Let's go ahead and get the necessary prognostications out of the way. Kentucky is Clinton's handily; I'm going with Clinton by a wide margin of 25-30 points. The polls are mixed in Oregon although it should still be Obama's show there; I say Obama by a narrow margin of 5 to 10 points.
The crazy thing is, no one in the country seems to care anymore. For Democrats, horse race fatigue has set in well and good. Seemingly all anyone can talk about with regard to the Democratic nomination for president is when Hillary Clinton will acknowledge that it's over - that indeed it has been over for weeks now. She is impossibly behind in the delegate count, her campaign is hemorrhaging money, and her victory speeches have started to sound positively eulogistic. Even she seems to think her race is coming to a close.
Here's the puzzling part - for all the media insistence that her campaign is drawing its last wheezing breathes, people are still voting for her. Not only that, but in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, she's beating the pants off Obama. Hell, in the last week or so she's even managed to reduce Obama's lead in Oregon polls. If ever life called for a WTF moment, this would be it. It seems that the voting public - or at least some very specific sections of it - is not at all ready to give up and name Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee. This has got to be giving Senator Obama pause. One would hope. Or maybe not. Here's his response when asked about the fact that he continues to struggle in states like Kentucky (as quoted in Kausfiles):
"What it says is that I'm not very well known in that part of the country," Obama said. "Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle."I am truly amazed at Obama's ability in such a short statement to simultaneously A) appear absolutely clueless about American geography, B) subtly but thoroughly suggest that the rubes who inhabit "some of those states in the middle" are too stupid to have figured out who he is, and C) adopt the Pollyanna-ish attitude that this will somehow change before the November elections.
Obama's continued failure to perform in "some of those states in the middle" should strike abject terror in the hearts of his campaign staff. It hints at a larger problem that could very well cost him the election come November. For whatever reason - whether it be racist white voters who won't vote for a black man no matter his qualifications, or disenchanted female voters who are fed up with the sexism and misogyny that have characterized the attacks on Senator Clinton are now taking it out on her male opponent, or downtrodden middle class voters who balk at installing Obama's air of elitism - Obama is tanking in a small but significant portion of the country. And he's tanking at a point in the primaries when it looks as if a vote for Senator Clinton is basically a vote wasted.
What should be the Obama campaign's answer to his probable failure in Kentucky today? If, indeed, the problem is that he is not well enough known in states like Kentucky, then it seems he should be working to increase his profile there. Hold some of those famous rallies. It probably wouldn't make a difference in Kentucky per se - they usually vote Repbulican - but it might give the campaign a chance to confront some of the skeptical voters it so desperately needs to win over and craft a message that might appeal to them.
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