Should the Obama campaign dump an end-game $5 million into a state where, in late Sept. (poll by Orion Strategies), 49 percent of the population believe Barack to be a Muslim or a member of some other, "secret" non-Christian faith? A state where, just yesterday, one of the savviest and most veteran county political chairs in the state (one who's never cared for Obama) asked me if it's "his black grandmother he's going to visit in Huh-woy-ya?"
Update: The poll I cite was done by Orion Strategies, a Democratic political consulting and public relations firm in West Virginia. Mr. Curtis Wilkerson e-mailed me and said the following, "Although it is true that there is a different company by a similar name headed by the person you mentioned, it is NOT one and the same. Orion Strategies works with Democrats throughout West Virginia."
Update #2: The Orion Strategies firm Mr. Wilkerson works for released the results of its most recent poll, which shows McCain leading in WV by 5.7. The poll Orion released when it showed 49 percent of state residents believing Obama to be a member of a non-Christian faith showed an 11-point spread in favor of McCain.
A recent poll (PPP) showed McCain leading 50-42. That was on the heels of Mason-Dixon, which showed a 47-41 tightening of the race in Appalachia's new political emblem (along with eastern KY, at least when it comes to Obama).
These polls came after ARG's quirky outlier had given Obama an 8-point lead (anyone remotely familiar with 21st-century WV much less anyone actually living here who believed that one might be advised to spend six months tending bar or waiting tables somewere in darkest Mingo County for some much-needed reality therapy).
Reliable, sane FiveThirtyEight.com wondered two days ago what light a Rasmussen poll might shed on this murky situation, and the answer came almost immediately: it's McCain 52, Obama 43. Even more telling is that McCain's favorable/unfavorables break down 60 to 38 compared to Obama's 47 to 51.
I've advocated for months that the Obama faithful in the state's northern tier should be spending their time in Pennsylvania and/or Ohio while those in the eastern panhandle and the southern counties should be going to Virginia.
Most didn't want to do that, at least not on a regular basis, and that's arguably admirable if, after the election, these hardcore Mountain State Obamakin stay active in the form of cohesive networks of Barack-style local community organizers.
Because: 1) the state's complacent, fossilized, big-coal-dominated Democratic Party political organization needs to be reformed from the bottom up, and 2) the grassroots Obama organizations across the country must stay together as active, core support groups because if you think the flexing of reactionary institutional muscle was breathtaking when Hillary undertook to reform health care in 1993 then...you ain't seen nothin' yet...
My gut take on the ground here in WV is that the state political machine at high levels (a few people excepted) continued to beat the drum in a pro-Hillary frenzy even after the North Carolina/Indiana primaries in part because of an uh-oh, pour-me-a-stiff-one suspicion that this Obama character may be serious about this reform-from-the-bottom-up stuff after all.
(Maybe they thought this fierce urgency of now slickness was just window-dressing on the biggest money-laundering operation since Bugsy started dreaming in the desert, a vast political Ponzi scheme fronted by Rezko for the Chicago mob that went awry after will i am scored a hit on youtube and...)
So, if the $5 million Andrea Mitchell reported on Sunday that Obama was prepared to dump into West Virginia--where no national campaign staff organizer has, to my knowledge, been on the ground on a regular basis since the May 13 primary--helps with that post-Nov. 4 grassroots organizational scenario, then, please, dump it. But if not, all that's being dumped is more waste into an already toxic political sewer.