Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Webb in Appalachia...

Picking up on a previous discussion of Obama's electoral weakness in Appalachia I see that Ed Kilgore has looked at Jim Webb's strength (or actually lack thereof) in Appalachia.

I thought it might be useful to examine Webb's own electoral pull among Appalachian voters in his one electoral contest, his narrow victory over George Allen in 2006. And as I suspected, Webb didn't do that well among his Scots-Irish lundsmen, winning mainly due to his electoral strength in urban Virginia and the Northern Virginia suburbs.


Kilgore does find a bit of hope though,

What you say to Appalachians, in other words, may matter as much or more than who you are--a lesson taught by [Mark] Warner, and for that matter, by Hillary Clinton, the Seven-Sisters-Educated feminist daughter of suburban Chicago, who has done pretty well among mountain folk this year. And in the end, that's good news for Barack Obama, who ought to be able--with or without Jim Webb's help--to articulate an economic message more appealing to the forgotten people of the uplands than anything John McCain can muster.

No comments: