David Brooks has introduced us all to the crucial segment of the electorate that determines the course of American politics:  Patio Man.

For all the talk of plumbers and investment bankers, populists and elitists, Patio Man is still at the epicenter of national politics.

Self-parody much?  But before you get your mock on, I think I know where he picked up on “Patio Man”.  I believe Patio Man is the lost verse of a They Might Be Giants song.

And, yes, Triangle Man beats Patio Man.

I suppose that there are issues swirling around with the vice presidents — Biden says something which the McCain / Palin ticket is running with, and whose controversy mostly just exposes it as something of the “Say Nothing” nature of a presidential campaign; Palin says something which contradicts McCain’s position.  (Or, if we are on edge about the existence of a controversy, it does not speak too well for how we think about presidential elections.)

Notwithstanding that, and while it is uncomfortable to see this, of all things, in crass political horse race terms — Obama goes off to Hawaii to care for his ailing grandma — I point out that, like the Powell endorsement, it kills a couple days in the Tedious Presidential Campaign — ensures a few days of fuzzy news coverage of Obama’s upbringing — blazened next to McCain decrying the Socialist Menace.  Or, in terms of that last post on the Powell endorsement — another first down.

Barack Obama leads by two touch-downs with five minutes left in the fourth quarter, and is on offense at the fifty yard line.  It is third and 13 — first down saw a run for no gain, second down saw a three yard sack.  (Or, in real world parlance, McCain just edged up in the polls slightly and the conversation had been focused on the 15 minutes of fame of Joe Plumber.)

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama.  This is a twenty yard pick-up, and a new set of first downs, and another chance to just kill a couple minutes off the clock, and if nothing else is in field goal range.  Thie endorsement fills the air of the media landscape for a couple days, which is the most important factor in this sports’ race.  Sure, sure: Powell attracts independents and wavering Republicans, provides the same “gravitas” he lent to Bush in 2000, in the game of Racial politics provides a counter to Wright, lends foreign policy and veteran credibility and everything else is true.  But mostly he just kills two day off the calendar in the tedious slog toward Election Day.

That is the meaning of the Colin Powell endorsement.  What can be said about Colin Powell himself?  Well, he waved around that vial at the UN, but never mind — I don’t much matter in this equation.

You gotta love the campaign of a long-shot candidate with no real ties to his political party.  From the news down in South Carolina.:

 Bob Conley, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for the seat, said he’s holding his opponent’s feet to the fire in the election.

Speaking to a group of roughly 10 gathered at Bobby’s Bar-B-Q Buffet sponsored by the Aiken Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty, Conley wasted no time in getting down to the issues, chief of which he said was Graham’s support of “so-called” free trade agreements.

Why could this writer not have simply counted to get a better representation of “roughly ten people”?

Further forecasting:

Mr. Graham offered assurances that the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package he voted for would work.
But Mr. Conley predicted the Dow Jones industrial average is heading to 3,000, about a third of its current mark, as the federal intervention adds to inflation and the national debt.

3 thousand?

An interesting side-light in the saga of Joe the Plumber was that he was a registered member of the Natural Law Party.  Media reports have gotten some things about this political wrong, namely its continued existence — the national party dissolved in 2004, though they did set up a shadow government and allowed for the continued existence of state parties.  The state parties have all probably dried up by now as their use for vehicle for vanity political campaigns sputter away in the face of fraction of a percentage election results, but I would have to run through the “politics1” page on minor parties to see if the Natural Law party still has some foothold anywhere.

(And a quick check shows that it does not any longer exist in electoral politics.  Idaho was the last strong-hold.)

