There's no suspense about the outcome tonight in West Virginia -- only about how the press will cover it.
Polls close at 7:30 pm, and if the other kind of polls are right the vast majority of West Virginians are voting for Hillary Clinton. She has led in all four May polls, by margins ranging from 66-23 to 56-27. She'll win in a blowout. But what will it mean?
Obama has tried in every way possible to make it not mean much.
Seizing on a comment Bill Clinton made urging West Virginians to rack up an 80-20 victory, Obama has tried to set that as a benchmark -- surely the first time in history that a presumptive presidential nominee has tried to cast a 50-point defeat as a moral victory! He has appeared in West Virginia only once since March, doing a couple of events in Charleston yesterday.
The idea seems to be to depress the turnout and the volume of the popular vote defeat, if not the margin, by not really competing. He doesn't even intend to deliver remarks tonight after returns come in. Today, he's on to Missouri. Tomorrow, he's supposed to be in Michigan, and he's also scheduled events in Florida, trying to make amends in the dispute over seating those delegations.
He continues to rack up superdelegate support -- a net of more than 20 over Clinton since last Tuesday, including four so far today, one promoted on a conference call. His campaign has spent the past week pointing to next Tuesday -- when, despite another expected drubbing in Kentucky, he hopes to secure an absolute majority in pledged delegates by winning Oregon, where he leads in two new polls 55-35 and 54-43.
The risk: He is missing an almost risk-free opportunity to enter the lion's den and at least show character by reaching out to the blue-collar white voters who have been most resistant to him. And, he is not quite 100-percent home free in the popular vote -- there's still a danger that he could be overtake by huge, resounding blowouts in WV, Ky. and Puerto Rico.
But, realistically, West Virginia -- which Gore and Kerry both lost -- has only 28 delegates. The media has already decided Obama is the winner of the nomination, and has discouted a big WV loss. First Read sets the bar at 38 percent -- Obama's average white vote in similar states -- and concludes:
"Perhaps the best way to think of today’s West Virginia primary is like the final football game of the regular season, which really won’t impact the teams headed to the playoffs. Yes, the players will once again don their helmets and shoulder pads. Yes, the game will count, as will the statistics. But MUCH, MUCH more has to happen besides this sole game to change the postseason situation."