and then somebody dropped it on its head. (I can say that, my husband was bron in WV and lived there till 12)

1. Gore ran in 2000 and was pegged by West Virginian's as anti-gun
2. And probably more importantly, Robert Byrd died. Though West Virginia was trending red at the time, anytime his name was on the ballot people went to the polls to vote for him and other Dems benefited. His campaigning with Dems also helped

That's what put WV in the blue column (we were one Dukakisis' states, after all).
Once that older generation who understood the importance of voting Democratic was gone, we were left with rightwing Boomers who are hardcore rightwingers.

Some of eastern Kentucky has had that happen as well
The most Democratic county in the country for the last 100 years is in Kentucky -- Elliott. Read several articles about the county and many there referred to FDR as Mr. Roosevelt

Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”

in the current meaning of dominated by liberal progressive ideology. In other words, never a southern Massachusetts or Vermont.

No surprise, of course. Conservative is both a basic personality type and a cultural orientation, and extremely white rural WV has always been strongly conservative. WV's electorate has traditionally voted "coal," and coal interests were traditionally mostly represented by conservatives who ran as Democrats. And those representatives caucused with Republicans on many or most issues.

As coal collapsed, so did the Democratic Party's usefulness to the very conservative coal mine owners. And with them went WV's coal culture warriors.

Btw, speaking of, Joe Manchin's approval is up. He now has a substantial lead over his Republican challenger. This might have something to do with it:

That's my underline under "politicallly." And yes, we HAD promised $20 BILLION to make WV a place where families could remain and prosper again.

It's a long way to Election Day, many bots to abuse voters' minds, and Trump Baby Jail Hotels may be far from their minds by then

But, but ..... but ..... if we could pull this one off .....

I'd love to know what happened. My husband worked in a plant in Ohio, on the river, and worked with a lot of WV residents. He told me his coworkers got worried they'd lose their guns. And he thought that was what happened.

Voted for Reagan 1984. Voted for Dukakis 88. Clinton '92,96. Bush '00, 2006.

Mines started becoming unprofitable, increased automation and job losses, blame unions for economic troubles, break unions, lower miner pay and less mining jobs because of automation, begin strip mining (use of cheaper less skilled labor and increased automation or big diggers), collapse of the coal market as coal-fired power plants become unprofitable and outdated compared to more efficient combined cycle gas plants, decrease coal demand, more job losses, blame demise of coal market on environmental regulations (democrats), failure to diversify/develop/invest in other industries. In a nut shell.

Just as most reliably blue states turned against the Democratic party after the 1964 civil rights act and the 1965 voting rights act, signed by LBJ, the racists left the Democratic party to follow George Wallace and slowly, but surely, entered the racist Republican party. that's how big business gets people to vote against their own economic interests, by highlighting racial fears.

You can follow that historical political path right up to Trump.

I remember when the Democratic party was vilified as the party of the rich fat cats. They certainly grew to bring everyone into the tent. While the repubs have shriveled to hateful, crooked liars.

like Kentucky, where I live, the moral majority ideologically took hold of most of the Churches in the state and steered them very far right to where probably a majority of white of Church members don't think they can be Christians and vote for a Democrat.

When all these elections are micro examined and watched for errors...AND COUNTED CORRECTLY...Democrats win. It's my opinion that we've been winning since Gore got robbed in 2000. When Election Day happens...there's so many elections going on at once...no ones really looking, and the fix is in. Then STUPID people, who go along to get along, bc they're stupid...start acting like the winners so they are "in". Self fulfilling prophecy. We've been getting rick rolled for damn near two decades, then lectured about WHY W LOST....and it makes sensible thoughtful people neurotic and we question ourselves unduly. JUST my humble opinion. What we know (we won) doesn't jive w what we see....bc someones got their finger on the scale. Makes me worry about the "Blue Wave" in November....Isn't DHS supposed to be securing the voting boxes? Too little time I guess...what with guarding all the children in cages.

is given by Diebold for a 5.00 withdraw at an ATM at any bank nationwide...but Diebold (subsidiary of Halliburton) can't manage to give us a receipt for our greatest right as a citizen...one man one vote. Strangely the computer voting really hit it's stride under bush CHENEY in the 2 thousand aughts as well. Coinky-dink? I think not. The fix is in.

as a receipt, even though I always hand it in in person. A receipt is easy enough to make and the cost is the paper it is printed so what's the hold up?

Exactly. Why the delay? That's a unique idea. I mail-in my ballot. Ever wonder if they see your name on the yellow envelope...do a quick state check, No-go list and..."Ohhh this guy votes D." Into the shredder w the ballot? In my township my family is stalwart Blue in a sea of down-brain farming red. Always have been. I'm sure the clerk knows that and is very familiar my families(?) name by now. Always wondered if our ballots even got opened. You hope I guess right? In CA where you're at I'm sure the same does NOT happen. Ergo, the blue state.
Whats up w that initiative to break the state up? What's going on with that?

It is very complicated and would take a ton of time, votes, red tape, money etc to carry out. I think it is a bunch of crap from some guy who is pissed off about the 12 cent gas tax or has Russian connections and wants to get red voters stirred up. If it ever happens I will be long dead, thank goodness.

