning, lying naked and shivering, in a cooling molten crater on the Southbound side of the Garden State Parkway. Paramedics took him to an undisclosed hospital, where he is reportedly in an "unresponsive state."

Tom Fitsimmons, a spokesman for Mr. Christopher, has confirmed that the incident is related to his recent experiments with inter-dimensional travel.

Reporter: So, can we assume that you can't transport clothing or other objects to parallel universes?

Fitzsimmons: No, you can. You're thinking of the "Terminator" movies, that's time travel. We don't know what happened to his clothing.

An early witness on the scene noted that the catatonic, fetally positioned space-time traveller was clutching a document of some sort, along with a $1 bill with a picture of Jesus on it. The witness retrieved the documentbefore the authorities arrived, but spent the dollar bill on a Lotto ticket.

What follows is the content of that document, a news article entitled:

President Kerry to Run For 2nd Term

May 14 - 2008 With yesterday's win in the West Virginia Democratic Primary, President John Kerry has all but sewn up his party's nomination to seek a second term.

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...

------------------------------


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...

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 seem to win over 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.

From her resounding Mountain Momma thumping of Obama, Clinton netted a total of 9 delegates. That "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" means that as of last night Clinton has suffered a net loss of 19 delegates since Indiana and North Carolina. This morning came word that three more superdelegates were formally endorsing Obama. Clearly, this treadmill is moving faster than its runner--Hillary Clinton--can keep up.

By CNN's count, Clinton now trails by 168 delegates. Newsflash, with four remaining contests, and superdelegates flocking to her opponent, there's simply no way that she is going to make up that difference.

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.

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.