Would I want to be identified with the Natural Law Party?  Would you want to be identified with the Natural Law Party?  I don’t know — it probably shouldn’t be held against you.  The focal point of the Natural Law Party, and its ultimate reason for being, was a belief in Transcendental Meditation under the auspices of the  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.   Moreso, from old wikipedia:  that the development of consciousness, in particular through the practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program including Yogic Flying, can enhance individual capability to resolve societal problems, and (2) that the practice of these techniques by a critical mass of the population, or else their group practice, in particular the group practice of Yogi Flying, results in overall improvements in society, including reduced crime, accidents and hospital admissions and improvements in prosperity, security and quality of life.  From this basic kernal the party can branch out and ornament its philosophy with some ecompass various liberal policy goals of an activist government and a peaceful political stance visa vie the world at large.  The “basic kernal” of Transcendetnal Meditation was always hiding behind the stated philosophy of “solving the world’s problems in an inter-connected” manner.  John Hagelin was the perpetual presidential candidate (in 2000 waging a battle against Pat Buchanan to control the Reform Party’s ballot access), until 2004 when they endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president.  I recall interviews with Kucinich where he was asked to address the members of his political following who got together in groups at the end of his speeches to practice some Yogic Flying — he demurred.  He also explained once how he was going to be elected president with a vast coalition of Democrats, “Reagan Democrats” who had been voting Republican, Green Party members, and Natural Law Party members.  Apparently including Joe Plumber.

My problem with Joe Plumber, therefor, does not really concern much his Aspirational politics where he believes (mistakenly) that he’s about to be taxed out the gorde as he is on the cusp of buying a $250,000 business, his lack of understanding of tax policy — people can vote for something that is not their immediate self-interest and for what they consider a larger interest – the only issue there is it would be nice if they know that.  Nor is it much of a concern that he is not a licensed plumber, and the immediate conspiracy theory that he was related to a member of the Keating family rang as immediately false.  No.  The problem is the inconsistency with someone who can spout out a litany of rather conservative opinions:

“Social Security’s a joke.  I have parents.  I don’t need another set of parents called the government.  Let me take my money and invest it how I please.  Social Security, I’ve never believed in, don’t like it, hate that it’s forced on me.”
“I’m not sorry that we’re in Iraq. … We’ve liberated another country.  I mean, you know, freedom. … I don’t know if you guys are Christians or not, but it’s like someone coming to Jesus and becoming saved.  These guys have freedom. … Has it kept us safe? Absolutely.  I believe in that 100 percent.”

(Also he’s tired of Americans apologizing for this greatest of nations, and dissing on the flag, and wants immigrants to get in line.)

… with someone who registered, unknowingly he states, with a political party that can eagerly endorse Dennis Kucinich.  You can be one or the other or you can be one and then the other, but you can not be both.  That does not square.  But everyone has their demons in the closet, I suppose.

There is a bit of conflicting information on this score, but it appears that the horse-race poll numbers have tightened toward John McCain a tad.  Drudge gets to blare the anomalous Gallup poll results which show the race in the margin of error at 3 percent– but Drudge probably blared that weird “which of these polls is doing its own thing?” one percenter a week ago.

Anyway, we’ve gone from the six and eleven percentage advantage for Obama to the five and seven percent advantage.  Which is odd, because the swing states don’t appear to be moving in McCain’s direction, and that weird assortment of non-swing states which nonetheless are tantalazingly close for Obama keep popping up here and there.  Perhaps the swing state polls lag behind the national polls?

I am also getting conflicting accounts of what it is McCain is doing with this map.  But maybe this politico report is just old news, and McCain has already side-lined it to his focus on getting a narrow Bush-state victory.  The tightening of the polls does suggest that McCain can’t or shouldn’t slide into the “Salvage what you can” mode for keeping as many Republican seats down-ticket as you can — though with McCain’s history with his own party this might not be too doable anyways.  What I would do if I were the McCain / Palin campaign: #1: You have something with “Joe the Plumber” — which is a nascent Tax Revolt which is not going to win you anything in 2008 but will be the kernal of a future Republican victory.  Go with that campaign tact.  #2:  McCain should shuttle back and forth between Ohio and Florida.  80 percent of his campaign appearances should be in these two states.  Maybe that number is an exaggeration, and maybe McCain needs to lean on Palin a bit too much to excite any crowd.  #3:  Sarah Palin can do that red-state tour through the questionably marginal states such as Missouri and traditionally Republican but swinging toward Obama’s direction states of North Carolina and Virginia and the unsettled West Virginia.  This is the Base Mobilization strategy, the states where the natural Democratic / Republican disparency should have the Republican win by just getting their voters to the poll — and it appears to be what she is doing — telling North Carolinas that this is the part of the country full of “Real Americans” (as opposed to the fake Americans who populate the rest of the country) and demanding that Obama come clean on his connections with ACORN (which strikes me like demanding to know somebody’s connections with the Rotary).