The companies who design electronic voting machines claim they can't make a rect. because it is too complex. I go to the store, select numerous random items, some of which are on sale, give them my id chips, coupons and whatever else, and lo and behold, it is all on a rect. which didn't exist before the checkout began logging my order. So, bs that the evm can't do the same.

agree. When it comes to voting integrity....just too hard. But...space force. Ugh.

let you make a photo copy (like a screen shot). There must be something they can produce for validation. If other countries can secure their elections, why can't we? I thought we had money and tech guys to spare.

then suddenly..."Nope...no educated enough people around." Just can't do it. We need foreign labor.
They can do it in a month...nation-wide. But, they don't bc..."Hey, are we going to turn down this money now? These plebes are rubes. Rubes I tell ya."

I'm not going to lie and say it'd be impossible for the machines Arkansas set up to have been preloaded with a "feature" allowing them to have it tell us at the end of the day, based on how many ballots submitted and how the election was supposed to go in that precinct, but part of our verification in taking the vote to the county was to seal the audit trail spools, the parts where each voter could see what the machine printed as their ballot.

Also, we compared the counts on the machines to the total voter count by sign-in sheet, and knew what it said the results were for our precinct. We handed them the sealed audit trail envelopes and the memory cards from the machines, and waited until they wrote our precinct's totals on the big board and verified everything matched before we left the courthouse.

I took a picture of the big board before I left, and then after the election compared for our county/precinct breakdown in reported election-day votes. No discrepancies.

Admittedly I don't know if they could get each machine out of storage afterwards and have them print a second audit trail in each instance where they'd used an algorithm to swing the vote, or if there are not enough differences in each individual machine's printing to make that unnecessary. But they wouldn't be able to pre-print them, because they wouldn't know the turnout.

But so far we've been using paper ballots with optical scanning, or those type of machines with an audit trail.

Crossing my fingers that at least recounts can happen, it's just they're so unlikely here. I guess the people who bought the machines felt their seats were safe enough for secure voting.

and the main purpose of the hack was to usher in HAVA, and enable the high-tech vapor voting machine hack that ensued.

That's an interesting piece of information. How hard is it to "Update" the machines software w a counting program right before the elections or whatever, even innately part of the machines main program, and change the vote tallies? Come on. I'd be extraordinarily stupid to think otherwise, at least as a point to ponder.
If you don't think they've gotten that computer guy over there to talk and work against us, we ALL might be a little naive. can't think of the mans name. Contractor. Brown hair and glasses.
Maybe they scared him into it? Could be? All of it's open for 'ponderance' bc if we don't...they will take advantage of our nature and rip us to shreds w the cheating. i dunno.

In recent demo, college kids hacked 'em in a few minutes.

For the most advanced nation on earth you'd think they'd try harder. They don't want anyone talking about it bc they aren't intending to do anything before this election. They are crooks and they need to cheat to win.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments!

Nice to hear a kind word around here from folks.

From the linked article:

A result of 48 to 39 is a 6-point lead? But then on different assumptions it "grows" to 9 points?

Because of rounding, the 48-39 could be a lead of 8, 9, or 10 points, but not 6.

n/t

This polling shows a race pretty much tied....that indicates what folks? Get over math errors

Who knew?

Either way, I suppose he's better than the alternatives. I just hope his liberal stances are not all an act on his part.

Was bashing refugees and backing Trump just two years ago, and continues to push lies about Clinton and Democrats.

He's a "colorful" character.

"Trump’s promise to put America first was appealing to Ojeda because he felt it was the first time in a long while that a national politician had actually seemed to care about his state, and not because poverty was bad and poor people needed help but because West Virginia was part of America. “When you hear about illegal aliens getting benefits and you have people here starving to death and can’t get nothing, it’s just a slap in the face,” he says. “When you start talking about bringing in refugees and when they get here they get medical and dental and they get set up with some funds—what do we get? So when people hear Donald Trump saying we’re going to take benefits away from people who come here illegally and give them to people who work, that sounds pretty good.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/in-the-heart-of-trump-country

And he's an EPA-bashing coal lackey.

His opponent Carol Miller is even worse, and he's the barely preferable candidate, but the ridiculous hero worship of this rightwing clown - Krystal Ball practically worships him, Michael Moore rushed to get his photo taken with him, Mother Jones slobbers over him, articles calling him "JFK with a bench press and tattoos," and "the new face of the Democratic Party" (a slogan he quickly put on his website after) — is by uninformed, out of state pundits who have no clue of his record here.

And contrary to myth, he's never "apologized" for backing trump - just merely offered a variety of changing excuses and debunked anti-Democratic lies, depending on his audience, for doing so.

Beware this guy. He's a loudmouth, rightwing showboat with no loyalty to anything Democratic. Another Jim Trafficant in the making.

First, a progressive CANNOT win there. It's either an alt-right or not quite so alt-right. So, he's done something extraordinary.

Second, his stance on coal, while disheartening, is because he's in COAL TERRITORY. So he's looking out for the constituency. He also wants ANY jobs...they don't have to be coal.

Third, he's PRO-UNION. In particular, TEACHERS.

He also hates lobbyists and big energy, in particular.

I found this:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/02/richard-ojeda-west-virginia-blue-army-one-217217

So...not the kind of Democrat I'd want to see. But if he wins, he IS better than a Trump worshiper. As we've discussed here before, it's important that Democrats win. There will be different kinds of Democrats in the different district. The choice isn't Ojeda and a more liberal Democrat. The choice for that district is Ojeda and a full-out Trumper.