So keep the toothless moron vote.

We just love a good number-cruncher. Dave Weigel at Reason explains how the Obama campaign seems to be putting its bets on the future rather than the past:

"The good news for Obama? The states he's losing aren't worth as much as the states he's winning. I discussed this with Eric Dondero on BlogTalkRadio last night. Dondero was crowing that the Democrats were losing Southern whites forever with their foolhardy Obama nomination, and I argued that they could afford to, because the electoral power of those voters is vanishing. West Virginia's a good example. From 1913 to 1963, the state had six congressmen and eight electoral votes. Now it has three congressman and five electoral votes. It's the 10th slowest-growing state: A political party would get far more out of locking down Hispanic votes in Nevada (5 electoral votes, set to become 6 electoral votes in 2012) than locking down poor whites in West Virginia or even Kentucky. Congressional re-districting is going to pulverize these states.

"Look at it this way. Say the Democrats win the White House with the states Al Gore won in 2000 plus West Virginia. In 2000, they would have been worth 271 votes. In 2008, they will be worth 269 votes—enough to toss the election into the House of representatives. In 2012, they will be worth only 259 votes, as the rust belt and mid-Atlantic states lose clout to the West and sun belt. The smart thing for either party, then, is to win those latter states. The GOP would gladly give up its West Virginia surge if it could stop bleeding support in Colorado and (to a much lesser but more worrying extent) Texas."

West Virginia proves Richard Florida's thesis in The Rise of the Creative Class: you can create all the enterprise zones and business parks you want, but if your population hates well educated people who want to live where they can get a good meal at a restaurant and not be harassed for being- or seeming to be- something the locals don't like: well, if that's the workforce you want, go see Senator Byrd. He'll earmark a billion or two for you to move your buggy-whip factory there.