Democrats rashly ignore political problems among their own usual voters

BOONE COUNTY, West Virginia — Not many people in the national press were paying attention to the Democratic presidential primary results in West Virginia on May 8, 2012. Barack Obama was the incumbent president, and few outside local press noticed that Keith Russell Judd, a Texas convict sitting in a federal prison for extortion, had sent in the proper paperwork and paid the $2,500 filing fee necessary to be on the ballot.

Even had they paid attention, chances are no one expected him to have an impact. Yet he won a whopping 41% of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic primary, earning 72,000 votes to Obama’s 106,000.