That also might give Palin an excuse to head over to, say Georgia.  Which is a state Obama is probably not going to win, but is entertaining the idea of making a play for.  I suspect it’s as much a play for winning the Senate seat there as anything else.  This brings me to what it is John Ensign of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee’s strategy these days ought be.  This is the Salvage Operation of all Salvage Operations — the very feeble goal of keeping the number of Republican senate seats into the 40s.  The situation for the Republicans is that they might lose eight senate seats, and they can still just go ahead and call it a victory.  I guess the strategy for Ensign and crew these days would be to concede Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.  Alaska they can leave to Ted Stevens’s devices — which is not a concession.  This leaves two tiers of states:  Oregon and Minnesota in one, followed by Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and perhaps Texas.  The Republicans should win that latst four, and purely defensively it would get them into the forties if they keep those seats — their meager goal.  I guess for limited resources purposes, I’d trust Texas to remain in Cornyn’s good hands, and spend it to keep Kentucky, Georgia, and Misssissippi in Republican hands.  That is the firewall — Gordon Smith and Norm Coleman might as well be buttressed by third party 527s (“Paid for by People Who Love Puppies”) and probably wouldn’t be too well served by advertisements which end with voters hearing “Paid for the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee”.  It is not too good a sign that the Republicans are left with a fire-wall purely with those three southern (and border) states, and conceding a bunch of Presidential swing-states, but that’s where the party sits for the year 2008.  Well, 2010 and 2012 promise moderately big things for the party, I suppose.  All of this is off, because the Republicans are foolishly still trying to pick off a Senate victory in Louisiana — a little too proud are they, I suppose.

A few months ago, someone marked as “Anonymous” stuck up a blog at blogspot.com called “Larouche Watch”, which seemed to be evoking the “Anonymous” who had been going after Scientology.  They posted up a few posts — reprints of a few articles, I suppose most notably the Avi Klein piece for the Washington Monthly.  But it was all very sparodic, and the rss feed stopped.  Going over to the blog, I see a shift of sorts in editorial direction, deleted to a new first post with some feign of “balance” in the offing.  Go figure.  In lieu of waiting for something like that to materialize, I guess I have to continue to do some grunt work here (if you call cutting and pasting various items every so often “grunt work”.  Because the world needs to know when Ann Coulter makes a cutting seemingly antiquated Larouche reference?)

Um.  Exciting news about four untimely deaths?  First off, Jeremiah Duggan:

Among the scheduled participants are German Parliament members Hans-Christian Ströbele (Greens) and Gert Weisskirchen (Social Democratic Party), as well British lawmaker Simon Hughes. Also speaking will be former members of the LaRouche movement from Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States.

The forum is sponsored by Weisskirchen, who is representing the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Combating Anti-Semitism, and Ursula Caberta, the head of the focus group on Scientology at the Interior Ministry of Hamburg.

Prompted by the mysterious death of Jeremiah Duggan in 2003, Simon Hughes, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, will travel to Berlin this Friday to attend a forum at the House of Democracy and Human Rights entitled ‘Does the LaRouche Group Present a Danger to Society and a Danger to the Individual?’

According to the parent’s of the late 22-year-old, the notorious right-wing organisation was responsible for their son’s death, an accusation that has so far been brushed aside by German authorities.While officials claim Jeremiah committed suicide, throwing himself into oncoming traffic on a busy autobahn, the Duggans attest they have forensic evidence to prove otherwise. […] Armed with what she claims is irrefutable evidence acquired by hiring her own independent forensic pathologists, Erica has made submissions to the Attorney General for a further probe into her son’s death. Her investigation revealed that he may have been battered with a blunt instrument and that there were no tyre marks or other signs on Jeremiah to indicate that a vehicle had come into contact with the body.Now, Hughes will add another voice to the family’s five year campaign. The MP told the Jewish News: “As a London MP I feel an obligation to support the family. I want to raise the profile of this situation. The fact is, the Schiller Institute acts with anti-semitic values and is very, very dubious. I am absolutely clear that there has not been a satisfactory explanation of what happened. We owe it to Jeremiah to make sure this is not swept under the carpet.”

