[CincyRichieRich]

Not stupid., Freeloaders. WV is the Welfare State.
That’s not entirely true.

Trust me, I’m originally from VA and thought the same way until I got up here and saw the problem first hand. These people are old style Democrats. They’re socially very conservative and fiscally conservative in their personal lives, but they don’t trust Republicans because the Republican party is linked to the Mine Owners, who have a very bad history up here. It’s the same mindset that resulted in VA’s 9th District electing Rick Boucher year after year after year. This State can be won, but it’s going to take work at the local level to undo the damage that the Republican party did at the turn of the 20th Century.

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Makes sense and drives home the thought that we ran a poor campaign. The fact that the Obama regime wants to run the miners out of business trumps the miners being republican. I’d suspect the mine owners WANT to remain in business.

[Avalon Hussar]

Makes sense and drives home the thought that we ran a poor campaign. The fact that the Obama regime wants to run the miners out of business trumps the miners being republican. I’d suspect the mine owners WANT to remain in business.

This is exactly the problem. The locals understand that someone has to run the mines, but the Republicans didn't do a good job of linking the Democrats to Obama's EPA mess. Conversely, the Democrats played up the "Republicans = Businessmen = EVIL" meme and it worked.

Had the Republicans consistently hammered the Democrats on the EPA mess, Obama's attacks on coal and the resulting lack of jobs, they would have walked all over the Democrats. That's their weakness in WV and it needs to be exploited to the max.