Thursday, May 8, 2008

Annals of Meaningless Comparisons

The she-Clinton has dug up the goalposts and replanted them in West Virginia. Blogger MiLog comments:

The key state of West Virginia

'I love claims like this:

Because for too long we have let places like West Virginia slip out of the Democratic column and you know it is a fact that no Democratic president has ever won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia.

'A quick check confirms that Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, was indeed the last Democrat to win the White House while losing West Virginia in the general election. The flip side, however, is that such notable Democratic losers as Hubert Humphries (35% of the electoral college, 1968), Michael Dukakis (20% of the electoral college, 1988), Adlai Stevenson (17% of the electoral college, 1952), and Jimmy [bless his nobel-winning soul] Carter (9% of the electoral college, 1980) also all won West Virginia. So I’m not sure it’s as much of a bellweather as, say Missouri.'

'Politico's Ben Smith adds: A couple of readers point out that Obama also has a state in his column that every Democratic president has won: Minnesota.

270toWin has a handy graph showing presidential voting in Byrdland since statehood- they've gone D 20 times, R 16.

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