"Wildly unpopular," a term used often to describe how West Virginians feel about President Barack Obama, doesn't begin to cover it, to judge by returns from the primary election Tuesday.
Democrats in our state gave Obama just 59 percent of their votes in the primary. The other 41 percent went to Keith Judd - an inmate in a federal prison in Texas (there for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999).
It is not uncommon for "fringe" candidates to run against entrenched incumbents such as Obama. Normally they receive just a few percentage points of the vote. Tuesday's returns were a historic repudiation of a Democrat president by his own party's voters.
In some southern coalfield counties, Obama lost to Judd. Here in the six-county Northern Panhandle region, Obama did just slightly better than statewide, with 60.5 percent of the vote compared to Judd's 39.5 percent.
Putting Tuesday's primary into additional perspective, consider that in 2008, West Virginians voted in favor of Obama's rival, Sen. John McCain, by a 55.7 percent to 42.6 percent margin (third-party candidates picked up the remaining votes). Still, Obama garnered 301,438 votes - nearly twice the 105,854 he received Tuesday.
We West Virginians have a skeptical streak in us. So, many of us didn't believe Obama in 2008 when he promised to revive the economy, cut deficit spending, adopt a realistic energy policy and disengage us from bloody foreign wars.
During the past three years our suspicions have proved well-founded. Judged against his own campaign rhetoric, Obama has been a none-of-the-above president.
Enough Americans took Obama on his word to send him to the White House, however. Some Mountain State Democrats agreed. Now, however, all illusions have vanished here - and between now and November, they will elsewhere, too.
