Hillary and Bill Clinton turned West Virginia, which admittedly was already primed, in a perfect storm of Know Nothingism.  I know hilbillies, I come from Kentucky hill people.  They have all the cultural and racial attitudes of Southerners without the leavening effect of black people.

Vanwurs: Boy, we are getting a lot of the Democratic equivalent of country club Republicans tonight on these threads. If these voters were going to Obama, I bet that most of the Obamamaniacs at this site would be praising these "simple folk". Prejudice cuts both ways, people.

liberal reformer,

Did you listen to these people as they were interviewed at Clinton rallies and outside the polls yesterday?  They exemplified every stereotype of a racist, close minded, nativist know nothing I've ever heard of.  The Clintons have been cultivating this vote since Ohio and Texas with every tribal and cultural and racial dog whistle ( and worse..."hard working americans, white americans..") in that deep bag of tricks our political history has given them.  West Virginia and Kentucky are the only two states where Barack does not get the under-thirty demographic.  That's how deeply anti-Obama (and this was a cultivated anti-Obama vote) these places are.  We are barely a generation removed from lynchings in this country, and there is a latent sentiment, particularly strong in some places (and I would put appalacia in that catagory for the reasons I suggested above...) that can be tapped and used if a politician is unscrupulous enough and heedless enough of the consequenses to do so.  Hillary and Bill are those very politictians.  Anything that works to get them past this election.  They are becoming increasingly vile and the campaign they are running, and the political sentiments they are provoking, encouraging and exploiting, is worse then vile.  It is dangerous.  We still lynch folks in this country.  The last time a politician (George Wallace) went around the country, massaging those particular nerves, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were killed.  They are playing with fire for the most selfish short term gain.

First, there was West Virginia. Michael Crowley parsed Hillary's thinking going into the primary