But wait.  Just who is this Simon Hughes?

On his proudest achievement in parliament since 1997: “A young man called Jamie Robe was kicked to death in Rotherhithe in August 1998. Using my community links I helped break the wall of silence, encourage witnesses to give evidence, and secure convictions.” Hughes had to receive police protection following death threats linked to his advocacy for the family of Jamie Robe. The episode became an ITV1 drama, with actor Robin Kermode portraying Hughes.  AND

Simon Hughes was an important figure in the fight to grant a young gay man, Mehdi Kazemi, asylum so he would not be deported to his homeland of Iran, which had executed his boyfriend and almost certainly would have executed him. Mehdi Kazemi thanked Hughes in a letter to people across the world who fought to save his life: “I would like to say thank you to my local MP, Mr Simon Hughes, and his team who gave me the chance to live and made a miracle happen when he heard that my life was in serious danger and asked the Home Office to suspend my deportation in December 2006. I would not be here if it hadn’t been for his intervention. He was here for me then and he was here for me again when I was eventually sent back to the UK in April this year. I do not know if I would have been granted my refugee status without him.”

But that’s wikipedia.  Where anyone can drop positive or negative information on a politician.  It just so happens two moments from his career were stuck up by supporters of Hughes.  For the real lowdown on this Mr. Hughes, you have to go to the Schiller Institute page, and you will see the truth, which is: he’s also connected with a Friend of Israel.  Hint hint.   What is bizarre on the “Schiller Institute Page” is that the game of “Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon” has one more person by way of Simon Hughes to this “Israel” than with the other five members of the British parliament who pushed a probe into Jeremiah Duggan’s death.

I do not see this going anywhere, with way too many road-blocks to proceed much further — the Wiesbaden Conference has been isolated away and shut off from the World at large for a reason.  Which is not to say I think any of it has been in vain.  The simple reality is that in the shadow of the Iraq War, Larouche had a hook with which to grow Version #2 of his cult.  That has stalled and crashed, due in no small part to easy awareness of Jeremiah Duggan. Though, also probably there is some natural turn-over (in this case turn-out) by the simple reality that the cult ceases to be any fun at a certain point.

As the cult settles into its current role of rambling on about the Worldwide Financial Crisis — and his take goes like this:  “The British are having fun; back to their roots in the time of Edward III; they’re going back to their roots, their Fourteenth Century roots. British economists return to Fourteenth Century roots, in the New Dark Age of the Fourteenth Century.“  “The only thing we can say about this,” he continued “which really sums it up, is that some people have a zeal to return to the middle of the Fourteenth Century. There’s no other way to describe it accurately.” — it should be noted that that does not hold a candle to the Perpetual Financial Crisis plaguing the Organization.

Looks like Bad Days at Black Rock–scanning recent “Ops Bulletins” (the ending sections of the “Morning Briefings,” in which LYM, or the “field,” or whoever’s out there these days, reports its activities) suggests that the LaRouche org is making even less money than it’s been making for years….

Squads of LYMers report making, oh, $4 on a “deployment.” ( —- Which is pretty interesting, considering the pamphlets have a supposed “$5 Donation Recommened” price-tag. —- )  I’m not kidding. When time permits, I’ll post the quotes……., as we all know, the real money (sic) doesn’t come from the field. Howsabout the phones?……

I don’t know, but they recently had one of those all-hands-on-deck Sunday “deployments” of everyone in Leesburg, rushing to the office to dial for dollars. Guess they’re feeling the pinch…….. And Barbara wasn’t always exactly the way she is now.

I had always assumed the evolution of the “Economic Model”, such as it was, which had schlepped expenses at Kenneth Kronberg and PMR and walk away scot-free from Printing Expenses, would have de-centralized the much thinner and oft-littered pamphlets to local Kinkos, after printing out a master copy from some student’s account at a University.  This is an exaggeration, but perhaps not too much of one.

If you look below we see something never seen before. The lit is being printed around the country if I am reading the expenses correctly. This means that there is no longer any central printing but local printing which places even more of a burden on the regions and their local business fronts. In this busines model, the downward spiral continues as the LYM and LYMettes are being moved from their free love ins at the campuses to hardball nickle and diming at card table shrines and carcinogen inhalation intersections.  The tweeners like a John Morris and others are being moved around the country to get the regional field income rising as you now have to pay for the paper delusions instead of just sponging off of PMR to the transfinite and beyond.

