Going to the Republican convention. Another pathetic Blue Dog that should be primaried.

Even WV Democrats aren't crazy about Obama.

Yes he's a very conservative guy (and his primary opponent wasn't exactly a progressive either). But for better or worse, for this election cycle, he's our guy. If he loses, it dramatically increases the chances the Senate ends up in repub hands. And his repub opponent is reprehensible. At least Manchin voted against defunding Planned Parenthood and against the Paul Ryan budget. You can take it to the bank that those two votes would have been different if cast by his repub opponent

he will jump ship after January - just watch

They like to have a few people like him inside the enemy's camp, so that they can say "look, even Democrats oppose these crazy liberal policies, like making us pay the same taxes as the little people".

I think he is more useful to his corporate masters than to anyone within the Democratic party.

Poor word choice, I probably should have said "He's more useful to his masters if he remains within the Democratic Party". Or the Democrat Party, as he probably calls it.

And it such a long distance to travel by car.

It would take him a whole 4 hours (assuming Charleston to Charlotte).

Manchin is a "chicken shit" Blue Dog, DINO. Hope the SOB loses! Democrats don't need shitbags like this representing them.

who needs that racist bigot to spoil the convention...I hope he was told he was not welcome..we don't need his stain on the rest of us.

of course not...he might be photographed standing next to liberals, gays and people of color, and the hillbilly vote he's selling out for would evaporate...

I've seen this story play out, and the ending is never good...

Didn't that same hillbilly vote elect Robert Byrd time and again?

Running a campaign from the "gop-lite cowardice" angle is a certain disaster...Dems field this type in my state every two years, and the result is the same 9 times out of 10

or why not make his crossover complete and switch parties?

and out of sheer curiosity, what's his "official reason" for not supporting Obama? (I know the real one)

God forbid he vote for Reid -- West Virginians might think he supports Obama by proxy and we can't have that...

What purpose does it serve to hate on Obama and avoid the convention other than making his party look weaker?

"D" behind his name...

Sounds like you are a republican to me.

they do not publicly support President Obama? You would rather have Republicans in these position who will openly support Republican candidates?

Its not as if he's announced that he's endorsing Romney and going to the repub convention. Separating himself from the presidential candidates of both parties serves his interest in getting re-elected and his staying within the Democratic party serves our interests in controlling the Senate.

play this neutral, fence-straddling game...

The GOP never seems to worry about getting their share of moderate votes, no matter how far right they lean...

It would be nice if the Democrats could master messaging and larger policy strategy. They seem terrible at it and too busy trying to appear reasonable. I suppose this is the reward for the president attempting to appear bipartisan.

Had the Blue Dog coalition not provided fillibuster cover for the entirety of 2009 we might have been able to craft an actual message that would have painted the republican congress of 2009-2010 as the most oppositional, obstructionist, minority party in modern American history.

Instead we got the tea party as the story. Good job Blue dogs! Thank you Evan Bayh for screwing the party as hard as you could and destroying what should have been a generational shift to the left.

to any strategy discussions. Never trust either one.

salivating over.

Prison Inmate Wins More than 40% of Democratic Vote Over President Obama in WV Primary

President Obama has never been particularly popular in West Virginia, and even though he’s an incumbent president running essentially unopposed, Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the Appalachian state didn’t change that dynamic.

More than 40percent of Democrats voting chose to cast their ballot for Keith Russell Judd, an inmate at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas, where he’s doing time for extortion and threats made at the University of New Mexico in 1999.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/prison-inmate-wins-more-than-40-of-democratic-vote-over-president-obama-in-wv-primary/

stuck out in the desert.

I asked my husband if he took the primary results as racism or stupidity, and he voted for racist.

But if they voted Obama in 2008 and then bailed in 2012 odds are there's a protest vote going on. This was a Democratic primary, after all; exclusively Democratic voters. It's too much of a stretch to claim people went from reasoned vote to unreasoned bias in the space fo 3 years.

and it's probably right, but I know that there's a good bit of racism back home as well.

for several decades now it's hard to imagine 40% of WV Democrats suddenly waking-up and finding they were voting with/for people of color.

he is a republiCON..