{"id":604,"date":"2008-05-12T19:41:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T19:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/05\/why-clintons-sticking-around.html"},"modified":"2008-05-12T19:41:34","modified_gmt":"2008-05-12T19:41:34","slug":"why-clintons-sticking-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/why-clintons-sticking-around.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Clinton’s Sticking Around"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"westvirginia.jpg\"Read some choice snippets from this Financial Times dispatch from West Virginia<\/a> ahead of tomorrow’s primary and then tell God-o-Meter if you can really blame Hillary Clinton for staying in the race a couple weeks longer.<\/p>\n

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.
\n“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife\u2019s an atheist,\u201d said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.
\nMr Simpson\u2019s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday\u2019s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls….
\nA visit to Mingo County, a Democratic stronghold in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, reveals the scale of Mr Obama\u2019s challenge \u2013 not only in West Virginia but in white, working-class communities across the US. With a gun shop on its main street and churches dotted throughout the town, Williamson is the kind of community evoked by Mr Obama\u2019s controversial comments last month about \u201cbitter\u201d small-town voters who \u201ccling to guns or religion\u201d….
\nNone of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. The depth of opposition is particularly striking considering that Mingo County is one of the most Democratic places in West Virginia, having cast about 85 per cent of its votes for the party in the 2006 midterm elections. If Mr Obama cannot win there in November, he has little chance of carrying the state.
\nMost people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and \u201cvalues\u201d, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding \u201canti-American\u201d sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim \u2013 an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months \u2013 despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright\u2019s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Mich\u00adelle, who des\u00adcribed America as \u201cmean\u201d and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\n8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read some choice snippets from this Financial Times dispatch from West Virginia ahead of tomorrow’s primary and then tell God-o-Meter if you can really blame Hillary Clinton for staying in the race a couple weeks longer. Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Clinton's Sticking Around - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/why-clintons-sticking-around.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Clinton's Sticking Around - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Read some choice snippets from this Financial Times dispatch from West Virginia ahead of tomorrow’s primary and then tell God-o-Meter if you can really blame Hillary Clinton for staying in the race a couple weeks longer. 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