Here are some accounts paid. We do not know what the total bill is, however, I would not discount the cult building up credit and having a larger bill than what we see here in money paid.  I only looked at a few pages and pretty obvious printing related companies. What is amazing is seeing how much is paid out in rents and utilities for our “volunteers” and how the stipends may be getting interlinked with LPAC and the local corporations.

-RODGERS & MCDONALD $196,514 Carson, Ca
-MCARDLE PRINTING CO $102,092 Upper Marlboro, MD
-AUTOMATED GRAPHICS SYSTEMS $86,688 WHITE PLAINS, MD
-UNITED PARCEL SERVICE $85,512 for delivery
-TRI STAR OFFSET $67,071 Maspeth, N.Y.
-SILVER COMMUNICATIONS $43,999 Sterling, Va Graphics
-CPG CACI PRODUCTIONS GROUP $23,500 Chantilly, Va AV production
-GEM/LASER EXPRESS, INC $20,206 Dulles, Va Toner
-FEDERAL EXPRESS CORP $19,829 shipping
-ECHO $15,469 Leesburg, Va May be direct mail service
-WORLDCOMP $11,531 This could be the last payment
-POSTMASTER, LEESBURG $8,279
-AVALANCHE SERVICES $8,027 Kearneysville, WVa
-MARKET SHARE SERVICES $7,510 Burbank, Ca print/mail
-COLORCRAFT OF VIRGINIA $5,041 Sterling, Va

This appears to be only current to June of this year, so by the next filing we can see how much is being spent on printing. Without a PMR to be soaked, hard cash needs to be funneled into paying printers and suppliers instead of LYM and LYMette “volunteers”.

Well, the buck stops somewhere.  Either a shadow of Financial Obligations looms over Larouche — as it had with PMR — or he could brush it aside in his realm as a British – Zionist plot, or… it gets to be pushed down to the road to this moment.

Two items from a new page of obituaries for Gary Genazzio and John Morris, for what I guess would be the Org’s last words on those deaths.:

I didn’t know Gary well. My one vivid recollection is from the winter of 1984, working with Gary in a small, temporary, ad hoc local office in Cleveland. It was a Sunday, and our fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants budget was depleted. Incessant torrents of rain came down. I remember going to a freeway off-ramp with Gary, brandishing zip-loc bags of campaign literature at motorists until they opened their windows in the downpour in order to support our intrepid campaign. The memory of Gary’s unfailing good humor and esprit de corps that day has stayed with me through the years.  […]

Good bye, John, it was a privilege to be your friend, and we will miss you terribly. Arrivederci in a better world, a world in which there is no rain, gasoline never ends, and finally justice and peace prevail.

In case you do not recall, forgot, or never knew in the first place: they died on a rainy night, having run out of gasoline en route from one Regional Organization to another.  But don’t worry, folks.  Lyndon Larouche received another name drop on a Russian television show, and his supporters are sure to be hard at work at wikipedia to gain his props.  LYMers continue to wander in and through college lectures, to no real effect — en route to earning those $4.  And Carroll Quigley quotations are sure to appear in a blog comment near you — so watch for that one as well.

The debate swerved into the surreal as John McCain introduced the world to … what was his name again?  The rest of the debate was addressed to nobody else except this guy — the other quarter billion Americans may as well have just turned it off (which, I guess, would make it a win for Obama — Great Strategy there, McCain!  Though, too many of these(*) and maybe you want everyone but Joe to turn the tv off.).  Why?  Apparently he was a republican blogger celebrity for speaking his mind to Barack Obama.  Fair enough, but it is ridiculous that he becomes the focal point of McCain’s campaign — a strange inversion of the old tact of lining up personal anecdotes of hard scrabbled people met during the campaign with the candidate’s policies meant to alleviate just that problem.  I was hoping Obama would, about two thirds through the debate, just come out and say it “Screw it!  Here’s what I am going to do:  as president, I will confiscate ALL of Joe’s money and throw him into the poor house.  Then I will take away all of his guns away, just for kicks.  In short, I will make Joe the Plumber the National Scape-Goat.  All your problems are the fault of Joe the Plumber.”  But that wasn’t going to happen.  Maybe someone at the third party debate could do just that.  Unfortunately, Bob Barr has taken up the cause of Joe the Plumber, so I guess all is lost.

