"We're going to spend a lot of time in Missouri," Obama said yesterday during a town hall meeting in that state. He will be in Michigan today and Florida next week, courting voters in two critical battleground states that were carried by Clinton but were stripped of convention delegates for holding primaries earlier than Democratic National Committee rules allow.
If West Virginia is to be a swing state in the fall, Obama needs to win converts such as Janet Reeves, 61, a banker from Charleston. Reeves said she is considering casting a write-in vote for Clinton in the fall because "this is who I believe in."
Her level of enthusiasm for Obama, she said, will depend on what Clinton says and does when getting out. "It's how she brings us together," Reeves said. "It's going to be her responsibility."
Clinton promised last night to "work my heart out for the nominee of the Democratic Party to make sure we have a Democratic president."
The Clinton campaign tried to make the most of its victory, distributing a memo earlier in the day noting that "no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916."
"Any significant increase in voter turnout, coupled with a decisive Clinton victory, would send a strong message that Democrats remain excited and energized by Hillary's candidacy," the memo said.
Clinton's victory does help her cut into Obama's national popular vote advantage of roughly 700,000. Eclipsing Obama in the popular vote count through the final primaries is Clinton's last best argument to sway uncommitted superdelegates; those elected and party officials may chose whomever they want at the nominating convention.
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 in West Virginia, with organized labor in the mining and steel industries a powerful influence. For decades, the state supported Democratic candidates in presidential elections. But George W. Bush took the five electoral votes twice, with his support of the coal industry and its mining practices, and guns. More than seven in 10 of the state's voters come from households with guns, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
Bill Clinton carried the state twice, and remains popular, said Gov. Joe Manchin III, an uncommitted superdelegate. Obama will have to put in a lot of retail-politics work to win over Mountain State voters as a nominee, he said.
