Dave Weigel had an interesting piece at the Washington Post on Monday examining the opportunity Bernie Sanders has to win white working-class voters over Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic primaries. Weigel reported from West Virginia, where in 2008, 69 percent of the white Democratic voters chose Clinton over Barack Obama. (Weigel’s piece doesn’t touch on one obvious possible reason for such a large victory margin, but it still might be an issue in 2016 for reasons we’ll get into.)
Basically, the theory goes like this: Sanders’s argument for economic justice and equality might just resonate loudly enough with rural working-class whites that they will be willing to overlook areas where they disagree with the Vermont socialist, such as on climate change and gay marriage. That West Virginia voters might go for such a leftist message is especially surprising in a state that elected Democrat Joe Manchin to the Senate in 2010 largely on the basis of his conservative positions on gun rights, Obamacare, and promising to (literally) put a bullet in the cap-and-trade legislation then being debated in Congress, a particularly popular message in the coal-happy state.