I think it is time to unveil a full blasted attack ad on Joe the Plumber.  I mean, did you know his real name was Sam?  Bob the Plumber ought to get right on that.

(*) No.  Really.  What is that?  Can I get video of it.  Maybe it’d make sense in context.

Note:  I had to edit this blog post because I am a bone-head who mis-spelled “plumber” to “plummer”.  This may or may not be fine, but I doubt it.

Before McCain’s arrival at a rally Saturday, a local clergyman delivered an invocation that instructed the almighty on his handling of the coming election.“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons,” said Rev. Arnold Conrad. “And, Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you if that happens.  So I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day. ”

Now THAT’S Desperation.  The Reverend has to appeal to Diety Pride to entreat him (er… “Him”) to get John McCain’s victory.  Lest the other Gods, such as that great God Hindu and that great God Buddha, Lord it over his God.  He knows he cares more than the Almighty, and the only way to get the Almighty to care is by pointing to how the other gods on the block are ganging up on him.  Hindu, Buddha, Allah… those gods.  Hindu the God.  Buddha the God.  Allah the God.

Reverend Arnold Conrad really needs to get together with General Boykin:  “Well you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his.  I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”

But Boykin at least seems to know that his god is bigger, unlike the fretful Conrad.  No word on whether Boykin also thinks there is a god named Hindu, a god named Buddha, and one named Allah.

The New York Times has a little device, one of those maps you can click to turn red or blue.  They start it with their current calculation of “swing states”, one which various blogs of note have observed have a skew which has “leaning McCain” with states he’s narrowly ahead and “leaning Obama” with states he is ahead by double digits.  I note that the map has, within the last two weeks, ebbed New Hampshire from the thin “undecided” sliver to Obama’s camp, moving his total from 260 to 264 votes.  I also note how this effects the “random close states” function, which assigns states randomly to Obama and McCain — today, if you click that 50 times, Obama wins 48 out of 50 times.  Two weeks ago, I was not counting, but I am guessing it came down to something like … 40 out of 50 times.

But the map has shifed somewhat.  Sarah Palin made an appearance in West Virginia, and gaver her little ditty about Jack and Dianne.  This is a little weird — in the primary season, West Virginia together with Kentucky was Obama’s Sahara — arid beyond arid, he lost by over 40 points as the media descended upon the states and dredged up any number of voters whose answer on why they voted for Clinton was, quite bluntly, race.  But the stunning thing is that West Virginia is not Reagan Democrat Country — it voted for Carter in 1980 and Dukakis in 1988, two of the three elections which you have to say would define the term “Reagan Democrat” — or tied with Massachusetts.  When the primary season came to West Virginia, I looked back and saw the media right up for the state’s election.  It was something of a surprise and out of the blue that they voted for Dukakis, and was attributed to Dukakis’s late charge in adopting the languate of “economic populism”.  A bit forgotten, in the debate Dukakis asserted “I am a Liberal in the tradition of Truman and Kennedy”, to which Bush “burned” him with “Finally.  He comes out and says it!  Liberal!”  Believe it or not, this stabalized a floundering campaign somewhat.  Somewhat.  Enough to win West Virginia.  And nearly win the grand prize of California.  Which would have, if nothing else, been like getting a face saving touch-down to whittle a lost football game from 35-14 to 35-21.  Or something.

But Gore dared raise some regulation proposals for the Coal Industry, and then Bush went on to stiff up the tarrifs to protect the Coal industry, and so it ran him from 7 points a victory in 2000 to 14 in 2004.  The population continued to age, the best and brightest of the young fled over to North Carolina and Virginia for better opportunities as opposed to dying industry, and the seven points more per election cycle seemed to be where it was going for Obama as Clinton choked him out by 40 points.  Unless, my observation in reading the 1988 election reports, things somehow went really bad.

Though the “No Democrat has ever won without West Virginia” remains a little inoperable either way.