Blue Collar Dems, Others Abandon Obama

Yesterday's primary results in a handful of states including North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin spell more trouble for President Obama.
Let's talk about border states and Appalachia first.
What happened in West Virginia is indicative of something that's occurring in the south, border states and through the Appalachians up into Pennsylvania and Ohio. Blue collar Democrats are turning away from President Obama. To be sure, these have never been a big part of Obama's base (remember how Hillary Clinton trounced him among this group in '08) but now they are in full revolt against the President.
The situation is so bad that yesterday, in West Virginia a prison inmate managed to capture 40% of there vote against Obama in the Democrat primary. This inmate (Keith Judd) became Obama's most successful primary challenger this year.
Imagine the embarrassment the White House must (or should) feel.
When Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy scored 42% of the vote against President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary that was considered a stunning upset "victory" for McCarthy. It so humiliated President Johnson that by the end of the month Johnson dropped out of the presidential race altogether.
Yesterday, Keith Judd won 41% of the vote against a sitting president. Judd actually carried 10 counties.
And Judd didn't campaign and didn't have the small army of volunteers that McCarthy had. Indeed, Judd is still serving time at Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas.
People obviously weren't voting for Judd. They were voting against Obama.
Translation: West Virginians (who have elected a Democrat governor and two Democrat US Senators) are damned angry with Obama.
Now, let's look to North Carolina, a state that the Democrats are targeting with such fervor that they plan to hold their convention there this summer. In North Carolina, by a lopsided majority of 61% to 39%, moderate, blue-collar Democrats joined Republicans to reject gay marriage -- a proposal that has become a pillar of liberalism and a sort of litmus test for Democrat officeholders. In North Carolina we now know that at least 35% of the state's Democrat voters joined in voting for an amendment to the state's constitution which effectively bans gay marriage by defining marriage as the union of one man and  one woman.
This issue is tough for Obama and the president knows it. Though he nominally supported the federal Defense of Marriage Act and has said that marriage is between a man and a woman, he's also said that his position on gay marriage is "evolving" and he has allowed his Attorney General to actually back away from enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act.
Obama knows that gay marriage is unpopular in the African-American community and among blue-collar Democrats. But he needs to rouse his base and this issue is a rouser among rabid libs.
So, Obama allows Vive President Biden and other would-be surrogates to support gay marriage while he hides behind some sort of "evolutionary" position. He's playing politics, pure and simple. And, in so doing he's using the gay community -- manipulating them and teasing them on an issue that would appear to be critically important to them.
And yesterday made the whole thing even more uncomfortable -- and more awkward -- for Obama.
Now, on to the midwest. In Wisconsin, Republicans turned out in droves to support embattled Gov. Scott Walker in the state’s primary ahead of a June 5 recall election, while organized labor efforts failed to rouse Democrats. Walker got 97 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, and almost as many votes were cast for him than in the entire Democrat primary combined. Not band for a guy who's supposed to be "on the ropes."
And in Indiana moderate (and often left-leaning) GOP Senator Dick Lugar lost to his primary challenger State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, again by a roughly 60%/40% margin as the Tea Party came out in force. The message for Obama? The Tea Party is not only alive and well but it's on the march and stronger than ever. Tea Party intensity could create a repeat of the 2010 election results.
Bet on it: Mourdock will win in November and Romney will carry Indiana as well.
And Romney will carry West Virginia, too.
And North Carolina and Wisconsin are eminently winnable for the GOP.
And Pennsylvania and Ohio? Here we come . . . . .