Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stated in her West Virginia victory speech last night that no Democrat since 1916 had ever won the White House without West Virginia. The implication, of course, is that Hillary will work the Clinton magic to win West Virginia and the nation as a whole.
That is undoubtedly true. But it is also undoubtedly irrelevant, and betrays a fundamental inflexibility in the Clinton view of the electoral map that does not grasp the changes that have taken place in America over the last 20 years.
West Virginia was once a key part of the Democratic coalition; even Jimmy Carter (in 1980) and Michael Dukakis (in 1988) won it. But beneath the surface, West Virginia was becoming an increasingly purple state during the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1980, President Carter won West Virgnia with just under 50 percent of the vote, outperforming the national popular vote (which he lost 51-41) by about 9 points. In 1984, a very bad year for Democrats, Walter Mondale lost West Virginia, 55-45, while losing the national election 59-41. Mondale overperformed in West Virginia by about 4 points. In 1988, West Virginia went Democratic by a margin of 52 to 47, about 6 points more Democratic than the national popular vote (which broke 53-46 in favor of George H.W. Bush). In 1992, Bill Clinton won West Virginia with 48 percent of the vote, about 5 points more than his national popular vote share (43 percent). On average, the Democrats were doing about 6 points better in West Virginia than in the rest of the country.
In 1996, however, Clinton won West Virginia with only 51.5 percent of the vote, which was only 2.3 points more than his national vote total of 49.2 percent. In 2000, Bush carried the state with 52 percent of the vote, 4 points better than his national popular vote share of 48 percent. Bush again won West Virginia in 2004, over-performing there by 5 points over the national popular vote.
So there has clearly been an underlying trend in West Virginia from being a part of the Democratic base to being a part of the Republican base.
And while Bill Clinton may have done about 2 or 3 points better in West Virginia relative to the long-term trend in 1992 and 1996, a 2 or 3 point "Clinton bump" would not be enough for the Democrats to win West Virginia in 2008 unless the election becomes a 49-state blowout. Extrapolating the trend line out to 2008, the generic Democrat should expect to do about 6.5 points worse in West Virginia than in the rest of the country.
There are plenty of states that were firm parts of the Democratic base which then became swing states and then became "Red States." Case in point: From 1848 until 1992, no Democrat had ever won the White House without carrying the state of Texas. In the highly-competitive elections of 1960, 1968 and 1976, Texas was a bona fide battleground state. John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson as his running mate in 1960 largely to nail down Texas's critical electoral votes.
But eventually, the Kennedy-Johnson era of politics came to an end, and Hillary's husband showed that a Democrat can win a national election without the Lone Star State (which, by the way, has nearly seven times as many Electoral Votes as West Virginia).
All of this leads me to question Hillary's judgment, because either she is spinning this line about West Virginia's significance out of desperation, knowing it is ridiculous; or she really has drank her own "Restorationist" Kool-Aid, believing that all it takes is a Clinton on the ballot to return America to the "good old days" of the 1990s. My dear readers are, of course, welcome to draw their own opinions.